I cannot tell you how the darkness inside me has grown.
The last time I felt like this was probably close to 10 years ago.
Feeling so tormented inside, in my head, every waking moment, I sometimes thought I was going to go mad.

Mad with grief, mad with loss, mad with pain.

Loss is part of life, right?
Except the times when it shouldn't be.

You lose someone you love, someone who was dear to you, because death took them.
They didn't have a choice.  They didn't willingly leave you.  Their presence was stolen by death, whether the cause was old age or something else.
That kind of loss stings, but it's understandable.
Because they didn't choose to leave you.

And then there's loss when someone who said they loved you...someone who made a vow for better or worse, in sickness and in health, would only part ways with you when death took them...except death didn't take them.
They willingly walked away.

How do you recover from that?
Please tell me, I'm begging for anyone to tell me, how do you recover from that?

Because I am trying to make sense of it all in my head.
Trying to understand how he could tell me I was the love of his life, his best friend, how he would be able to continue on if he ever lost me but it would be difficult for him, only to then turn around and abandon me.
First to move someplace else without me, although that's absolutely not how marriage works.  And then to decide that he didn't want to be married to me anymore.

I can't make sense of it.
I have tried.
I keep trying.
But I can't.

The absolute opposing existence actions and words.
I'm the love of your life, but you don't want me anymore.
If you lost me it would be difficult to move on, yet you willingly lost me by walking away, and have easily moved on.
Giving your word that you would be by my side until death, but death hasn't taken you away from me.

I don't throw around the word trauma lightly.
I think too many people these days throw around words for things that don't actually apply to them, but they use them anyway, because it's a trend, or they've convinced themselves that's what it is (when in reality, it's probably something different, or not as major as they make it out to be).

But this decision that he's made, this choice, he made for him.
And in making this choice for himself, it has impacted every single facet of my life, too.
Because that's what happens when you marry someone.  Two lives become intertwined together; they become one shared life.  Or at least, that's what should happen.
It's clear his life was not shared with mine, but my life was absolutely intertwined with his.
And now a part of me has been ripped away forever.
A wound that will never heal.
A heart that will never be repaired.
A life that has been robbed of all its dreams of the future.

And that is nothing if not traumatic.
The trauma of being abandoned.
The trauma of extreme betrayal.
The trauma of being told that I matter, that I'm valued, that I'm wanted and desired, that I'm worth it...only to have it all turn out to be lies.
Because if any of that was true, he would still be here, by my side.

All of this, everything that has happened, the choice that he has made, is one big mindfuck. 
One small decision for him, but that small decision has seeped into every crevice of my sanity and is slowly tearing me apart inside.

I have so many noticeable white hairs on my head, that have cropped up seemingly overnight in the past year and a half from the stress and trauma of all this.
I can't sleep well at night anymore, and its taking a toll on my body.
I've lost my appetite because every time I think about what is happening to me, I get sick to my stomach.
I've stopped going to the gym and to therapy, because existing is a challenge in and of itself.
I can't even enjoy the things I used to enjoy, like baking or hiking.  I've tried.  I went hiking a week ago, and felt absolutely nothing being outside in nature, whereas before, such a simple thing as being outside would do wonders for me.

All those times he told me it would get better, that we would get better, that he wanted to work on himself for me and for us, that we would get through the hard times...those were all lies.
I should have known.
Because I saw the evidence of his hard work when he actually wanted to work on something.  I saw his determination and his willingness, the time he put into the things that mattered to him.
And I saw the lack of it when it came to our marriage.

I feel like I'm in psychological warfare, except there's no war.
There's no one to fight.
The last 6 years were one big joke, one long stint of telling me that I was loved and wanted for who I was, except surprise, I'm not.  
He grew tired of me, realised he didn't actually like who I was, and walked away, because I couldn't give him what he wanted anymore (whatever that was in the first place, I have no idea).

I don't know how much more of this I can handle.
In fact, I know I can't take this for much longer.

Him saying that he still loves me, still cares about me.
How am I supposed to believe that, when he's said that since the beginning, only to repeatedly show me the exact opposite through his actions?
How am I supposed to trust anything he tells me anymore, when everything has been a lie?
How am I supposed to trust anyone in my life, when the majority of my life and the people who were supposed to care for me repeatedly failed me and didn't keep their word?  Didn't provide the basic needs that every person - every child - has?

Lesson learned.
I can't trust anyone.
And I am not worth anything.

Even worse (if anything truly can be worse), is that with him walking away, he has robbed me of my chance to have a future with my own family.  The family I wanted to build with him.  The family he led me to believe he wanted with me, too.
He thinks I'll find someone else.
But if I truly believe what the bible says (even though I haven't called myself a Christian for the past 7 years), divorce is it.  Marrying someone else is committing adultery, which means sinning.

I never, ever thought the man I loved, the man I gave my heart to, the man I let see more of me than anyone else in my life, would abandon me, much less rob me of my future.  Our future.

I can't keep doing this.
I can't continue to live, when I have no reason to continue living.

All hope is lost.
All dreams are crushed.

I hope that someday soon I will finally get over my cowardice and end this suffering once and for all.

Because it is too much, and I cannot live like this for much longer.

This hurt is too great.
This torment too much to bear.

