X ray null wave.

Me: I have no idea about you or your past. Your lying is a poison that flows both forwards and backwards. I’ve no idea how far that extends. Clearly you are not who or what you pretend to be.

I freely admit this notion comes from The Undertaker by Puscifer.

Nevertheless, it is exactly how I feel.

On Friday I was meant to be nice and normal and possibly grateful as I took the invite to eat fish and chips with him. I managed OK (not normal) and I was grateful. But I took the opportunity to ask a question to which I truly needed at the very least a discussion.

I got an answer.

"No"

At which point I should have left. But his hostility (disgust?) left me shaking. I didn't see myself as fit to drive; I needed eye contact and a hug...something to get me back to the land of the living.

At some point in the depth of the fear, my anger clicked in.

I felt as if I was holding the last remaining photos that show that he is a good man. All the others, all the snapshots and recordings have been consigned to the bin, or burnt on the funeral pyre.

Is he a good man?

No, a good man works to mend, to heal, to help...

He isn't and he doesn't.

In my view, no not at this moment...

And the memory of the past is changed by the experience of the present, of the lies...

Clearly you are not who or what you pretend to be.

I have several narratives about what happened to us, but there is one core narrative which began when he asked me to marry him - there was was something too fast, and not fair about our agreement to marry.

I didn't feel that he married me; I asked many times, what is the hidden agenda?

I felt shoehorned into a script. I took our marriage as if it was arranged. Arranged by fate, by the undertow, by forces bigger than me.

"Taken by the Kur"

I was both grateful and torn by it.

But his version of me never was me.

From the vantage point of NOW, I'd say what he wanted was a ready made, perfect, family - the happy home educating Buddhist hippies - a full 180 degrees from his birth family. One in which he could play out the fantasy of rescuing mom from the bad man, and one in which he could avoid becoming his dad...

But actually at the time, and when it mattered to me, he didn't defend me at all.

Regardless, we were a happy family.

But my kids couldn't be kids forever...When our house became an empty nest he had no plans about the future, there was no bright blue yonder for us. Nowhere yawned wide and welcoming.

Partially because of this I chose to head out to college to get myself into a career, vaguely and uncomfortably aware that I didn't feel safe or secure about the future.

Where was he?

Soon, Josh began to un-ravel and my husband was becoming his dad, superficially polite and loving but...absent, un-hearing, un-feeling...

Clearly he was playing happy families elsewhere.

When Josh fell far from the impossible standard, work was where my husband's happy family lived (he works in a school) - with a woman (her sons have the same names as mine) who appreciates it when he manhandles the child who attacks her, unlike me, who was filled with despair hearing Josh hit the kitchen floor..she, not me is the good wife.

Her partner, her husband is a real manly man, who might kill him...

Funny how being with her allowed him to access 'Manly man'. From my point of view manly man is a sad and ugly specimen of in-humanity. His natural enemy is the counsellor of course...she who says, "and how does that make you feel"?

On Friday, after the hurt and vulnerability simmered into clarity, It felt like it was time to drop the narrative of: 'You rescued me, made me feel safe, kept my heart from shattering into a million, million razor bits, and protected me from 'the bad man'.

You were just playing happy families.

I also told him I don't know if I'm right.

I can't know.

I want to know..

This old for me, new to him narrative positions him as a child unable to take any responsibility.

Now orphaned.

Alone in his dead parents house.

He said 'take that back' that I was turning his past to shit.

I said, 'well tell me how it is then. I mean you are living alone in the house your grew up in, you have abandoned your real wife and your real family...we didn't ask you to go'

l also said that this needed to be done with a counsellor present, 'someone to support you and I, but I have needed to say this, and you wont go to counselling'.

He exploded in rage and said 'you wouldn't tell this to a counsellor!'

I was perplexed, 'of course I would'!

So tell me my narrative is wrong. Tell me how it is!

And I wanted to know...and like his non-answer to my question.

No answer.

Null wave.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men. 

T.S Elliot.