...and so it goes

It's amazing how quickly a good week can be brought low.
A week that started with  family vacation that went surprisingly well has now ended with yet another shouting match.

So much of the time, I feel like I not only don't have a partner in life, but like I'm married to an opponent. It seems that the more I try to change and make things better, the more she obstructs and fights. And not just big things.

Sometimes I feel so petty and awful.

Last night, I was angry. I thought I had a good reason, but I don't know.

When we went to leave the hotel yesterday morning, I packed most of the stuff and brought it to the car. It's easier this way. I sent everyone else to the waterpark to have a good time and I got to spend some time just being busy and productive, which I enjoy. But I had packed most of the stuff in the car prior to the trip, along with the kids, unloaded it all at the hotel, also with the kids, done the little shopping necessary for food for the trip (the room came with dinner vouchers which saved a bundle), packed everything in the car after the trip, and, with the kids, unloaded the whole car at home. Then, since the kids had so many stuffed animals that they were essentially buried under a large pile of fake fur, I made the trip back the way I had come to pick up the dog, followed by her evening walk, which she was hounding me for (pun intended).

It was a long, cold walk, in temperatures as high as 8 or 9, or at least it FELT long (1.4 miles is nothing, not even a decent warm-up, on a nice day). And then I went home.

At ten-thirty on a school night, kids ought to be in bed. Instead, there's my boy, playing videos games on the TV, while his mother plays video games on her phone. My daughter, bless her, is working: packing for the mother/daughter Girl Scout camping trip they have to leave on less than 24 hours later, and putting stuff away from the trip she just got home from. I was upset: They should have been in bed, and stuff should have been put away, at least a little. And when my daughter found the clothes from vacation that she needed for camping, her mother took them down and washed them and left all the wet swim stuff sit in bags upstairs.

I was upset: I worked hard, not just to pay for the trip, which I will be doing for the next month and a half, but before, during and after the trip to make sure everyone had a good time. And now I'm going to get to clean up the mess afterwards, as well. By myself.

Then today, I went to upload pictures from my wife's camera to the computer. She has about 1100 pictures on the card. almost none of which have been seen since the day they were taken. She's good at taking them, not so much at getting them looked at. I thought I might help the process. Well, I uploaded a bunch of them, but then I was trying to get out the door for work and accidentally stuck the camera in my coat pocket. This resulted in a call at work, during which I apologized repeatedly while being berated and insulted.

So I hung up.

And refused to take any more calls.

And now, I'm sure, I'M the bad guy.

She was upset on the way home, as well. I was playing the stereo and singing along to pretty much every song, but when our song came on, I couldn't. She made a nasty remark and I didn't really respond.

If she'd have looked, she'd have seen the tears running down my face.

I've decided I'm leaving. I don't know when or where yet, but I'm looking south: Alabama or Missisppi or maybe as far as Texas. I'm tired of the cold. And the weather around here has been lousy, too. I know there are jobs available where I can work 7 days on/ 7 days off, which would allow me to get back and see the kids more than I do now. If the kids wanted to come with me, I would work hard to make that possible. My daughter is old enough to make it work right now with just us, but my son needs a few more years. I would do everything I could to make that happen, though: I would hate to separate them. I have a few ideas, but I don't know if they will work.

I'm just staring down another lengthy period of solitude: The people who I thought loved me are treating me like a pariah, those who said they were my friends have abandoned me without so much as a "Go to Hell," my family doesn't want to follow where I have to go.

I'm scared. I'm lonely.

I'm resolute.