 I was 19.
At the time, I was doing my DTS with YWAM.  I remember there were some days I would sob hard - sometimes uncontrollably - from how lonely I felt.  Then one of the books we were required to read, changed my perspective on something.  After that day, I never felt lonely again.

I still don't.
Feel lonely, that is.

But I do, absolutely, feel alone.

If I don't think about it, I'm not aware of it.
But then sometimes things happen that make me aware of how alone I truly am.

For example, there's an institute here that I have signed up with to occasionally do medical studies for.  Paid, thankfully.  All studies have questionnaires/surveys that are required.  The most recent study I did (and am technically still part of), had some questions about feeling/being alone.

And that's when I realised it.

I don't feel lonely.
I haven't since I was 19, and that was over 10 years ago.
I do, however, feel alone.

Why wouldn't I?
It's not just that I am physically alone most of the time (apart from my cat).
But it's also from everything else.

Growing up, sure, it was a full house with 8 people sharing 3 bedrooms.
But unless you were misbehaving, you were mostly ignored.  (I think. I don't really remember, because a lot of the time I definitely was not behaving, and therefore had attention on me, because I was being disciplined.)
And then it was being an adult, but still just not having a lot of attention (which I was fine with) or affection (which I am also used to).

And then you came along.
Someone who saw me; completely, my weirdness and quirks and all, and still somehow miraculously decided that he still liked spending time with me.  Which was such a foreign concept to me, because I was used to people running away once they saw who I really was.
And some time after that, you decided you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me.  I couldn't believe it.  Someone who knew me more/better than anyone in my life (including family) and decided he liked me enough to want to spend the rest of forever with me?  What a wild concept.  What an insane notion.  What a...(not yet recognized) dream come true.

Until you spent more time with me.

I never hid from you the fact that I was depressed, and struggled with severe depression.
In fact, I remember one time when it was super bad, and you couldn't comprehend it.  You took it personally, which made it that much worse for me.
I don't know what you thought, but it seemed as though you thought maybe it would magically get better after we got married.

It didn't.

Don't get me wrong.  It definitely did get better.  Before you, I'd wake up every day (and when I say every day, I mean literally every. day.) and my first thought upon waking was "I want to die."
Then you came along.  And suddenly?  Suddenly, that wasn't my first thought anymore.  I still was depressed, but you made things better.  Better enough to where "I want to die" wasn't my very first thought when I woke up.

But it never fully went away.  Why would it, when it's been with me over half my life?
So you knew.  You knew going into our marriage that I was depressed.
I thought you knew and you still chose me.  You still loved me.  You still wanted to be with me.
But I was wrong.  I knew I was wrong the day you told me that you didn't like being around me when I was depressed (which was basically all the time).  If that didn't solidify it, I knew the day you told me you didn't like having sex with me because I'm me.

And then one day you drove me to an appointment where I was supposed to get a shot in my neck.  On the drive, I thanked you for taking me.  You responded by telling me you would always be there for me.

...

And then two weeks later you announced you wanted to move to a new city.  Alone.  Without me.

And that's how I ended up where I am now.  In a city I never wanted to live.  Near family physically, which doesn't mean shit, because my family has basically never been able to be there for me, or give me what I need.  When I'm around them, I'm constantly on guard, because the past is too much history to overcome with suddenly trusting them now.

I still don't feel lonely.  Truth be told, I hadn't felt lonely since I was 19.  But then being married in my late 20's, I felt lonely again for the first time in my life.  More so than ever before.
And I don't feel lonely now, but I feel alone.

Because I am.

I have been abandoned by the person who made a vow to me before God and man, to spend the rest of his life with me for better or worse.  The man who told me he would always be there for me, then two weeks later told me he wanted to move to a different place alone.  The man who told me I was the love of his life, and while he could move forward if he ever lost me, admitted it wouldn't be easy, and then willingly made the choice to lose me by leaving me.

Tell me how I'm supposed to get over that.
Tell me how I'm supposed to make sense of that in my head, when vows and actions contradict each other to the most extreme levels.
Tell me how I'm supposed to get over the trauma of betrayal and broken trust.  Not just from my family growing up, but from the one person who was supposed to love me regardless of what life threw at us, was supposed to be by my side, was supposed to spend the rest of our shared lives together.

Until it got too hard.
Until he decided he liked being alone more than he liked the idea of spending the rest of his life with me.
Until he made the choice that I wasn't worth trying to get better for, trying to change for, and sees his choice as what's "best" for me.

He once told me that "other people aren't [him]" when it comes to his egregious belief that someone "better" will come along for me.
But that's where he's wrong.
Other people may not be him, but he is doing to me exactly what my family did to me growing up.

Showing me (by actions) that I'm not wanted.  That I'm not worth anything, despite me trying to be good and on my best behaviour.  That I am not worth making an effort for, to provide for me, give me the basic needs any human *needs* much less wants, which is time and affection.

So yeah, maybe other people aren't him.
But if the sum of my life experience has been that most [influential and significant] people in my life fail in the most basic of things, that doesn't mean much.  If anything, it proves to me that all people will fail me.  Fail to follow through, fail to keep their word, fail to be there for me, fail to want to keep me in their life.

Family (by blood) doesn't mean anything to me.

I am completely alone.

And now I know I always will be.