Is This My Exit Email?

Dear XXXXXX

I don't understand what you were thinking today.

You told me that money, what I owe the IRS, keeping the business going, etc. is a major source of stress. You said that "I'm expensive to keep" to our friend. You worry about unpaid bills.

And then you book a $500 a night room at a resort a three hour drive away from home. Supposedly to make it easier for me to study?

I could have gone to the library, bought a $5 latte nearby, and done as much studying as I actually got done today.

So far, one hour. One hour that cost the hotel, lunch for $68, treats at the gas station, $30, and what it will cost in fuel to drive here and home. Add in the toll fee at the bridge, and if I get in one more hour of study, it will have cost us $300 per hour for me to work on Real Estate. Maybe if I get in three hours it will only cost us $200 per hour. See how hard I work to save us money?

A program of study that you suggested once we looked at how much money we don't have.

Oh my god I don't even know how to talk to you anymore.

I feel if I tell you what I'm actually thinking, actually feeling, it will crush you. I see the worry in your eyes, as I stare at you silently. I wonder if you have some idea, wonder if I am going to blow up at you. But I don't want that.

I'm seriously considering, thinking about, looking at, and tentatively planning to leave you. It seems to me it will be easier to leave than fight. Which makes no sense, but seems like the only way to break a cycle I only recently came to see I was living in with you.

Why am I so afraid of hurting your feelings? Why do I shy away from telling you things like: please do not ever book time away for me again.

Here's what I want to ask for.

Don't order food for me

Don't buy things for me that I haven't agreed to ahead of time.

Don't show me things you want to buy me.

Don't

Just

Fucking

Don't

Don't plan vacations. I don't want to go. I would rather work.

Don't make food for me. What you want and what you like are not good for me.

If I don't want to die from diabetic complications in the next decade, I must change my entire lifestyle.

You said, we're going somewhere you can exercise and study.

I haven't done one, and barely touched the other.

Just because we had sex once we got here doesn't negate any of this. It used to. It used to make me feel connected to you, in touch with you, in love with you.

Now it feels like mutual pleasure, but doesn't reinforce any emotion contact. I don't feel like we're using each other, but I don't feel like it brings us closer.

Friends with Benefits. maybe that is what this has become.

I know that this resentment has built over time, it's not born out of something in the last half year. But the last half year has revealed it.

In January, I was told my diabetes is full blown, not just metabolic syndrome.

I filed for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy on my birthday this year. To stop a foreclosure on the home. If I wasn't living with you and your son, I would have signed the house over to the bank, filed for Chapter 7, and found a room to rent somewhere.

See, I also stopped playing video games, which had the benefit/consequence of helping me stop eating and drinking late at night, stopping me surfing internet porn, and helping me go to sleep at a better hour.

I used to be able to sleep through anything (the news blasting all night) because I was exhausted. I routinely worked day in and day out on 4 to 5 hours of sleep per night. I ate and drank because sleep deprivation fucks up your metabolism. It also accelerates, exaggerates, and exacerbates the symptoms and challenges of ADHD.

It does nothing good for blood pressure.

Or getting steadily fatter and sicker. Which is what I was. Becoming fatter and sicker. Sick in my belly, in my pancreas, in my blood, in my brain, even my eyes were weakening due to diabetes.

I have to start loving myself. Caring for myself. Taking care of me first. Putting the oxygen mask on me, before I try to care for anyone else.

Like you.

I am truly sorry if I took anything away from you. Your autonomy. Your independence. If I made you dependent on my trying to take care of things.

You do want to be a good help mate, a good home maker, and a good wife.

I hear you say that, I see you try to do the things that fulfill those roles.

But, it's not working. And it hasn't worked for years now. I see that.

Your pain, it's constant tiring you out. It's draining you. I thought I could fill the gaps, help, step in, make it right, make it nice, make it good.

But it turns out I have a limit. My reservoir is low, dangerously so.

Maybe if things were different. If I had a 9 to 5 job for 40 hours per week with benefits and decent pay, that things would be different.

Maybe if I felt like I didn't have to be home every hour I'm not working, and was able to recharge my batteries with things like volunteering, conventions, and gaming, I could keep going.

But I can't

Sorry, it's me, and it's you. It's both of us. And I don't have any answers on how to change this. And I don't think I want to.

I want out.

I want to get out and leave you stable. With the house and the business.

Right now I feel like I can pack about 10 boxes of books, my guns, my clothes, my family photos, and be done.

Everything else is yours.

Everything.

So

I think the next step is to figure out how to tell you this.

Then

That's it. I just need to get to the next step.

How this will end up, shape up, finish up, that's in the future.

I can't control the future.

But I can see part of it.

And we don't live together in the future.

I love you, but I can't live with you. I can't share your lifestyle. I can't share your life anymore.

I know this will be painful, for both of us, but I'm not going to say sorry for causing you pain. I will say, sorry I didn't know how to see this sooner, say this sooner. But it looks like maybe now is soon enough.

When you find yourself in a deep hole, the first part of getting out, is stop digging.

I'm going to stop digging.