Tyler was fast asleep by now and had been a little restless for a while, maybe feeling the same worry as I was as I had been faced with a teary-eyed sister and a wailing nephew while she instructed me to babysit and practically burst out of the door and hadn't called ever since then.
My stomach was a little uneasy about that but I didn't want to worry so much that I would end up waking Tyler and getting him worked up–he looked quite peaceful. His little curly head was resting against my lap as he drooled all over the pillow and probably dreamed of dinosaurs and cotton candy, at least if babies his age dreamed. His chubby little cheeks and big bright eyes were the cutest but they were currently closed as he slept, peacefully, and free of his pacifier. I raked my fingers very gently into his hair with the television still on and playing some cartoon my ten-month-year-old nephew had been too preoccupied to care for.
Tyler mostly preferred to rather 'converse' with me and I had to entertain him. All I had been doing was trying to play along as I did my best to somewhat decode his babbling. The fondness he had for me was adorable though a knife which he couldn't help and as he laid against my lap so peacefully I found it twisted against my heart. I rarely thought of it and I rarely let myself go there, I just couldn't help myself. My baby would be a year old this year and would grow up with Travis and Tyler. I would get my nice little suburban house and the perfect little family I had dreamt of my entire life. For the first time, I sat there and shut my eyes, and imagined the what if's. Tears came down my face at some point and hated them, but not as much as my regrets. I had been doing my very best for months, telling myself I wouldn't regret signing those papers as I hadn't regretted shutting my husband out and I would welcome it –I was better of by myself.
I guess marriage handy turned to be whatever fantasy I had created in my head and neither was having a husband. Selfishly, I had only thought of myself and had only thought if I was a perfect wife then all would go well. To be honest, all I had been was a great bride and pictures to prove it though I hid them away so I couldn't see them all the time. I had to admit it, as much as I hated my husband for straying and humiliating me, it wasn't only his errors that had broken us and there was no use in trying to deny it–I had pushed him away.
It started with small arguments, here and there, and more fighting began and then calming down, admitting my faults, and letting it all out on the sheets. It was set and it became a constant pattern until I hated myself and every inch of my body until I just hated being touched. From then on there was more fighting and him staying late at work and this project and that, more traveling away, and less talking. I guess that was when I began to push him away, refusing to be intimate and refusing to communicate.
How then was he expected to take it? How was he supposed to accept it and stay? How was he supposed to feel? How did he feel? I didn't even know how it had started so well and I had ended up so resentful? How had I let myself turn out so bitter? I didn't even know when I had fallen out of love with someone I had been so sure was my life.
I had married him for the wrong reasons, maybe, I just couldn't tell and he didn't deserve it.
I was quick as I caught my tears before they cascaded any further and carefully I dried my eyes with the back of my hand and decided to turn the television off just then.
My sister still hadn't called and I was worried. Travis's temperature had skyrocketed and the panic and fear written in her eyes still worried me. I guess that was what it was like to be a mother and it did hurt me to see it. I didn't want to be jealous, but I admired that and as much as I did I was still sure those kinds of dreams were way behind me–I didn't want to be a mom anymore.
It wasn't like that had been my plan, to begin with, it had happened on its own and I had been happy about it. Hell, it had made things better for us and I had thought they would get better to only find out he was screwing some coworker behind my back the entire time, and fast forward to two months right after that bomb was dropped and I was in the hospital and my baby hadn't let out his first cry. I remember only the numbness and nothing more, maybe whispering and many apologies that meant absolutely nothing.
I could only swim in nothingness and could only be lost behind a still wall where it felt like I was screaming and no one could hear me. I barely ate or said much and I just slept, hoping that as days passed I was to mend with time somehow and I will admit to wishing for amnesia and I had prayed for death countless times, just to end the agonizing pain that often rose within me countless times as if to remind me of the large hole in my chest.
Then days had dragged on so slowly and I hadn't cared whether it was night or day, or if I had eaten or not, it was all the same to me. I guess it sort of still was. It got me thinking of the questions Nicholas had asked me days ago and it had clasped to my mind so harshly because, in all honesty, even I didn't know the answer to it. Why did I care? I just did and maybe at some point in my life, I had stopped. I had lost myself and had slowly died within myself, so maybe I had stopped caring and had forgotten what it felt like to even feel. Why did I care? I guess I just wanted to feel something, anything, besides the hurt or the numbness and so the hurt was far better.
I didn't want anyone to worry about me also, I didn't want to feel any more guilty than I already was and if that made me selfish then I was. My family was everything to me and so I didn't need them walking around in eggshells for me, I was okay. I was fine with knowing I had finally gotten what I had begged for when I had pushed my husband away–myself. And that was just about the best I did have, I couldn't cry over everything else I had let go of and as much as it hurt, it was my fault I had lost everything. What I couldn't get myself to understand was why I had to lose my baby too. Now that was the big question. That was why I couldn't get myself to let go of and it hurt like hell because there was nothing that I could do–he was gone.
I found myself crying again and was done with It as I picked up my nephew who slightly protested up and laid his head carefully against my shoulder and carried him off to bed. It was late anyway and sitting there on that couch with Tyler worrying and crying over things I could never change was just going to make me worse and Tyler needed to sleep.
Tyler clung to me as I parted the door to their nursery and met the dim lighting that softly brightened the room that was decorated with lots of greens and blues and pretty much cars and dinosaurs.
Travis and Tyler were only going to confirm this apparent duration for dinosaurs and sports cars when they grew a little older because currently, it was just up to our guessing as to adults.
Tyler finally allowed me to put him down and I stood there brushing his curls softly as he laid in his green crib oblivious to the wound that was unpatched itself. I was never going to know just what my son would have grown up to like if he would have liked dinosaurs or lions or whatever toddlers were fond of. I had lost him too and with his final resting place so had my marriage went.
It wasn't as if it hadn't been inevitable, I had been too stubborn and selfish to force myself to believe the ignorance I often claimed–I had always known it was going to end.
I should have just saved myself the embarrassment.
I picked up the little stuffed teddy bear I had given to my sister who had been reluctant to take it, feeling awful about the fact that Michael, my baby, hadn't gotten to hold it and that it belonged to me. I put it with the other stuffed toys, it belonged there and Tyler adored it anyway. It was better than it being stuffed away so I couldn't see it and remember as if it wasn't easy to do so every day.
He wasn't there and I woke up every morning aware of it, though I did my best to just ignore it. It was part of my life now, to be by myself, and I was never going to be able to fill that void, try as I may.
I sighed as I left the door ajar, maybe a glass of wine was going to ease my thoughts.