The next day we shopped for some more things to get around the house and continued to install them. My friend Linda Kudo flew in to give us a hand while I still wasn’t cleared to drive. She thought that I was recovering so well that maybe she didn’t need to come after all and that was nice to hear when I was starting to feel so confused about what I’d fought to stay alive for.
She was there two days and the friends kept coming to help and then the second day after she arrived, My wife and I continued the argument and I didn’t have the energy left so this interaction instead of the long fights where I had hoped that I could talk her into having a matching tattoo or having another child or something where I felt validated about having wanted so bad to be with her, I called it a night and took my daughter to bed. The argument was about to start again and in an adolescent move, I locked the door just trying to get some space. Ironically, my wife had been insisting on space for a few days and in my desire to have some reassurance that coming home to her had been worthwhile, I had failed to do so asking for an hour or two late at night for some validation. It’s sad and ironic how sometimes what a relationship needs ends up being exactly the opposite of what we do.
I woke up a few hours later and she was gone. I thought about calling her right then but more intelligently emailed her asking where she was at 2:00 am or whatever it was. That email was never responded to. I didn’t know what to do.
The next day, Linda helped me do some painting and we hung out with Kiana and it would be till early afternoon before I would mention anything. I kept hoping it was just an emotional outburst and she would calm down and come home since we had some commitments on Sunday with friends but the longer the day dragged out without any response to texts or emails, I couldn’t figure out what to do so I told Linda. It would turn out that she had heard from my friend Dre that they thought we were making house repairs because we were planning on splitting up and selling the house. I’ve never figured out where that perspective came from.
Linda would leave almost a week earlier than she had planned because she thought that our marriage had been on the rocks for a while and she didn’t want to be in the middle of the drama. This wasn’t my perception of it but apparently it was very different than hers who within a few days would state she wanted a divorce. Friends who had seen her a few days before and after Duke and myself were blown away. Susan sat she had talked with her about how she was doing and how we were doing and felt reassured. Dre’s parents had complimented our relationship and the nurses had talked about how it was clear I had affection for her. But obviously whatever language I had tried to communicate it and my own deficiencies in how I handled marriage were more damaging than I had realized. Back to back emergencies were arising.
You took your daughter to bed....after she had already been put to bed and you continued to yell, to threaten, and say that you wanted me to leave if I wasn't happy, repeating until about 1 in the morning that we needed to deal with this right now, that I needed to make a decision right then, even after I begged you to let this stuff go and that this was definitely not the time to have a conversation. I went into Kiana's room, and I laid down on the floor because I was just so tired, and you came in, kicked me, tried to pulled me up off the floor, and then said "Fine, then you don't get to sleep with your daughter." Picked up Kiana, and went to your room, and locked the door. Yes, I think 'I went to bed with my daughter' sums that up very well.
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