40 Days of Mourning

Weary se'nnights nine times nine...

It was an uneven playing field from the get-go: she was the Wife, I was a person of no consequence. But she took me on, she slew me and crushed me underfoot, and even this was not enough for her, vicious and vengeful she-demon that she was, she sought to tear the entrails from my bloodied carcass and stuff them down my throat. Far be it from me, though, to seek revenge - I'm a lover, not a fighter! I shall instead crawl off to lick my wounds, by attempting to console myself with whatever glimpses of silver I can spot in this black cloud. Here they are.

1) Men are nothing but a bunch of motherfucking assholes, I'm better off without them, etc.

2) I lost 2 kilos when he left me. And I had already lost 2 kilos when my mother got cancer.

3) I can finally devote myself even more slavishly to the PoDS. If I don't end up abandoning him at the steps of some nunnery somewhere (if such a thing even exists, today).

4) I no longer have to worry about Magic walking in on us some day. That would have been embarrassing. And almost a little bit funny. But mostly just terrible.

5) I can perhaps finally do something productive with my life. Not that he took up that much of my time - at least not physically. But I was always either dreaming about him or floating around in a state of good-for-nothing euphoria.

6) I was never good enough for him. And I was deteriorating.

7) I was always destined to be alone.  It really did seem unnatural to me, to be so happy.

8) I was always insanely jealous - though I think I did a damn good job of pretending not to be!

9) I was also being driven mad with suspicion. It's a well-known fact that a woman commits adultery when she finds herself in an unhappy relationship, whereas a man is predisposed to it by personality traits inherent in his nature. The old "once a cheater" maxim, tiring as it is. Of course he couldn't really "cheat" on me in the conventional sense, since he was free to do whatever he liked. But I knew that didn't entitle me to his honesty - he told me so himself at that restaurant on rue Orillon. So I knew he was probably always hiding things from me, and yet it's not in my nature to police people and spy on them. I'm a very trusting person... and also, believe it or not, a very private person, which is why I respect the privacy of others. So I would never have been able to pull off the kind of massive undercover surveillance operation apparently necessary to keep a guy like this in check! So hats off to the blood-thirsty harpie, after all.

10) He was probably tiring of me towards the end anyway. At least now I can tell myself that it was only because he got caught that he left me. Were it not for that, he would surely have deserted me much more ignominiously. Whereas now, I can always believe that it is as star-crossed lovers that we parted!

Don't get me wrong - if I'd had my way, it would never have ended.  And I do have regrets.  But that's the subject of another post (unfortunately yes, there is more where that mindless babble came from).