The Hits Just Keep on Coming

So here I am, single for the first time in nine years, still stuck for another three weeks in my project from hell, and alone in this big ass 2000 sq ft, 4-bedroom house. I have just found out that my wife had left me three weeks ago but didnt bother telling me. She didnt even take any of her clothes or any of her things with her. They were all still at our house (which was in both of our names).

I know, I could have left the project and went to Winnipeg to try and work things out with my wife. But for one thing, back then I was a young career professional. My wife and family life was more important, but career and commitment was always a priority. If you were committed to a project, then you finished that project. End of story.

Youve also got to consider the fact that after pouring my heart and soul into our very loving marriage for the past eight years. Fully believing that it was a wondrous and unbreakable bond that could stand any test. Then see my wife walk away at the first sign of problems or issues without even ever mentioning it. She abandoned me. She who up until a few months earlier suppossedly loved me unconditionally and forever. Not to mention the zombie-like person that she had become the past six to eight months. I was always the one that supported her, both mentally, emotionally, and financially. I was always sacrificing my own needs or wants for the sake of building a beautiful and loving marriage. For the past eight years that is what we seemed to have. There was no question in my mind that our love was true, unbreakable, and forever. To find out that she walked out on it without even trying to mend it. Without even talking once about it.

My attitude is that if our marriage, or me wasnt important enough for her to come back to our home and work things out, then she can stay in Winnipeg with her sister. As far as I was concerned, if she was unwilling or unable to try to work it out, then it was already over and my life was much easier and better off without her. And I do still believe that.

It still hurt beyond compare though. I wont get too far into that, but to realize that if her love could go away, or fade, or die so quickly without even wanting to fight for it. To save it. It means that she never truly (truly) loved me in the first place. I think that was to me the ultimate betrayal. She betrayed me. She betrayed us. She turned all my sacrafices, and all my love, and all my life for the past nine years into a mockery. A joke. A sham. It was never real...

That revelation left a complete knawing emptiness in my heart, in my stomach, in my head, and in my very soul. I cannot begin to describe that complete hollow emptiness that my whole being became from that. The only way that I could cope with that emptiness was to become dead inside. At least for a time anyway.

As long as I was busy, then I can keep my mind off of it. Keep myself focussed on the task at hand. Which meant work. There was plenty of work to get done still in my project from hell. But when it was time to go home at the end of the day or evening. That was a different story. I couldnt go home. The one thing that I couldnt do was think about it. All my mind wanted to do was to keep asking over and over again what on earth went wrongÉ How did this happenÉ Its the only thing that my mind could focus on, but it was also the only thing that I couldnt cope with. There was no way that I could sit in that big empty lonely house by myself. The only thing to do there was to think, and think, and think.... Its the only thing that I couldnt bear to do.

So I didnt go home. After work I would go straight to crazy Bills house. He didnt work because his stomach muscles and tissue was all torn away two years ago by being shot seven times in the body at point blank range by his then girlfriends ex-boyfriend. Thats another story though. I will write a separate post about Bill sometime soon. We would grab a sandwhich at Bills place, then be at the bar by 8:30p. There we would talk, and laugh, shoot pool, and have a great time drinking $5 pitchers of beer until closing time. Bar hop if we felt like it. But we would have a great time, and because we were having so much fun, all the other fun people would gravitate around us. I would get home around 3:00am (after having such a fun night), crash, get up and go to work, then repeat the process again the next night. We werent wallowing. We really were having a ton of fun. It was a distraction for me. A diversion. It was something that allowed me to not think about what on earth went wrong with my marriage. It was something that diverted me from thinking at all. That is what I needed then.

Luckily I am the type of person who doesnt need much sleep. Therefore I can do this all week and then crash on the weekend. My project from hell ended three weeks later and I was put to work on the team writing the proposal for the next project. This sucked, because due to time frames I had to work six days a week getting this proposal completed. That means not sleeping at all Friday night, then making it to work Saturday morning. But I did it.

Unfortunately, that project was delayed six months by the client. That was the state of the current market. The dot-com crash that lost me $65K in the stock market six months earlier, also was ravaging the Information Technology budgets. Which meant a serious slow down in new technology projects. Three weeks later, a large part due to the fact that my manager from the project from hell took a dislike to me, I was laid off.

So, at 31 years old, I was single for the first time in nine years, and for the first time in my adult life (13 years, including University) I was unemployed. BUT I did own a 4-bedroom house with a hot tub, and had $45K in cash (in the stock market).

I didnt even know who I was anymore, or what path or direction I wanted to be moving in. I didnt want to be anything. I just wanted to be and to not make any decisions (especially career decisions) until I was in a more stable frame of mind. So I just didnt work. I took several months off and just existed.

...It was this time that kicked off the second phase of my adult life. The years that I refer to as the Crazy Days...