Foreshadowing

If I am honest with myself, I knew he couldn't handle being a father and a husband when we were dating.  And I was strong then and not yet covered in the binding haze of love, and I knew it.  If I am honest, I knew it was too much for him because I know it's so much, and I should have shut it down when I still could.

I wanted to believe him more than that quiet shouting inside me.  When he said he could take it on, I told myself not to be hard.  When he said that he WANTED to take it all on and be a family man, I was sold.  He wanted to be like all his coworkers, like his siblings.  And what did a man pushing 40 have in this world if not a family of his own?  If I'm honest, I knew very well that he didn't know what he was talking about.

I got pregnant when I was 23 years old.  It wasn't a choice except that I was doing all the things to make a baby, with no foresight whatsoever.  I was two years older than my mother was when she had me, but still, I was so much younger than she had been.  I was a foolish and impulsive child, leaping heart first toward whatever felt good in my own ocean of self obsession and sadness.  I was unmarried and terrified.  I had entertained thoughts of aborting the baby, but after I confessed the pregnancy to my mother, and went back home to her 600 miles away, I became a mother, too.

And everything was very different.  Then there were no more options for me.

That was over fourteen years ago, and I have spent every day trying to be woman enough to put my children first, like my mother before me.  My father cheated on her, my step father fled.  This is what they do.  Someone has to carry the weight.  I knew he was not strong enough to share my burden.  It was all pretend.

For the last year of our two and a half year marriage (together nearly five), #2 joked on and on that he wanted to buy this shed that we passed on the way to his sister's house.  He was going to turn it in to his "man cave" to get away.  He joked about it with his family, with me.  It came up in conversation frequently month after month.  I asked him why he needed it, but he said it was only a joke.  Was he trying to get away from me?  The kids?  The noise?  The mess?  It's a joke, he'd say.  But now I know we were only an option; he was always going to run away.  If I am honest, I think I always knew it, too.