Oh Honeypig, your story made the tears flow. I feel you. It's the little things that show you how much a person cares. I found a card that my ex made me for Valentine's Day last night. I stuck it on the outside of a kitchen cabinet but it became one of those things that kind of fell into the background and you stop noticing.
He cut out little hearts and glued them to the front and when you opened it it was one of those 3D hearts that popped out. It said I *heart* you. One of my favorite cards. It made me wonder, "what the hell happened?" How did we get here? I couldn't turn the other cheek anymore...
I do have those feelings of "who is going to love me like that again". At the time it feels like one of those once in a lifetime things. But if it was real, and really once in a lifetime then he wouldn't have had to keep asking me "what my problem was". Someone who respected me would've listened the first few times, or had been able to make the connect themselves after one of the many times I spent the night sobbing and sharing my stories of how I grew up.
You are absolutely right it's another layer of grief. It was brought on by having to sell the house. I'm going to see it completely empty, and even though it already feels that way seeing it is too much to imagine. We were here less than five years and although I never wanted to stay here much longer than that I always thought it'd be because we were progressing.
That's the thing though, our relationship wasn't progressing. The only things progressing were his drinking and my desire to get healthy. We couldn't have been going in more different directions. I was holding on to the imagine in my head of what I wanted us to be and I was in denial, such bad denial over how things really were.