The Ghost That Haunts Me

I’ve been thinking of all the follies in my life of late. There have been many, it seems. I have loved and lost a woman who was the other half of my heart. Her departure, not unpredicted, left a gaping hole in my soul. Was she justified in leaving? Well, she thinks so. I’m not really so sure. Certainly, she went out of her way to treat me like a nobody…and it grated on me until I had to demand she stop. She didn’t just stop; she left. But, she will never be loved as much by another man. She knows that and, once in a while, I detect a hint of sorrow in her voice when we’re talking about our children. At least, I think I do. I hope I do.

It took me over a year to want to be with another woman. I languished in a self-imposed envelope of pain. I loved my wife; I told you that. But, gradually, I realized that, if she had loved me back, she would not have done many of the things she did. She would have heeded my requests, gentle at first and more forceful as she ignored them, and given me the simple things any real wife would have been happy to give her husband. I came to realize that, through some inadequacy of her own, she was incapable of such a simple thing as I requested.

I looked around and found a woman. She was beautiful to me in many ways, and I dared to want to be with her. I was still in pain and probably should have thought twice, but the loneliness and the sorrow was eating me alive and I knew there was nothing I wanted more than to have someone who wanted to hold me.

We got together. We held one another. She helped me in ways that I had been previously denied, and I adored the woman. But, I still had a large hole in my heart and, while it was slowly healing, it wasn’t ready. I told her I wasn’t ready for some things, but she was. She’d been looking for me for a long, long time, she said. I was happy. But, the past kept creeping into our relationship. I have two beautiful and wonderful children with my ex-wife and, therefore, had to deal with the woman on a daily basis. It grated on my new relationship and, sadly, I think that’s over with now. I cared immensely for Stephanie and wish her nothing but good things. I’m sorry the ghosts of my past are still with me. Believe me when I tell you I tried to push them away, but they simply wouldn’t go away.

Unfortunately, Ghosts are like that.