My wife and I hadn't been getting along lately.
I'd like to say it all started when I lost my job in the great tidal wave of the economic crisis in the last few years of the '00s, but that would be a lie. It really began earlier than that. Even before I started smelling a cologne that wasn't mine and she began to smile now and again for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Maybe it even began, in some small way, before we were married. I don't really know. When it's been this long, the past and present mingle together in a confusing, tangled mass that even simply cutting the whole thing in two won't solve.
I suppose five years isn't all that long to be married, or maybe it is, in this day and age. All I know is, back then at least, even with the not talking that crept into our marriage, the kind that was worse than fighting all the time, I was still old fashioned enough to believe in working at and trying to make it work.
But I'm getting off track here. This isn't so much a story of how things were, although you can't talk about the now without first figuring out how the then lead up to it. This is a story of how things came to be as they are now. Some people, maybe even a lot of people, will call me crazy. Others will say I'm an outright liar. But I promise you that everything happened exactly how I say it did, even if some events seem too fantastic to believe.
As I said, my wife and I weren't getting along and hadn't been for a long time, to the point where we'd say maybe ten words to each other the whole day, two of which were "Morning." and "Night.", three of which were "What's for supper?". It frustrated me, this not-talking, so I would do things to try and upset her, the little things that you learn really irritate your spouse after you've been married a while. Like not wiping down the counter after I made toast, or scattering the newspaper sections on the floor around my chair after I was done with them, rather than stack them neatly so she could reach and read them easily after she got up.
But what -really- ticked her off would be when I'd get up in the middle of the night, especially when it was cold, and go outside for a cigarette. In the winter, I'd come back to bed with a chilly body that'd immediately wake her up out of her warm, cozy sleep, and it'd be a good hour and a half before she could fall asleep again.
And so it was, on one particularly, near-wintery late October night, around 11:51, that I woke up, threw my coat on and went outside with a smoke and a lighter.
What happened just a few minutes later started the chain from Then to Now.
I'd like to say it all started when I lost my job in the great tidal wave of the economic crisis in the last few years of the '00s, but that would be a lie. It really began earlier than that. Even before I started smelling a cologne that wasn't mine and she began to smile now and again for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Maybe it even began, in some small way, before we were married. I don't really know. When it's been this long, the past and present mingle together in a confusing, tangled mass that even simply cutting the whole thing in two won't solve.
I suppose five years isn't all that long to be married, or maybe it is, in this day and age. All I know is, back then at least, even with the not talking that crept into our marriage, the kind that was worse than fighting all the time, I was still old fashioned enough to believe in working at and trying to make it work.
But I'm getting off track here. This isn't so much a story of how things were, although you can't talk about the now without first figuring out how the then lead up to it. This is a story of how things came to be as they are now. Some people, maybe even a lot of people, will call me crazy. Others will say I'm an outright liar. But I promise you that everything happened exactly how I say it did, even if some events seem too fantastic to believe.
As I said, my wife and I weren't getting along and hadn't been for a long time, to the point where we'd say maybe ten words to each other the whole day, two of which were "Morning." and "Night.", three of which were "What's for supper?". It frustrated me, this not-talking, so I would do things to try and upset her, the little things that you learn really irritate your spouse after you've been married a while. Like not wiping down the counter after I made toast, or scattering the newspaper sections on the floor around my chair after I was done with them, rather than stack them neatly so she could reach and read them easily after she got up.
But what -really- ticked her off would be when I'd get up in the middle of the night, especially when it was cold, and go outside for a cigarette. In the winter, I'd come back to bed with a chilly body that'd immediately wake her up out of her warm, cozy sleep, and it'd be a good hour and a half before she could fall asleep again.
And so it was, on one particularly, near-wintery late October night, around 11:51, that I woke up, threw my coat on and went outside with a smoke and a lighter.
What happened just a few minutes later started the chain from Then to Now.