Dear Jack,

I hate that our eight-year relationship has been reduced to a fucking goodbye letter. But I highly doubt that anything I’ve written here will come as a surprise to you.

I can’t fucking do it anymore.

I can’t look at the ever-growing galleries of Junior’s pictures you display on the walls, the walls of the house where I wander around aimlessly, like some kind of fucking mental patient, from the moment I wake until the time I go to sleep — in the bedroom you’ve abandoned in favor of the couch in your office.

I can’t spend another fucking night alone in our bed. I can’t keep wishing you would just hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay, while you sit in your office, glued to your laptop, searching for clues, obsessing over every possible lead in a search that will never end. While I lie in bed crying like a fucking bitch, you spend your time looking for the person who did this to us. You have to see the irony in this, if not the tragedy.

I can’t deal with this constant cycle of fight ➞ cool off ➞ make up ➞ fuck. Fight ➞ cool off ➞ make up ➞ fuck. I’m numb to it now. Sometimes, I wonder if every marriage is like this, then I remember that not everyone has gone through what we’ve gone through.

But surely, every married couple endures their own ups and downs. Why the fuck can’t we figure this out? We used to know how to do this.

I can’t stand by and watch you keep digging that hole deeper. You have to let him go. We’re never going to know who killed him or why. Let it go, Jack. If not for me, then for yourself and your business partners.

Yes, you’d better fucking believe that Kent has been asking me to talk some sense into you for a long time. I promised him I wouldn’t tell you about his request, but I can’t keep his secret anymore.

I’m sick to fucking death with all the secrets.

Every time I meet someone new, I lie and tell them I don’t have kids, because I don’t want to explain that I do have a child, the most beautiful child you’ve ever seen, and he’s rotting in the dirt.

Can’t you see I’m drowning, and your obsession is not helping. Don’t you remember? You were supposed to keep me from going under. You promised me you would. All I had to do was say yes.

You broke your fucking promise.

The worst part is that I could probably forgive all of that, the obsession, the abandonment, the broken promises. I would wait for you to come out of this, if it weren’t for my own weakness.

I can’t bear looking at you and seeing him, in the shape of your face and the blue of your eyes. I can’t stand the constant reminder of how close I came to having everything I ever wanted.

I can’t keep blaming you for fucking me on the waterfront while our boy gasped his last breaths. I can’t keep blaming myself for lingering over that extra glass of wine at dinner.

I’ll never love anyone the way I’ve loved you. That is the one thing in this fucked up life I’m certain of. But there are so many ways to love someone. I just wish I knew how to love you in a way that would bring you back to me. If you figure that out, you know where I’ll be, waiting and wishing to say yes… again.

Yours always,

L

* * *

I sat at the table in the dining area of the house we moved into two years ago, staring at the handwritten letter for hours. I thought of tearing it up. I thought of rewriting it. I thought of changing it from a goodbye letter to a suicide note.

The truth was that none of those options made sense. I couldn’t tear it up because that wouldn’t change the many reasons I’d written it in the first place. I couldn’t rewrite it because I’d already rewritten it at least a hundred times, and I was just so fucking exhausted. And I couldn’t change it to a suicide note because I could never do that to Jack. I still loved him, even if I could no longer live with him.

Finally, with my hands trembling exactly as they had when Jack first slipped the ring onto my finger, I slid my platinum wedding band off and placed it on top of the folded letter. Jack would be back from the gym soon. It was time to leave.