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This journal recently became public again. I have nothing to hide, nor did I ever. All I did behind this wall was spare the feelings of somebody important to me.

An open letter, to my wife, my friend, my soul. Work in progress, what has been typed was true at the time and has not been changed. current as of 6/26/09

The longer I stay in this apartment, the more I feel it in the pit of my stomach. I don't feel right and that scares me.

You might laugh at me for the things I'll put here, but they need to be said. You might hate me or despise me for it too, but they still need to be said. I'll try my best not to babble on about insane things and stick to the core issues.

I always wondered if I'd miss you when you (or I) left and whether or not I'd miss you for the right reasons. Now that we're down to it, I think I do miss you and mostly for the right reasons.

You've been my best friend for the last 5 years, even if it hasn't always been roses. Just because one horrible memory is able to completely overwrite the rest, doesn't mean that I don't still love you. Not romantically of course, we're in agreement of that. I love you as you are dear to me and the last 5 years will always be some of my best memories, my best times and my worst.

I want you to be happy and lead a fulfilling life, Jen, I always have. Even if it's not with me, I want you to be happy. I just wish you wanted the same for me. You might say you do, but your actions as of late show no concern for how I may or may not feel. I told you that I'm not stupid, I know what's going on, when it's going on and why. I'm able to suppress the urges to lash out, but you sure as hell do not make it easy on me and you never have.

It's not that you actively make my life horrible, it's just, you seem to think I'm capable of turning off everything. I'm not like you, I can't just turn off my emotions when it's convenient. I've never not respected you or your feelings and it's because of that respect that I've swallowed more than my fair share of pride vomit these last few months.

I suppose I shouldn't hold you to my standard though. If our roles were reversed, I wouldn't be able to carry out a relationship directly in your presence because of how much I respect you and your feelings. Just know in the entire time we had been together, not once have you ever needed to worry about me forsaking that respect for the chance at temporary pleasure. My willpower is much stronger than yours is. "It just sort of happened" is not an excuse you would have heard me say, ever. I cut people off before it gets to that point.

This brings me to say that I think you are the biggest enabler I have ever met. You blame me for so much that has been wrong in your life as if I were responsible for all of it. I hate to say it, but in no way should I ever have been responsible for giving you the drive to do anything. You constantly painted me out to be a controlling monster when all I did was force you to take your own actions. Somebody once said "When you ride on the back of others, you rarely get to choose where you end up in life." I don't mean that in a bad way even though you're going to take it that way.

To you, I was controlling and oppressive because you felt you had no say in what we did with our relationship. At the same time, you stacked everything on me until I became overwhelmed. I always felt like you WANTED me to carry you and your baggage at all times because you had absolutely no drive to do so on your own. You can't have your cake and eat it too and by that, I mean you can't complain that you had no say while making no real attempt to get from the back seat into the passenger side. I WANTED us to be equals in the relationship, but you never seemed to want any part of it unless it was purely at your own convenience or benefit.

I'm able to suppress the vast majority of negative things you make me feel, but I'm only human. We haven't been in love for a long while, but I still hold a deep love for you on a level I'll never fully understand or be able to make you understand. You are dear to me. You have been dear to me since I first realized I was attracted to you on a level greater than physical attraction. It's because of this that I'll always be here for you, despite how badly you wound me, how constantly you wound me and how much you ever grow to hate me for the things you've made yourself believe I was doing.

The way I feel now, I think I'll always leave the door open for you just as it always has been.

It's because of this that I do the things I do, why I fight within myself to not give in to base instincts and lash out at you for not understanding the gravity of your choices or the impact they have on the lives around you.

Some things still get to the surface though. Mocking, snide and rude comments still blurt out from time to time in response to situations I'm not mentally prepared for. They suddenly blurt out with no warning. Tears will still come at random times for no real reason. I can't help those things, but for them, I am sorry. That's the price I pay for getting in too deep.

In truth, I wanted the both of us to come out of this relationship stronger, happy and better for it, as equals, with all my heart I really did. Instead, I feel like I'm the only one who is hurt and saddened by the death of our marriage. It's no small thing, 5 years together, 3 of which married. I find myself unable to let go of these memories, so I'll keep them close to heart where I can call on them again when I need them.

Then again, you're probably already passed your mourning phase, keeping your feelings secret. Possibly, you never had a mourning phase. Maybe all this time really meant nothing, every smile faked and every kiss empty. There's just so much you couldn't let me know about your feelings.

To you, these years might not have meant much, but for what it's worth, it was worth all the while to me.

I said it before and I'll say it again. All I've ever wanted from you this entire time is acknowledgment. Somebody who would tell me that I exist and that I mattered. You have no idea what it feels like to not know if you matter to the lives of the people you're close to. No idea how it feels like to not be able to make friends. No idea how it feels like to never have somebody to depend on.

Needless to say, I did try. Up until all this started happening I tried. I knew you were unhappy in a sense, but I thought if I kept trying or continued on, that things would be able to right themselves in the future.

This is my failing.

I should have been asking you the questions I wanted you to ask me. I wanted us to find a way; for you, for me, for Noah, for the good times and the bad. But.. I started to resent you ignoring me. I started to resent not being able to depend on you for emotional support. That resentment turned into apathy, that apathy to nihilistic feelings. Even despite feeling no romance, I still felt like pieces of me were dying and there was nothing I could do to stop the damage from being done.

