What a fun site. The chance to share the most private of thoughts.
Where to begin…
By all accounts you would think that my life was perfect, or close enough. Very successful in my field, well-loved by my community, a fun set of hobbies, not in financial crisis. So what’s wrong?
I’ve always suffered from depression. Thoughts of suicide. My wife has been great at keeping me out of it. But over the years, she has grown so very distant. I don’t think she is cheating on me; it’s not in her personality. But these days she’s a roommate, nothing more. Intimacy has dried up to infrequent… and by that, I mean I only need the one hand to count when she says yes per year. That’s pretty demeaning. Year after year. Not getting any younger, we finally decided to have a child. I (mistakenly) thought, “That’s what we need. We don’t feel like a family, and she said she always wanted a child, and so she just feels unfulfilled as a mother. This is what we are lacking.” So we had a child a year ago, a daughter. The single most perfect thing I could have ever imagined. What a beautiful blessing!
If I thought our relationship was lousy before, I’ve gotta say, that was nothing. Didn’t try multiple times to have kids, didn’t have sex when pregnant, and won’t have sex now, “in case she wakes up and needs something.” So yeah, as far as intimacy goes, I would have thought trying to have a kid would have improved my sex life just a bit, but it failed miserably. But on top of that, she got crazy during pregnancy and suffered post partum afterwards. I would describe the past two years as nothing short of abusive, but always I kept thinking, “She’ll get over it. It’s the pregnancy. It’s the post partum. It’s the colicky kid. It’s everything else.”
We haven’t been sleeping in the same bedroom for years. I’ve told her that it was because I would rather sleep alone 365 days a year than sleep sexually frustrated 360 days a year. So I sleep on a mattress on the floor in the study. Tonight I told her I was going to buy a bed for the study. “Why? Our daughter is starting to sleep thru the night these days. Aren’t you going to move back in any day?” “Not if our sex life is going to stay once every other month or less. I’d still rather sleep alone than sexually frustrated.” Pause. “Well, then buy whatever bed you want.”
So… now I know where I stand. The one person that used to keep me out of depression now is the source of all of it. Not only has she been a merciless ***** the past 2 years, but we’re still not intimate. So why am I still married to her?
Oh, yes. Our daughter.
Except that I am convinced that it would cause her more harm to grow up in such a dysfunctional household than it would to grow up in a single parent home.  But the thought of living without her is more than I can bear. I love my daughter so much.  I cannot live with the idea that if I divorce my wife I might only see her on weekends or occasionally. I would rather die than have to live without her. And I cannot live with my wife this way.  This life of constant criticism is more than I can handle.
So here’s where I am at. I’m in the middle of a big work project. I’ve put my heart and soul into this thing and I still have about a year and a half left, and I would like to see it thru to completion. And then… well, that gets us up to Christmas 2014, which is also when I am scheduled to finish paying off my car, which is good. My wife is a teacher, so I think it would be unfair to just finish things off over Christmas. Wait until the school year is over.
So… I have a plan. Summer of 2015. I’d love to sell off a lot of my stuff between now and then, comic book collections and the like, ostensibly for the reason of simplifying my life and starting a college fund for my daughter, neither of which is really a lie. My wife can use the money for my daughter however she wants. Two years is a lot of time to plan. In a perfect world I will return to my homeland (I’m not from here), and be able to die in peace where I was born. That would feel wonderful.
Oh, I know. “You have so much to live for.” But I’ve done almost all of it now. Every dream I ever had, and I am blessed to say that at the age of 40 I’ve pulled it all off. I feel like God was good to me, and let me have such a full life in a short time. I had one thing to get done, to get right, before my time ran out, and I’ve done it. My daughter is perfect! And now after a lifetime of struggling to find a reason to get up in the morning, I can finally say the time is right. It’s coming. There isn’t any reason to stick around anymore. And if I do this early enough, it won’t cause her anything beyond short term sadness. And that’s okay. We all die. Everyone of us. Some of us are just brave and lucky enough to choose when and how we do it. The rest are at the mercy of happenstance and failing bodies. Not me. I have a plan. Admittedly, at this point the plan is 2 years out, but I look forward to seeing how this plays out. I feel like I’ve finally been given the green light on something I’ve eagerly anticipated for my whole life. Death is not a bad thing; its a reward for making it thru life.