Hope

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier.’ – Alfred Lord Tennyson

How quickly things change, even hopes. I was hoping to get through the holidays and my daughter’s birthday before starting the conversation with my husband telling him I have been unhappy. Then he decided to ask me if I was having an affair and instead of denying and ending the conversation I decided to deny but casually mention well since you asked I haven’t been happy for a long time. Which led to him guessing I wanted a divorce and then a miserable, heartbreaking, awkward Christmas.

I was hoping to just tell him that I had fallen out of love and had drifted too far away to get back to where we had been long ago. But he couldn’t understand how I could just walk away and begged me for a chance to make things right, to be the man he once was that I had fallen in love with. He refused to let me go even when I said my heart isn’t in this relationship anymore.

I was hoping to not have to admit to him that I may not be completely straight anymore. It was hard enough to admit it to myself!!!! But after reading a portion of an essay by Cheryl Strayed yesterday about being ok to leave….specifically “Go because you want to. Because wanting to leave is enough….” I realized that although it’s not best for him if I leave, it’s not best for me if I stay, and I have to be true to me. I will only become more miserable and life is too short to be miserable. So to be true to myself and justify “giving up” I have to tell him I am gay. While I am not yet fully identifying that way, I feel it would be too much to have to explain being fluid, or not completely straight, or bi-sexual even.

The truth hurts but it also sets you free. I realize that living this new truth will be an adjustment at first, and that many difficult things will come along with it as my previous world learns of it, but I am hopeful that I will find my happiness. I am hopeful I will find the me I lost.

I am hopeful and that is enough.