Stunned

Between when he came back in late October and Christmas when he left again, I didn't write. School became increasingly challenging and things between Knight and I were on perpetual wobble. I was worried I had made another mistake in allowing him back into my life and MY KIDS. He still wasn't doing to much in terms of decision making and executing which imbued much trust in me and I was turning into a clingy, batshit crazy mess.  It came to a head the day before Christmas Eve.

I waited at a restaurant for him to pick me up after talking to his soon to be ex-wife. An hour passed, then another, then another.  I was starting to wonder what was keeping him when I got his text:

"I can't do this anymore."

I heard a groan but it didn't sound like it came from me.
I stood up and quickly walked out front.
He had my truck.
It looked like he was leaving me.
Panic.
Questions.
Disbelief.
Shock.

I didn't really believe I was even standing there in the dark trying to read my phone through a blur of tears.

I didn't until a deputy passing by mistook me for drunk or crazy and detained me in the parking lot.
I didn't know where my car was.
I was madly trying to reach Layne.
I was drowning in a dark sea of questions which threatened to swallow me up.
All I knew was that, one minute I was sitting in a restaurant/bar waiting for Christmas to officially begin and the next one, he was leaving me with a text message,
saying he couldn't do it anymore
and that he didn't want me to call him or contact him.

The deputy was annoyed at my lack of ability to articulate what was going on and my attention paid to the phone in my hand instead of him, but the world was swirling around and I couldn't sense where I began or ended. More logically, I knew the questions the deputy was pelting me with could only be answered if I could get some answers from Layne, who made it clear he wasn't going to give me any.

The more this deputy pressed me for information, the more confused I became until I was sitting back in his bright lights and waiting for him to tell me what he was going to do with me. I was humiliated...coupled now with the pain and confusion was this abject fear and shame of being detained and seen as a threat to the public.  I tried one last time to contact Layne, who texted me again to please not bother him.  My response to him was that I didn't think that would be a problem since it looked like I was going to jail.

A few minutes later he was on the scene and this ass of a deputy was escorting me to his truck for a courtesy ride home, if I would be so kind as to allow the "gentleman" ie Layne, to drive my vehicle home. I nodded and shrank into my seat so far beyond humiliated and scourged that I don't remember the ride home until we were on the over pass and making a turn at the base of it. It was then that I noticed that Layne's wife was ahead and in the caravan as well. I just shook my head in the disbelief I thought I had run out of a few miles earlier up the road.

You should never, ever say: "Well, it could be worse."

In a few hours I had gone from planning Christmas to standing in my yard looking at Knight's blank face lit by with a thousand Christmas lights against a night sky, before he handed me my keys and walked away.