It was around this time last year that I finally decided to put my foot down and leave. I left my spouse of a year and a half, our marriage, and the happiness we once had. I left.
There were red flags all along the way, but I finally realized that things weren’t going to get better. I remember very vividly the day my ex-wife said to me during an argument we were having in the bedroom that she can’t be helped. There’s been too many years of trauma in her life that she didn’t think anyone or thing could help her, and that’s that. She had decided that she wasn’t going to get help because she didn’t think it was even worth a shot to try get a piece of her sanity back. I sat on the floor at the foot of the bed and looked at her disappointedly.
My heart sank. It was the final pull for me to painfully remove myself from her life, however slow the process was going to be. I can’t help anyone if they don’t want to be helped. If I tried I’d be wasting my breath, time, and energy. So I gave up. Or at least I tried to stop helping her. I still do, in one way or another, because I am still legally bound to her and in court she’s still my responsibility – but now, after a year, I’m done playing the good ex-wife. It’s time to really call it quits; I just need to remind myself why I left.