Tuesday, September 15 in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

I’m still struggling.

That’s just… honesty.

My body is in pain. My work schedule is a mess. My marriage is over. And I’m struggling with my own self-worth.

This is actually a regular part of prosecution, actually. Did you ever see The Practice? Lara Flynn Boyle’s character specifically asks her District Attorney boss to “give her the speech”:

Helen Gamble:
I need it, Richard. Give it to me.

Richard Bay:
What?

Helen Gamble:
The speech. Why we do what we do.

Richard Bay:
Oh, I am not really in the mood after…

Helen Gamble:
PLEASE, Richard. I NEED it. Please give it to me. And don’t just phone it in.

Richard Bay:
Helen…

Helen Gamble:
Please! Can’t you see how demoralized I am?

Richard Bay:
OK. (takes a deep breath) There are heroes in this world. They’re called District Attorneys. They don’t get to have clients, people who smile at them at the end of the trial, who look them in the eye and say, “thank you.” Nobody is there to appreciate the District Attorney, because we work for the state. And our gratitude comes only from knowing there’s a tide out there. A tide the size of a tsunami coming out of a bottomless cesspool. A tide called crime, which, if left unchecked will rob every American of his freedom. A tide which strips individuals of the privilege of being able to, to walk down a dark street or take twenty dollars out of an ATM machine without fear of being mugged. All Congress does is talk, but it’s the District Attorney who grabs his sword, who digs into the trenches and fights the fight. Who dogs justice day, after day, after day without thanks, without so much as a simple pat on the back. But we do it. We do it, we do it because we are the crusaders, the last frontier of American justice. Knowing that if a man cannot feel safe, he can never, never feel free.

I needed that today. I still believe in the fight. I believe that if we don’t fight every day of our lives for the things that matter… we’ll lose them. Maybe that’s why… as shitty as the timing was for my marriage to end in 2020… maybe this is the only year it COULD HAVE ended. Without the constant daily battles of 2020 wearing me down; maybe I’d have all of this energy to try to keep fighting for my marriage. I don’t know. Maybe?

Sometimes I’ll read old entries here and… just feel a sadness. A sadness that I once thought what I was going through was acceptable or just a normal part of being married. I’ll feel sadness and frustration that he (me) didn’t leave sooner and try to find more for his life. But then I’ll sit in my thoughts, sit in the present. And with the exception of my time in law school; I wouldn’t have changed it. Yeah. If I knew in Law School that there was no saving my marriage, so fuck it and date the law students? THAT I would have done. But 2014 to 2019? As sad as it is to see what I was willing to accept as a “marriage”… it was better to go through that with her than to go through it without her. OBVIOUSLY it would have been better to go through that with a fully functioning adult capable of a healthy marriage… that would have been the ideal. But still, given the options… it was better to go through that with her than to go through it alone. And maybe that, above all, is what I’m struggling with lately. That I realize I have to go through some of the hard shit alone. If I’m EVER to have a shot at going through things with a fully functioning adult capable of a healthy marriage… I have to go through this rough “going through things alone” phase. And I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate arguing with people all day only to come home and have no one to hold me. I hate spending my days reading about the evil people do to each other and then going home to a cold nothing waiting for me. I hate knowing that the only joy I get is the rare day a week when I open my house up to other people’s families because Remus and Victoria and Essen and their children are really the only flesh and blood people I have in my life these days. And I hate that I’m happy to know I’ll be seeing Nancy tonight. And here’s another thing… whether it would have been tonight or tomorrow night or maybe not this week at all but… I hate that the next time I’m alone with Victoria… as outstanding as she is in every sexual way… all I want (right now) is just to hold her and be held. For just a moment of even faux intimacy. For someone to tell me that things are going to be okay and for me to believe it; even if just for a second.

Anyway… yeah. Nancy is actually going to grace me with her presence this evening (allegedly). I’m honestly a little afraid that I won’t have the balls to go through with any of the tough talk. Because I mean… even I don’t see the logic in it. How am I going to set a deadline for her removing her things and in the next breath ask that she relinquish her key to the house? By doing one, I’m complicating the other. But at the same time… I really don’t like it when she comes over whenever she wants to without telling me and then I return home and find shit gone. But at least I’ll get a chance to talk to her. For the first time in over a month.