Mid-Marchish last year I took a trip to Calgary with the kids while Jon stayed home to study. My sister Hannah was visiting from Tofino, so we spent time with her and the kids had fun with their cousins. I was so spoiled the entire time I was up there. Jon's sisters watched my kids so I could spend time with my sisters. We shopped, we ate out, we visited. My mind was distracted. I even got a massage, it was so wonderful I fell asleep during it and woke myself up when I snored. When it was finally time to drive home we were all tired from playing so hard for two days. I texted Jon to let him know we were on our way. He let me know he was going to a friend's house in Lethbridge, but would be home when we got there so he could help me put the kids to bed.
As I made the trek back to Raymond, I texted Jon two more times to let him know where we were. We just turned onto the Granum road. We're passing through Lethbridge now. We also had each other on "Find My Friends," so I was sure he'd be keeping track on that too. As I got closer to home and watched him on "Find My Friends," I began to realize he wasn't going to beat us there. In fact, he wasn't moving at all. Fortunately, my mom and sister came home with me to help unload four exhausted and grumpy kids and get them ready for bed.
It's hard to describe what I felt at that moment, as I wrestled my sleepy babies from the van, into their pajamas, into their beds. As they cried because it was uncomfortable to be woken up and taken from the warm van. As they asked me where their Dad was. As I could feel how angry my mom and sister were for me while they helped. As I kept looking at a stupid blue dot on my phone that refused to move and acknowledge where it should have been. I probably felt every emotion you could imagine: anger, disappointment, frustration, self-pity, and more.
It wasn't until after the kids were in bed and my mom and sister gone that Jon texted me. He had missed my texts, he was sorry, he was on his way home. Half an hour later he sheepishly walked through door, apologizing that he didn't get home in time to help. By then I was half numb, but knew we needed to talk. I told him he hadn't given me any sign that he wanted our marriage to work. His response infuriated me: "You haven't either." And there it was. The indignation, the fury, the wrath of a woman more than slighted, thawed from the permafrost of courtesy and etiquette.
What happened next could best be described as a monologue; I wish the words that flowed from my mouth could have been transcribed for me to read over again and again. I told Jon it wasn't my job to let him know I wanted to stay married, I wasn't the one who had messed up. I hadn't wandered, he had. I was offering him an olive branch all this time to step up, to step back in, while he had been vainly waiting for me to beg him or something, who knows. I listed all the ways he could have let me know, all the ways he could have made amends, and he didn't. You could have apologized, you could have shown remorse. You could have deleted What's App, deleted her number, quit messaging her. You could have asked your clinical instructor to change your cohort so you wouldn't be around her. But you did NOTHING. I asked him if she had been at his friends. "Yes." Did you know she would be there? "Yes."
That was the last straw. There was the light. I had told him he could wait until the end of the semester to move out, but now he needed to leave ASAP. And the monologue continued. I told him we were pretty well passed the point of reconciling. That he had chosen the wrong thing over and OVER again. He could have stopped and made things right when I told him I was pregnant. But he kept cheating. He could have stopped when he saw how devastated and hurt I was when he wouldn't tell me he loved me. But he kept making the wrong choice. He could have stopped when I patiently and kindly talked to him when I found out he had a crush on someone, when I encouraged him to "get out of Vancouver." But he kept making the wrong choice. And even now, that night when I needed his help to unpack and put kids to bed, he made the wrong choice again. And he was speechless as per usual.
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