My dearest, darling Michael,
I am leaving you and you know why. I love you and I am leaving you today.
It feels so good to be able to say that, so exhilarating and so powerful. I am leaving you. I feel like jumping up and down and punching the air and screaming, Yes, I am doing it! I am leaving you. After 30 years together and two beautiful children, I am leaving you. There is no reason for me to stay. I waited ten long, painful months for you to leave me until I couldn’t stand the powerless, helpless feeling anymore. Now I am leaving you. I am leaving you today, December 12.
I haven’t always felt this good. Ten months ago, I felt a terrible isolation and despair. I don’t feel that way now, but rather the reverse. I feel outrageously happy and excited. I feel fabulous.
In two minutes ago, I will ring your office to make sure you are back from Perth. I will ask you to open the email and attachment from me as soon as you are free. I will hang up and then I will press send.
In an hour you will receive by courier a small envelope with a post office box key and a storage unit key in it. Please read the attachment, my letter to you, Mike. It will help you understand what I have just done to you.
Why didn’t you tell me? I imagine you asking. I am telling you now, I reply. Please read this. Why have you written to me? I hear you ask. I have written you this letter because I just had to write it. I couldn’t NOT write it. I want and need to explain. For thirty years, you were my lover, husband and best friend. You were the person I could tell anything and everything to. When I had had an interesting day, I always thought, I must tell my dearest darling – my Mike. I still do because habits can be hard to break. I still want to tell you everything that is interesting or important to me, but I intend to let this particular habit fade with time. For now, I am writing to tell you what has happened to me over the past ten months before your unseeing eyes, condensed from some recordings with my therapist and the journal she encouraged me to write.
You’ve been seeing a therapist? Since when? I hear you ask. Yes, I have. Seeing a therapist is one of the many things I have been doing over the past ten months to help me come to this decision.
Why didn’t you just tell me, or deliver this letter yourself? I hear you ask. I couldn’t give it to you in person, darling, because I’m a coward. I don’t want to see you. I am afraid that if I see your beloved face, I might change my mind. The last time I saw you, four days ago, you hugged me, picked up your suitcase, smiled and kissed me goodbye. That was the last and best image I have of you and I don’t want to spoil it. I might have some satisfaction from seeing the expression on your face today if I speak to you or hand you a letter, but I simply can’t risk it and it won’t be worth it. Believe me, I thought about it. I thought about it a lot.
Over the past month, I have imagined a variety of different scenarios. You might be shocked, horrified and disbelieving. You might cry. You might beg, which would be very satisfying, or you might be relieved, delighted or even euphoric, which would not. Either way, I don’t want to remember you like that. I want my last image of you to be one in which you smile and kiss me goodbye.
Why did you send the keys to my office? I hear you ask. I needed to be sure you would receive them. That woman works in your office and the parcel may have become ‘mislaid’ so I am making sure you receive it by arranging for you to sign for it. Besides that, the office is the only place I can send it – don’t ask. Just read the letter. By doing it this way, I can leave you – no discussion, no negotiation, just a done deal.
I have also written it because I believe there will be tough times ahead for you, my darling, and the ideas I was taught by my therapist may help you the way they helped me.
I have loved you since I was eighteen years old. I still love you and I am forty-eight. You are, and probably always will be, the love of my life and I am finally at a place where I can say that I want you to be happy simply because, if you are happy, maybe you will leave me alone to be happy too.
I want you to know how I went from holding my breath every time you walked through the door to breathing freely and easily, no matter where you were or what you were doing. I want you to know how I went from having my happiness depend on your every move, to discovering that my happiness depends entirely on my ability to focus on who I am and what I want.
How did you find out? I hear you ask. I saw you with another woman on Wednesday, February 8 – the day my life fell apart. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, two months after my Mum died, six days after our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary and three days after we had to have lovely old Molly put down.
I saw the two of you together in the Fitzroy Gardens. I was cycling across the park to meet friends for coffee at the Pavilion Café. You were sitting under a tree about thirty meters away on a rug with a young, blonde woman. You were kissing her, holding her hands, smiling and talking. The two of you were totally engrossed in each other. I was watching lovers who knew each other well. I got off my bike for another look. It was definitely you; there was no doubt about it. To make sure, I phoned you. I saw you take out your phone, look at the screen for a second, touch it and put your phone away. The ring tone went dead at my end. You had known it was me. I stood still. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The betrayal I felt was so huge! Then, something unexpected happened. I wet my pants and not just a little; I lost the lot. My bladder simply let go.