UNCONDITIONAL

Reckoning

They arrived without fanfare or so much as a warning. The proposed agreement. He half read half skimmed it, skipping the words he didn't understand, dissecting the ones he did. Wading through pages of parenting plans and charts representing the amount of love and intimacy he would be legally kept from. He was breaking. The last things of value, the only things he placed any hope in would be forever altered, regulated, and controlled by her decision.

To say he was destroyed would be like describing the atomic bomb as a common firework. This was the bottom. The home of complete annihilation.

He sat rigid and shaking on the front porch at 3:30 in the morning. The night birds lending their muted song. He questioned angrily the sentence.

"What have I done to deserve this? What did I do to be crushed over and over and over? It's bullshit! It's too much for me to bear! It's too much damnit! Nobody should be saddled with a lifetime of heartbreak!" He was widely ignored with the exception of the moonless pitch which engulfed and muffled his complaint. He was used to being unheard, unbelieved and ignored.

The same person that had given him hope and inspired him to get up time after time had removed his beating heart from his chest, given up and tossed it carelessly aside.

      She refused to accept and understand the illness until it benefitted her plan. She was understandably hurt and it hadn't been a slow descent into chaos. It had been wave upon wave of disappointment and reconstruction. She was hurt and bitter, and like a cornered animal with no foreseeable escape, she came at him with all the pain she could offer, hoping that somehow the rendering would ease her own hurt and in that destruction the playing field would be somewhat leveled.

       There remained a glaring and unavoidable fact. His actions were directly caused by a mental illness. They were unintentional and unstoppable. Her offering was sent with thought and intent and would destroy multiple lives and one remaining lifetime in its execution.
We all want justification for our actions. We want an angry mob of likeminded supporters that are in step with whatever our motivations may be. The size of your sympathetic backers is largely determined by 3 factors. One, the popularity of the complainant, Two the nature of the offense, and three, the level of partisan knowledge that has been communicated. She controlled their entire sphere of influence. He knew he had done himself no favors but he had injured without intent.

       He refused to sign, hoping that his commitment would soften her resolve. He blindly thought that given time, she would see the change. He had changed,  inexorably for the positive. Relationships he had never cared to tend because they only brought the sting of conviction to his wondering heart we're now strong and desired. He found himself head long in a faith which he had either played at or ignored for years. He had to, not only to be a good father in whatever pain was coming, but in order to stay alive. No fight is worth fighting but the last one, and he knew with all his being, this was the diverging of paths in the road.

      She had changed too. The exuberant green eyed beauty of his youth had transformed into a silent wall of bitterness and resentment. She denied the metamorphosis angrily. She buried her pain and loss in pursuit of rest and recovery, none came. She carried the hurt exposed and awful to her family. She gained blind support but lost respect by offering up the sins of her partner to the half caring, half understanding masses. They turned on him, not so much out of rebuke, they too knew that forgiveness and restoration was still a stroke of absolution away. No, they turned only out of loyalty and a uneasiness inherent in an unknown disease.