I never dreamed he would reach out after our for want of a better explanation ambushing him, but Marshall proved me wrong, he messaged every day after ten to make sure I was okay, never answered if he was okay just seemingly content to know if I was doing alright and then last night an invite back to his house. In truth I could have cried I was that desperate to get out of my house and see another human being.
“Are you in love with him?” I let his question linger in the air between us, too comfortable and peaceful to delve so deeply into my feelings.
Lying here naked in Marshall’s arms in his bed is an entirely new mood and I feel warm and safe, not that I’m not safe in my day to day life but this feels like I’m enveloped in Marshall armour and I like it.
His fingers trail softly up and down my spine as I consider my answer carefully, he deserves the truth but I’m not sure how to articulate it to him.
“That’s a difficult question to answer” I whisper, he sighs, his chest moving me up and down slowly.
“It’s not really Jasmin, it’s a simple yes or no”
I should be angry with that comment but he’s never been in my position, he wants to know my feelings and I want to hide them from him, I don’t want him to think I’m a bad person.
It really is a complicated question that I deal with on a daily basis, it’s hard to explain how physically and mentally exhausted I am without it making me sound like the most selfish human being in the entire universe.
How my feelings swung back and forth in those early days after the accident, they changed with the wind just like Jack’s moods but ultimately I knew what the truth of that question was now and it was almost too much to bare some days.
“I’m not in love with my husband any more” I state softly, tears pricking at my eyes because admitting it to someone for the first time hurts my heart so badly.
“Why?”
“Because he isn’t the man I fell in love with any more, he looks like him but my Jack is long gone”
“So because he’s paralysed, you don’t think he’s the same person any more?” His statement wounds me and the safe protected feeling flees my body at a thousand miles an hour, I get that I’m not making myself clear but I get the feeling he also deliberately misinterpreted my words.
“No, not that” my voice is firm desperately trying to get him to understand me but I don’t fully understand myself so there’s that to complicate all of this shit too.
“I meant his personality, his soul if you like is changed and no I don’t blame him at all because what happened to him is so monstrous that I can barely believe its real some days. To be a man so alive and full of life and now he’s trapped, I don’t blame him for being mean, for hating the hand that life dealt us. I fucking hate it too” I’m trying so hard not to get angry or cry, I tried to leave those emotions behind me a long time ago.
“But you were hurt too, have you changed?”
My laugh is a wry one “I have, I’m emotionally harder. I gave up my career and things that I loved to care for him and I hated it and I carry the guilt of being so selfish but I got off lightly don’t you think, yes I’m scarred, but I can feel, walk and run. I could do everything I enjoyed doing before. I can live my life as normal, Jack has none of that, so please don’t feel anger towards him if he’s mean to me, he’s just trying to cope” I don’t want to get into this now just when I was feeling so relaxed, the big black cloud looms over me once more.
“To be clear Marshall, I love him very much just not ‘in love’ with him any more, I won’t leave him either” I look up at him, he’s looking down at me with a frown on his sexy face, my fingers find themselves idly scratching through his scruff of a beard gently, trying to stop this line of conversation.
He’s trying hard to wrap his head around this and I do understand it must be hard for him.
