Exile

Karma is a real bitch.  I live my life in exile.  It is a self imposed exile of living in my "little house", a 550 square foot "in law house" that sits in my back yard.  The "big house" is only 1700 sq. feet, maybe 1800 feet, if you count the unheated sun room.  Our house is not that big by American standards, especially for my neighborhood, but my guest house is a pretty good size.  I used to call the little house the world's biggest dog house.  Today, I live in the "doghouse" and I have 3 dogs sharing it with me.

Why am I in exile?  I do not do it intentionally to punish myself for my sins.  My punishment is internal and it haunts me every day and every night.  I sleep here because I have not been able to stand spending a night alone in the other house, much less get a night's sleep there.  After 3 months (to the day) of separation from my spouse, I am just beginning to possibly understand the source of my sorrow.  Two therapists and the opinions and advice of many friends have not helped me understand my feelings.  All the days and nights of soul searching have led me to believe that my suffering is caused by much more than the pain of a broken marriage or a lost love.  I have come to realize that the deep sadness that I cannot seem to escape is based on guilt and remorse.

When I got married I took a vow to love and care for my spouse until the day that we died.  I also took  a vow that I would not have another lover besides her.  I now find myself filled with so much regret that I cannot fulfill the first vow, and so much guilt that I did not uphold the second one.  Was I supposed to go on living in a loveless, emotionless and sexless marriage forever?  I felt like I was justified to experience some happiness even if it were to be found outside my marriage.  I deserve it and I still do.  I always will deserve to have love and I think that each of us does.  Maybe what I regret is that I did not leave the marriage before finding that other love, or that she has been hurt by my finding happiness.

I know that I cannot change that now and I have no regret for finding a love that really does fill the emptiness in my heart and soul.  Perhaps one of the things that eats away at me is not knowing if my spouse left me because of my transition or did she leave because I had another lover?  If it was the former, I would be sort of mad at her.  If it was the later I would be mad at myself.  I can't really get a straight answer from her and I think the real truth is she was just fed up with whole situation.  I really believe she left me for both reasons.  I must have been in a fantasy land, thinking that we could stay living together, stay married and exist as "friends".  Recently, I have capitulated to the idea that we will divorce, and that it is a good thing, but I have clung to a notion (dream) of once again living together after our divorce and share our life together as friends.  Today, for the first time, she pretty much shot down that notion, but at least she admitted that no one knows where we will be in a year.

One of the things that bothers me so much now is that this whole thing does not seem to elicit any emotions in her.  I am the one that is doing all the crying, all the hurting and has all the remorse.  Has she already worked though the pain by herself and did she hide it from me in the past, perhaps while we were still living together?  Another source of regret in me is the fear that I have destroyed her to the point that she just does not care anymore, that she has "shut down".  I see her indifference directed not just to me but to everything in her life.  Her dog, Jumper, is dying and I don't see the concern or pain in her eyes that I myself feel for the dog.  Did living with the unhappy shell of a person that I was for so many years eat her away inside to the point that now she is the unhappy, empty shell of a human being?  Perhaps my real hell is my feeling that I have destroyed another human being from the inside out; that she is as dead on the inside as I was my entire life before I came out to myself and started my transition.  Now I feel alive, fulfilled, and content with myself on the inside.  I just feel gullt and a LOT of pain about my situation and the fact that I have hurt someone I deeply care about. I live in exile.  Karma is a real bitch.