NAVEL GAZING: excessive absorption in self-analysis or focus on a single issue

A Failed Attempt

In the years that followed, I developed an unshakable loneliness that my relationship with her couldn't reach.
I longed for something deeper—somewhere to rest my need for connection.

Despite the productive team Samantha and I made through the baby years, what was missing between us returned once the noise of child-rearing faded.

⸻

The absence of love changed the air in the house.
We moved through routines, managing life more than living it.
The more we provided, the less meaning it seemed to hold.
Appreciation never lingered long.

⸻

The kids factored into my decision to leave—though not because I wanted to escape responsibility.
They were being raised in a home without a foundation—or at least one we had both weakened.
But more than that, I believed they were missing something essential: a mother with the energy to love them the way children need to be loved.

Samantha wasn't capable of that—not often enough.
When her depression took hold, she withdrew behind it, distant and easily angered, a faint outline of herself.
I worried about what that absence of affection was doing to them.
I wanted them to have a mother who could nurture.
And no matter how much I tried, I knew I couldn't fill that space.

[To be fair, being a cheat didn't square with the kind of father I'd imagined for them;
but staying felt like slowly disappearing.]

⸻

It's hard to blame someone for an illness.
Still, over time, I stopped seeing Samantha apart from her depression.
Eventually, the illness was all I could see.
There were bright days, but not enough to outshine the weight between us.
Slowly, we drifted—side by side, but already gone.

⸻

I became skilled at pretending things were fine.
Early on, the family portraits on the walls reflected the life we wanted.
Later, they became proof of what we'd lost.

By the end, we treated each other with a distance that bordered on contempt.
Friends could feel it.
Strangers could sense it.

It had been years since I found her attractive—she must have known—and no emotional closeness remained to bridge that loss.
I know how vain it sounds, but I no longer felt we looked like we belonged together.

[I became embarrassed to be seen with her in public—a kind of shallowness I wish I could deny.]

⸻

Eventually, I crossed the line again.
This time, not from confusion or curiosity, but from a deeper hunger I could no longer silence.

With Nina, it was different.
People noticed her.
They stopped, smiled, lingered.
She carried a light that drew attention, and being near it was intoxicating.
After years of invisibility, I felt seen again.

⸻

My parents and siblings never fell under her spell.
When the truth became public, their disapproval was unmistakable.
As for my marriage, they may have suspected its decay,
but as long as we maintained appearances, the illusion held.

A nice house.
Four kids.
A marriage that looked intact.

From the outside, things could have been worse.

But they were worse.
We were two unhappy parents holding together what had already fallen apart.

⸻

I worked hard to provide a good life,
but the more I tried to fill the void, the wider it grew.

Samantha worked hard too,
though the illness consumed her energy and dulled her spirit.
The woman I'd met years earlier had disappeared into a fog I couldn't reach her through.

Later, her diagnosis shifted—from depression to bipolar disorder, then to severe depression.

⸻

Long before the suicide attempts and the 51-50 holds—
the mandatory 72-hour psychiatric evaluations that began shortly before our final separation—
she had stopped caring about nearly everything.

And I had long since stopped trying to save her.
I told myself I was tired.
In truth, I was already gone.

⸻

That was the secret in our marriage, hidden in plain sight.
It would be unfair to say it was all bad; there were good moments too.
But the shadow never left.
It lingered in every silence, every distance we couldn't close.

Her depression didn't always look like sadness.
It looked like sharpness, irritability, retreat.

Over time, she spent most of her free days in bed.
I stopped asking her to get up.
She missed work—covered by vacation or sick leave—and self-medicated with alcohol and painkillers.
Sleep was her escape.

⸻

I learned to smile for others, to keep the story neat.
Inside, I was already somewhere else.
I carried an unspoken plan, and the quiet comfort of knowing I would someday be free.

That freedom came.
And with it, a silence that still follows me—
something like guilt,
or maybe the echo of what was lost while trying to save myself.