Are We Even Now? Pt. 06

I thought about introducing myself to his wife, maybe asking her to pass on my apologies. Even if she would do it (and why would she?), what good would it do? I turned the car around and slunk homeward, if you can slink while driving a car. I never saw Tad again. Were we even now? Not that it mattered anymore, but he'd been right: no, we weren't even, and we never would be.

I had deliberately chosen to cruelly humiliate the man I'd loved, for what I thought were good reasons. Now I was alone, with no immediate prospects for being otherwise, while Burt and Tad had loving families. The good reasons didn't look so good any more. I was starting to see that though it hadn't seemed so at the time, I'd punished myself at least as much as I'd punished Tad.

Yes, I thought for the thousandth-plus time, Tad had cheated on me. He started it, and I wasn't going to put up with it. That was still just as true as it was the day I first saw those pictures. But he and Burt were also right: my response wasn't the sort of thing you do to someone you love. It was like I had turned off my love for Tad for that weekend, and expected to turn it back on when Burt left, like love was a water faucet or something. It seems love isn't like that.

So what now? I'm forty (well, plus a few months), and I can't compete with the twenty-somethings anymore, but I still get hit on. I know I have it in me to be a good and faithful wife. Hell, I was one for twelve years, before I went off the rails with my revenge. Even Tad said so. Now I've learned from bitter experience that you either love or you don't. You can't put love off to the side for a weekend, and expect nothing to change. It's up to me to put that knowledge to use.

I'm getting past the point of having children. But maybe there's a man out there who could love, and accept love from, a sadder but wiser woman. Maybe somewhere there's a man on his own with a young child or two, who needs someone to love him and them and share his burdens. He won't be Tad, of course, but maybe someone...

"And maybe tomorrow, I'll find what I'm after;

I'll throw off my sorrow, beg, steal, or borrow

My share of laughter."

-- "Who Can I Turn To," Anthony Newley & Leslie Bricusse