The First Day Is The Hardest

Not so long ago ... I wasn't a very good wife.  It wasn't that I didn't love my husband ... I think it was more that I didn't show him love or more specifically I didn't know how to show him.  Oh, I adored him, not that he would've known it ... but I did.  The problem was that for years I never really showed him how much he meant to me.
I think after awhile, it got so bad for him that he just shut himself off from me.  The sad thing was that things had gotten so bad between us that I didn't even notice the pain he was in.  Of course knowing what I know now I could definitely see there was a problem, but not then ... not in the moment.
When everything exploded, and my life as I knew it was different ... he was there ... almost a shell of a man I thought I knew ... a man that I was completely certain I was going to grow old with.  My f o r e v e r.  BUT ... I don't think he believed that f o r e v e r would include me anymore.  I had broken him ... to the point where I wasn't sure there was a way to fix all the "broken" I had done. 

I can't say I blame him.  Etched in my memory is this picture of my love ... my husband ... staring at me from his place on the couch ... his eyes were cold ... an emotionless face.  As I sat and put everything on the line ... let down my walls and said all the things I should've said for years and never did, he sat there, just listening ... emotionless.

I knew it was bad.  Very, very bad.  The weeks following that night on the couch were some of the hardest weeks of my life.  Trying to fix myself ... trying to fix Brian ... trying to fix US ... trying to be the wife that he deserved.  Then somehow ... very slowly I started to hope.  I started to get glimmers of the man I loved ... it was like waking him up from a coma.  It was slow ... painstaking ... and absolutely amazing.

Then one day several months after the explosion ... I was at work sitting at my computer when an email from Brian popped up on my computer screen.  It said three simple words ... "I love you".  I'm not sure if he even remembers sending it, but it is a message I will never forget.  I read those three words and immediately burst into tears ... ran from my desk and sat in a bathroom stall trying to compose myself.  He loved me ... after everything we had been through ... he still loved me. 

Tonight Brian left for the police academy.  He will be living in Green Bay during the week and coming home on weekends.  We were trying out Skype on the computer and I sent him a quick instant message that I loved him ... he replied "I love you too!"  I started to cry.  I was immediately catapulted back in time ... to that same girl sitting in front of her computer screen clinging to the hope of a new future.

I love my husband ... more than I could ever express in words.  His absence in this house is overwhelming to me, but I know from experience that the first day is always the hardest.