It was my choice for him to leave and with reluctance, he agreed. Jack and I had done this many times before. We knew the routine; we knew how to break up. This was the fourth time and we knew it was final, no question in our minds. There was no slamming doors, no screaming, no ugly words, just a sad calm. And the occasional turning away from each other to gather ourselves as tears would run down our faces.
There was always a cloud of sadness to see him leave and we always cried together. I could never understand that. Many times we could not go through with it, so we would stay together. Although this time the fighting had ceased and we had been trying to rebuild, we found we were too wounded and numb to even know how to rebuild. We knew it was final, it was over, he was tired and so was I.
We had been through nineteen years of fussing, arguing, fighting against one another and not understanding one another. Over the years we had beat upon each other emotionally so bad that the only hope for a bright future was to go in separate directions.
