these boots are made for walking, part two

I don’t think he ever believed I would actually move out. We had been together for over five years, living and sometimes working together. I told him “I just think there’s something better out there for both of us,” and I meant it. He resented that my schedule was so demanding. I didn’t like how much he drank and hung out with his friends. The last “hurricane party” was a real eye opener. Being cooped up in a house with him and his closest friends and relatives for almost a week with nothing to do but drink, with no electricity and virtually no mobility, was sheer hell. It provided a horrifying illustration of what our future would look like, what our life would continue to be. I wanted a partner, not a drinking buddy.

I told him that I was looking at apartments. I knew that to him, the fact that I had actively been looking at places would be a form of betrayal, abandonment, but I also knew I couldn’t continue to live with him as if the status quo was still intact. Even after everything, I still had respect for him, and couldn’t be deceitful, which is what it would have felt like. And to be honest, I was hoping it would jolt him into realizing how bad things had gotten, that this wasn’t something he could ignore until he felt like dealing. He didn’t have much to say. We spoke for a while about where we had gone wrong and how we had failed one another. There were no protestations, no requests that we try to work on things. I squared my shoulders; I had gotten my answer.

A few days later, I let him know I had put a deposit down on an apartment and would be moving in three weeks. (I was STILL prepared to abandon that deposit should he man up and decide the relationship was worth saving. It wouldn’t have taken much - at that point I would’ve settled for an effort of any kind.) He stayed out that night, and when we spoke the next day he said he didn’t want to ruin his day off by talking about anything important.

Hurt, I only spent two nights there over the next three weeks, until the day I moved out. I stayed with girlfriends, my parents, anyone who would let me. I came home on the two nights I couldn’t make other arrangements for my daughter. Those two nights were the only nights we really fought throughout the entire wreckage.

About a year later, a mutual friend and neighbor told me that he had spoken with her during that three weeks about our situation. She quoted him as saying, “Sugar Kane will never leave. She has it too easy here.” He assumed that it was all a bluff, and never believed I was moving until the truck pulled into the driveway and I showed up with my two helpers. When I stopped coming home, he was taken aback because there was no opportunity to talk to me and straighten me out. When I was there we fought over where I had been and what I was/ had been doing wrong. I took the stance that he had abandoned the right to ask those questions or have an opinion.

Guess he didn’t know me as well as he thought.