Everything had crumbled around me. Now it was time to rebuild. Starting with myself.
I did that by finally coming clean with Dahlia.
I didn’t do it back in college. When I broke up with her, I told her it was for a reason that wasn’t true to try to soften the blow.
If she saw through my lie, she didn’t say.
I loved her and didn’t want to hurt her, but I did anyway. And I continued to hurt her throughout our marriage, even though it wasn’t my intent. She was an excellent mother and a decent wife.
It was the old adage: It’s not you, it’s me.
I tried to fight the urges, the ones I had buried deep and wanted to forget. But I couldn’t. All it did was eat at me and make me unhappy. My being miserable affected my whole family.
When I saw how it was affecting my children, I knew something had to change. And it had to start with me.
I would not destroy their lives because I had destroyed my own. I owed them that much. I knew they would be upset with me—possibly even hate me—for leaving and of course, they were. I was to blame and I accepted that.
It started a little over a year after we married. A little over a year after I graduated from Duquesne. A little over a year from when I walked away from Ronan. From when I walked away from who and what I was, trying to convince myself I was wrong with my discovery, when deep down I knew I was right.
I ignored it until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
That led me to late night random hookups with nameless men.
In sketchy motels, dark parks and filthy bathroom stalls.
Quick, dirty and anonymous.
But I beat myself up after every time. Did that make me stop? No.
I had an unreachable itch I kept scratching.
Worse, not once did I find real relief. It was a desperate attempt to remember who I lost. What I lost.
Who I walked away from.
A desperate attempt to recapture what I missed and who.
It failed every time.
But I kept trying. If nothing else, to punish myself. To prove I had made a mistake, chosen the wrong path.
I convinced myself that meeting these random men in random locations was nothing. That I was hurting no one but myself.
I was wrong.
I hurt Dahlia.
I hurt my kids.
I destroyed my family by not being true to them or myself.
No matter what, I loved my children. They were my heart and soul, and I would never regret having them.
However, I regret what I did to them. To us. To my family.
To the woman who bore my children. Who stood by my side for years even though she sensed something was off.
There came a point I had to come clean.
It was either that or jump off a bridge and take my secret to my grave.
But I owed my children better than that. Even if it took them a while to forgive me. Eventually they would when they were older when I could explain and they’d be mature enough to understand.
It was difficult to break up with Dahlia in college. It was even more difficult to do it over twelve years later when I had so much more to lose.
We sent the kids to her parents and I flayed myself open.
I could see it on her face. She already knew.
Of course she did. She knew back when we were at Duquesne. She ignored it then. She pretended the truth was a lie.
But I wouldn’t let her ignore it now. No matter what she said. No matter what she did.
“Tate, don’t do this,” was the first thing she said when I sat her down. Her face was pale, her throat rolled when she swallowed.
“I think… No, I know… I’m gay. I’ve always been gay. I never wanted to admit it out loud. I saw how others were treated. I didn’t want that. I thought I might outgrow those feelings, those urges. I convinced myself I was experimenting, even though I knew I was lying to myself. I was wrong. And I’m tired of living a lie. I’m tired of lying to myself. To you. To the kids. To…” I sucked in a breath, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to soften the blow. A hit she had to know might be coming for years and exactly why.
Silence filled the space across the living room where she sat on one couch and I sat on another.
Finally she shook her head, once again ignoring what was clearly in front of her. The whole reason why it made it easy to continue to live the lie. “You’re not gay.”
“Dahlia…”
“No, Tate! Gay men don’t have sex with women.”
She was so, so wrong.
“At most you’re bi. You always acted like you enjoyed sex with me.”