The Winter of Our Discontent, Part 5: Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?

I thought about him today and it was not in a positive light.  I really thought I was attracted to him.  I daydreamed fantasies about him.  Naughty ones I wouldn't tell my best friend.  I was so excited to be having those kinds of feelings after so long I was even naive enough to tell him.  I was immediately ashamed.  I wanted to be with him so bad.  When I think about it, I'm pretty sure I told him because I was afraid of losing him.  He was my secret.  My special way of feeling alive in a sea of disappointment.  The thing that occupied my thoughts so that I didn't have to think about other unhappinesses in my life.

I suppose thinking about him the way I did today was healthy, but it made me sad.  It meant that chapters of my life are closing.  I think about how great it felt to know he was attracted to me and that I might get a text from him or a call from him.  That I might come up the stairs to his floor and find him waiting in the stairwell for me.  I know all he wanted was sex.  I know that now and it hurts pretty bad.  But then, oh my, it was all I could think of.  I spent many a Saturday morning snuggled down in my blankets just thinking of moments I would see him again.  I lingered in bed many times wondering what it would feel like to wake up next to him instead of my husband.  Or, in a different angle, to wake up in his bed on a forbidden afternoon together.

Now I am angry because I believe now, that he knew what he was doing from the first time we "met".  He figured I was vulnerable.  Married, but sleeping alone and not wearing a wedding ring.  A little chubby, a little melancholy, a bit of a loner.  A perfect, needy target.  He seemed so attentive.  He listened to my struggle with desiring sex and asked me personal questions my husband has never asked.  He asked me if I'd had a bad experience, if I enjoyed it, or even liked it.  I didn't know, no one had ever asked and I'd never thought too much about it.  Now I know the questions were just a way to work an angle.  They are all working angles.

Well, after today, I may be able to start writing again.  It's possible I am that much closer to leaving that wonderful moment in time behind me and accepting the fate that has been laid out for me here in a marriage that is void of true interaction and, in my opinion, love.