The moment it ended

“She says she doesn’t feel safe around you, and Danny and my Mom agree!”

These words were the sword through my heart

The absolute end point in something that had been a relationship in name only for a few years at this point

All that was supple, all that was special, and all that could have been magical had already been systematically taken off the table

One thing at a time

One little signal of our intimacy

One little indication of our life together

Inch by inch, and day by day, they vanished like mirages in a desert that was too hot and dry

Too acrid to support life

At least any kind of life I was willing to live

But the illusion that there was anything left to salvage, came crashing down with that sentence

I am far from perfect, but perhaps not as far as most

I bring a whole host of phantoms with me into the present from a whole host of traumas in the past

But I do know how to communicate, I am self-aware, and I do possess the skills of constructive arguing, accountability, and knowing how to mend again when things inevitably break

The truth is her daughter never really liked me, never really knew what to do with me, and I suspect in some deep and secret place, that having to watch me be in love with her mother, reflected to her, her father’s profound failures

But I’m not sure if that excuses the manipulations, the machinations, and the complete absence of any meaningful boundaries between the mother and the daughter

Boundaries that might’ve kept us from the moment we found ourselves in

It wasn’t just that I had spent 13 years modeling, the exact opposite of any kind of threat

I demonstrated proactive relationship repair

I demonstrated love, patience, tolerance, understanding, and compassion

But I also understand that the heart of a hurt child is probably the wrong place to look for logic and reason

Never mind that “Danny and her mother” had been the two most abusive and manipulative forces in the life of my wife

It was less about whether she thought this was actually true or not, and more about the fact that she would say this to me for expediency sake, when we both knew it was the opposite of what was true

That was the moment the tether snapped

That was the moment the cathedral fell

That was the moment that all that was solid, turned to sand

Now there’s just simply no going back