Escape

As I drove home from the cottage tonight, I purposefully drove past the interchange I needed and kept driving north. I just couldn't face driving straight home. I needed to feel free. I needed to drive without purpose. As I drove, I listened to music and thought about things. I cried. I felt broken. I felt empty. I felt lonely. I felt sad.

I noticed as I drove that if I ignored the street signs and just saw the gentle slope of the exit ramps, I could convince myself that I was driving through a completely different city. Detroit, maybe. Or Philadelphia. Indianapolis or Cinncinati. It didn't really matter where, as long as it wasn't home.

I didn't have children with me, so I had no one's needs to tend to but my own. I entertained the notion of just driving up to Traverse City. Calling home and saying I had just needed to escape for a while and would be home by Sunday evening. I thought about calling a friend and seeing if I could spend the night in her guest room.

I just didn't want to go home. I wanted to escape.

As I drove, I listened to a CD I'd made from iTunes. I was listening to the same Evanescence song over and over. It wasn't until I finally, almost unwillingly, took the interchange home that I realized the bitterly humorous irony of the lyrics that were playing over and over.

"Wake me up from this nothing I've become."

Which is really where I stand right now. What am I? I'm a mother. I'm not even sure if I'm a good one. I love my children fiercely and would do anything to protect them, probably even staying in an unhappy marriage if I thought it would be better for them. I'm not sure if that makes me a good mother, however.

What else am I though? I feel like I've become nothing. I'm that woman whose husband cheated on her with her own friend. I wasn't important enough to him to ensure loyalty. It's hard to feel like someone important, someone loved, after that.

I want to feel happy. I want to feel love that isn't tainted by questions of loyalty or survivability. I want to feel so important to someone that they wouldn't ever dream of hurting me.

Is that possible? Or is that a remnant of the fairy tales we grow up with? I've started changing the ends of the Disney stories I tell my 3 year old daughter. I simply cannot end a story with "And they lived happily ever after," because it just is not true. Why lie to her? I've varied the endings. Some variations: "And they lived a married life in which they settled all disputes with reasonable conversation;" "And they parted the best of friends;" "And they got married, had many children, and talked through all of their disagreements."

Should I blame Disney for this? For tainting me with unrealistic expectations that I could find someone who loved me so much that they would hold my heart in their hands like a valuable treasure? Because I'm hurt enough to send Disney a strongly worded letter.

In the meantime, I can't help but wonder where this strong need to escape will take me. I've read novels in which the main character, always an unappreciated, burdened mother and wife, just takes off. Leaves her responsibilities (almost always after the kids have matured and left for college, of course...not irresponsible or cruel are these women) and hits the road. Sometimes they return to their former lives refreshed and with renewed vigor. Sometimes they discover true life was out there somewhere the whole time, just beckoning them with open arms.

My point here is that I completely understand that desire to just leave. Leave it all behind. Drive until you have to sleep, then get up in the morning and drive some more. Get yourself some coffee. Stay in anonymous roadside motels (use the chain lock and deadbolt.) Eat in greasy spoons while reading the local paper. Refuse to make conversation until someone you just can't resist comes along. Become a gardener, a chef, a rancher...whatever dream waited for you all those years while you just marked your time as a spouse and mother.

I feel that urge so strongly now that it's almost painful to ignore it. It was hard for me to turn the car west and head home tonight. I just wanted to keep going so I could what awaited me out there.

But I can't leave my children. Not in a million years. Ever. I cannot imagine not seeing them every single day.

And maybe that's why I don't escape. Because I don't want to evade the constraints that my true love for my children imposes. That is a wonderful, untainted, magical love that I could never question.

Escaping from everything else would be okay.

What if this can't be repaired?

I found myself wondering that today. I had a day to myself. All to myself. My husband took the kids over to the east side of the state to visit family. I lounged around for a bit, hit Starbucks, and headed out to a cottage owned by someone my husband works with.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. Not too hot. Light breeze. Small bluegills trying to nibble at my toes when I dangled them in the lake. I actually touched a few of the eager fish with my fingers. Life was peaceful, life was good.

But somewhere along the line, I started thinking about our marriage. As it stands now, I wear my engagement ring, not my wedding ring. That was his idea. The idea being that I put on my wedding ring when it feels right again.

But maybe that symbolism triggered my mind. An engagement is less formal than a marriage, not viewed as a legal arrangement in the eyes of our society or our courts. People break off engagements all the time. I broke one off in college. (Thankfully. I fully believe that marriage would have been incredibly unhappy. Maybe he would have cheated on me too. Perhaps earlier.)

My point being that people walk away from engagements much more easily than they do marriages. A simple "It's over" can end an engagement. No protracted legal discussions, no messy alimony discussions. Just return the ring (or not, depending on your point of view) and walk away.

So perhaps wearing just my engagement ring triggered these thoughts. Can this marriage be saved? Can I ever feel madly in love with this man again? Because for much of the time I spent being in love with him, things were amiss...I just didn't know it. Even the period of time in our marriage that he claims was miserable, I thought things were okay. Ideal? No, but okay. Superficially, however, that marriage didn't appear too different from the marriage we have today. He is present more, and he helps me more, but as far as the things we do together, or the way we relate over dinner or casual conversation, things appear remarkably similar.

So how can I ever, ever know the true state of our marriage? I thought things were okay then, but apparently they were so terrible that he turned to my friend for comfort and love. So I obviously cannot trust my own instincts as to the health of our marriage. I can't trust him for that either.

The question, then: Do I continue on and just hope and pray that someday I will be able to trust my own assessment of our marital health? (Answer: How could I ever, ever again trust my own assessment when I was so pathetically incorrect before?) We already know the answer to whether I can just rely on him for an assessment of marital health. (There is also the fact that I just refuse to become someone who constantly begs her significant other for assurance that things are okay...I cannot live like that.)

Or do I just decide that I can't live like that and pray that someday someone will truly love me for who I am, and love me so dearly that they could never conceive of breaking my heart?

I really don't know, and that is what scares me the most right now.