So often these days I feel as though I am going mad.

Going mad with what?
With pain.  With grief.  With the inability to understand what has happened to my life.

It's been over two year.
TWO. FUCKING. YEARS. since he told me he wanted to move to a new place alone, without me, to treat our time apart like a deployment, because of course that's what you fucking do in a marriage.

Of course that isn't what you do.  But how would he know that?  He never saw an example of a healthy marriage.  He never saw or experienced what real Love is.  You can't know what you don't know.  And he didn't know a lot when it came to relationships.

I miss him, like the idiot that I am.  Like a fool, because no matter how often he hurt me emotionally, no matter how often I felt dismissed or undesired by him, I still loved him.  Unconditionally.  (I still do.)  He will always be loved, by my family, by me.

In these times, I also remember the bad.  Most of it was bad.  Why wouldn't it be?  He didn't pay attention to the relationship, to the marriage, to me.  He told me he didn't like being around me when I was sad, which was the baseline of my existence.  Something I never hid from him.  Even worse, he told me (shortly, before he deployed, so I lived with that knowledge the entire time he was gone) that he didn't like having sex with me because I was me.

...and you wonder why I want to hide who I am completely from everyone new that I meet from now on.

I don't understand.  I don't know if I will ever be able to truly understand or comprehend what is now my reality.  Because to me, if someone gives their vow, that's it.  End of story.  You keep it or you die.

But he gave his vow.  He said for better or for worse, until death do us part.  But he never truly meant it, because when things were worse, when he wasn't doing well (completely ignoring how I was doing), he quit.  He gave up.  He showed his true colours.

Colours that were there the whole time.  That were evident, even from when we were dating.  But colours I never noticed, because of my lack of experience with dating, because of my blind trust that he meant what he said, because I ignored how he lived and his actions and how he treated me, and paid more attention to his words, which ended up being completely worthless.

My world has turned upside-down and inside out.  It has been that way ever since he confirmed he wanted to move to a new city alone.  And even now, after all this time of being separated, and now no longer being married, I still cannot comprehend or understand it or make sense of it.

It's like my brain refuses to accept what is right in front of my face.
That even though reality is showing me he was a coward, he quit, he gave up, he was a liar, that somewhere in there, those things are not true.
That this is a bad dream I will someday wake up from, and the man who told me he cared about me when he didn't really care for anyone, will still be by my side, will love me in all the right ways, will show me that he meant what he said.

Except that's not true.

What is true is that I meant very little to him.
For all his talk of saying he wouldn't know what he would do if he lost me, he walked away pretty damn easily and quickly.
For all the times he asked me "just give me a little more time" and when I asked "what for?" and he couldn't give me an answer, I still gave him time.  Believing, somehow, hoping against hope, against history that repeated itself, that maybe this time things would change.
For everything he said to me about me being the love of his life, about how he loved me, and wanted me, that all of that turned out to be lies.

Even after we separated, even after the divorce was finalized, he was still lying to me.
In the random times he contact me, he probably still is lying.
Because if history has proven anything, he can say all the words he wants to say, but I should know better by now.  Nothing he says is worth trusting.  Nothing.

How he wanted a divorce because he realized he wanted to be alone?
That was a lie.
How the girl he was talking to at work was "just someone to talk to?"
That was a lie.
Every. Single. Thing. with him has been a lie.

I am an idiot for having ever believed him.
EVER.

And I am not going to make that mistake with him ever again.
Not with him.  Not with anyone else.

No one is trustworthy.
No one tells the truth.

And his actions have only proven to me what I have known my entire life.
I am not wanted.
My love is not enough.
I am not enough.

I have finally learned my lesson.