I Don't Want to Know

All these well-meaning people have been giving me unsolicited advice--well, I assume they're well-meaning; in actuality, they could be malicious, underhanded people scheming to ruin my life--and I have to say that I don't appreciate it, not one little bit. None of these people really has any idea what it has been like to be in my marriage. They weren't with me when I spent I don't even know how many nights sitting in front of the mirror in my parents' house crying; they weren't with me when I cried myself to sleep for practically the entire eight months I was pregnant with Griffin; they weren't with me when I was twenty-seven years old and wrote in my diary that I couldn't believe I'd spent almost ten years feeling lonely and rejected and that I had to get out of my marriage as soon as possible because I was dying inside; they weren't with me when I got a ticket the day after my ten-year anniversary because I was so busy being distracted and miserable about Glenn wanting nothing to do with me the night before that I didn't notice the speed trap on the side of the road; they weren't with me any of the times that I told Glenn that I felt completely unloved and he didn't utter a word in return; they weren't with me when I came home excited to see Glenn after a four-day trip to Chicago last October, only to walk out of the airport to find him telling an old man he'd kick his ass and then being ignored for the next three days for getting annoyed about it; nor were they with me on New Year's Eve this year when Glenn decided to be mad at me, leaving me and the kids to spend the night on our own and not even bothering to acknowledge the change from 2011 to 2012. On these occasions and on countless others, none of these people were with me; therefore, I'd say that the amount of qualification they possess to give me advice is exactly none.

Not only are these people not qualified to give me advice, but they also have no idea what kind of struggle I've gone through to get to this point. They really don't know me at all, which means they have absolutely no idea how much the idea of change terrifies me. They don't know that even though I've dreamed of living in Chicago since I was dragged here at eight years old, I never went back because I've always been too afraid; that I cancelled my plans to move to Gainesville after high school because I was terrified; that I cried myself to sleep the night before my wedding but didn't want to change my plans because Glenn was all I knew; that every year I imagine working in a new school but lack the nerve to go to one. They don't know that the idea of change paralyzes me, that if it didn't, I would have gotten divorced a long, long time ago and that it's taken so much strength and courage for me to do what I'm doing and that their unsolicited advice is doing nothing but making me second-guess a decision that I don't want to change.

Another thing these people don't know is that Glenn is trying with everything he has to get me to stay in this marriage. They don't know that he assaults me with sad face every day, sends me emotional emails, and confronts me with conversations that I don't want to have on a continual basis. They don't know that he's offering me things that I don't believe he can give me but that even if he could, they're things I no longer want. They don't know that he's playing the "kid card." They don't know that I feel as if reconciling with Glenn will take every bit of joy, every bit of drive, every bit of me that I have left.

They don't know that it will decimate me.

Now they do.