Louise Thayer vowed never to leave her husband. But her promise couldn’t stop them from drifting apart.
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My husband is bringing me my truck today.
This was supposed to have happened four or five other times over the course of the last eight months, but for various reasons those plans fell through.
I didn’t mind at all.
Everyone around my encampment tried to ensure that I would be getting my vehicle back, and while I appreciated their sentiments, concern and suggestions for how to ‘make’ that happen, I really didn’t care about the truck and I knew I could trust him to bring it when it was right.
He is and is not my husband any more. That was decided last July when, after working away for his usual month-long stretch, he decided not to come back to me.
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He is and is not my husband any more. That was decided last July when, after working away for his usual month-long stretch, he decided not to come back to me.
The truck, however, is mine.
I have a title on her. On it.
I never wanted ownership of him. We had even happily agreed to try to be each other’s ‘person’ in this world when the titles of ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ felt too alien and too heavy to us both.
We used to call her Sexy, (‘our’ truck back then). Our joint love of Dr Who (which I compulsively watched with him during long months of a repeat bout of darkest depression) led to that name.
We had been traveling these United States for the three years of our marriage and the trailer we pulled and lived in was our TARDIS.
The truck became ‘Sexy’… an alter ego of the Time Lord’s spaceship. She wasn’t blue and she couldn’t travel forwards or backwards through all of space and time but she somewhat reliably took us where we needed to go.
I never wanted ownership of him. We had even happily agreed to try to be each other’s ‘person’ in this world when the titles of ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ felt too alien and too heavy to us both.
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She carried him out of my life too.
I never imagined, waving goodbye until I couldn’t see him or her any more, that it would be the last time I would see them until today.
I knew, of course, that our marriage was in trouble. We both did. I had just decided (maybe rather selfishly) that no matter what, this time I wouldn’t leave. I told him that. Repeatedly. I thought that would be enough.
I had already left one marriage. It had shocked me to the core to have made that decision, (ultimately the right one for us both). I had said I would never re-marry, because really, what was the point? I had meant it when I said “I do” the first time around and so it seemed very hypocritical to say it again.
I did say it though. To someone I called my best friend. In the most gorgeous dress, with friends and family I hadn’t seen in years, feeling as though we couldn’t be any more perfect a match to venture through life together.
The cracks appeared quicker than I had ever imagined they could. They rent at the seams of who we thought we were to each other. In the end it came down to an engineered fight on the phone when he didn’t want to drive the 350 miles back to a marriage that was torn apart beyond repair.
He was wrong about one thing though, I didn’t just want him here to make me coffee. It was that it had been the only thing I felt I could ask him for, after asking for so much when I could give so little in return.
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He was wrong about one thing though, I didn’t just want him here to make me coffee. It was that it had been the only thing I felt I could ask him for, after asking for so much when I could give so little in return.
I thought back then that I could push through my mental illness with caffeine. I thought I could push through the chasm in our marriage with the decision to never leave him.
When he asked, over and over and with varying levels of compassion and anger what it was that I needed, all I could tell him was ‘time.’
He was right of course, because in spite of my denials, I certainly wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t because of him.
I’ve worked hard these last eight months to understand how to live with myself. It feels as though I’ve taken myself out of space and time, no TARDIS required. Resistant and triumphant in equal parts, I’ve been stripping away at the layers of the lies I’d been convinced were solid truths.
Resistant and triumphant in equal parts, I’ve been stripping away at the layers of the lies I’d been convinced were solid truths.
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Making the decision to marry and live with anyone is incredibly brave, even when depression isn’t an issue. I give him full credit for staying even as long as he did when my initial euphoria of finding my ‘soul friend’ disintegrated into my more familiar, though despised, pattern of being.
Mental illness is a thief who also bears gifts. It robs us of who we might have been but if we are very lucky it also gifts us with the desire to fight our way to the truth, to come into the present and to learn how to stay here.
This time it cost me my marriage but it also gifted me with the time I needed to truly begin to heal.
My husband is bringing me my truck today. I am staying present. I am crying and I am smiling as I make curry in case he’s hungry after the long drive and I am more grateful than I could have imagined to be free of the bonds of what we ‘should’ be to each other and able to choose what we will eventually become instead.
Photo—Katy Warner/Flickr
Thank you for the heartfelt sentiments Lisa. I only just read your comment and I’m feeling very loved ☺️
Very brave and honest, Louise. I think of you both often and miss his easy laughter and your brilliant smile. I hope that you are able to have a friendship that lasts even when marriage does not. Love to you both and wishing you smiles and laughter and the forgiveness needed to move forward over curry.