I honestly think if we both had been able to catch that sooner, we might have been able to work things out. Instead, we both let that opportunity pass by almost unnoticed. As I look back, there's many things I wish I would have had the courage to ask you. Many things I wish I could have been able to tell you. Fears that I wanted to share and dreams I wanted to dream with you.

I'll always be here for you, Jen. Not as your partner, but as your friend. I've never been good at telling you how I feel, but I want you to know I have much love for you. (Non romantic, of course) You're the mother of my child and my wife of three years. You might hold that against me, but I do not hold it against you.

Even now as you seem to find any reason to hate me, I try to keep myself like I was when we met. Fun and silly, somebody pleasant to be around. But all of a sudden, I'm like a stranger to you. In response, the only thing I can say to that is

"One day I woke up and there was a strange woman living with me. She knew my name, she knew my life and she raised my child as if it were her own. To this day, I've never figured out who that woman really was and where she came from. All I know is around the same time, my wife dissapeared and was never heard from again."

In closing, all I can do is wish for you to have a happy and fulfilling life. Maybe one day in the future, you will begin to see me as your friend again instead of the monster you've accused me of being, instead of the monster you've made yourself believe I am.

I tell you this now, I'm no monster. For one thing, I have a heart. For another, this heart that I have feels, bleeds and most importantly, breaks.

Monster hearts don't break.

I'm moving on with my life now, or at least trying to. As strong as my feelings are on this matter and regardless of how you really feel. Choices have been made that cannot be unmade. There's just some things that we cannot take back and others that we cannot take with us where we roam. You and I are on completely different paths now and we've gotten so far apart and nothing is likely to change.

As far as what happened... I'm still at this moment not able to let that go. But I no longer hold a grudge against either of you. Life's too short to spend it despising people, regardless of how righteous the reason is and in truth, despite what I say otherwise, I'm no better.

Maybe in the future we'll both be able to face the reasons our marriage failed and our respective reasons for letting it do so.


---9/28/09---

That was how I felt until a month or so ago.

Up until that point, I had held stern to my belief that you and I were better off going our separate ways, for our own reasons.

Lately though, something has happened.

Like a flash, my eyes opened. Adjusting to light that I never knew was there. All of a sudden I feel something that had been there all this time, just smothered by the crap walls I put up to protect myself. When those walls came crashing down at my own hands, when I ripped out my own defenses and left myself completely at the mercy of fate... I felt it like I was feeling it for the first time. Hell, maybe I was feeling it for the first time.

Love. Actual love, a solid feeling sitting in my stomach. This wasn't your garden variety "I care for you" love either, this was the real thing. For the first time in my life, I was truly in love with somebody to the point where I'd give anything for them. Yet it was a hollow discovery because I knew it a "one day, too late" situation.

So as we spent time together. I felt this feeling grow inside me. All of a sudden the things we went through earlier this year meant nothing, all that mattered was being with you in whatever form it could be in.

I also see now that sitting back and watching our marriage die was the single biggest mistake I have and will ever make in my life. If I could turn back the clock and know then what I know now, I think we could have fixed things before they broke.

In all our marriage I had fantasized about being single again. I had thought that life was what I really wanted out of life, to survive just to survive. In 6 months of soul searching I've learned this is not the way I want to live my life. I'm tired of being selfish and surviving simply to survive. Maybe I just wasn't ready for it, mentally and emotionally... But now I know...

You are the only person I've ever felt like I could dedicate my life to. Fully without question or reward. I know now that I want to spend my life with you so that when I pass on, my last thoughts will be that I spent my life with somebody I loved. That my life was worth living simply because it was spent with you.

I've lived my entire life on a day to day basis, for myself and all this time I thought that was the right way. Now that my eyes are open, I see that you and Noah are what I should have been devoting my life to. Again, one day too late.

These feelings that are alive inside me, they beg, they scream in my head to tell you how I feel. I'm overpowered by fear though. Fear of the unknown, fear of screwing your life up further, fear of not being able to live up to these feelings. When I'm around you, the urge to hold you and whisper in your ear is so strong it breaks my train of thought often. I dream of what our lives should have been like together when I sleep and I keep your photos close to me so I can feel at ease when I start to panic.

That being said, I have no idea how you even feel on the matter. I can't read you, or anything you do. Everyone I know is urging me to take the risk whether you feel the same or not... I want to tell you, everything inside me aches to tell you, if for no other reason than relieving the emotional pressure built up. I want to tell you and if you want to, I want to try and fix things. We have one last chance to try and turn this cracked marriage around and into something beautiful and something that will last.

So this is it. If you ever read this and I haven't told you in person yet. I'm holding out my hand. No strings attached. We start over with a clean slate and forge this relationship into something that lasts or we walk away, never knowing if we could have made things work.

Either way, know that I truly love you. Jennifer... After everything we've been through. After wandering through the darkness of this world so long and all this time I couldn't see it. These feeling buried so deep. You are everything I'd ever want in life and even if we still do end up going our separate ways, I can smile knowing that for the time we were together, it was the single greatest experience in my life and has left me with memories that I will treasure for the rest of mine.

Take this chance with me. All or nothing. If there's risk, let's face that risk together. If there's challenges, let's take them on together. If there's pain, let's share it together.

All or nothing.

-Jacob

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