Broken Promises

**Author's Note**

This is my first attempt at nonerotic writing. In my endeavor to become a better writer, I am expanding my horizons. I welcome any constructive criticism and comments. Please vote and if you are so inclined, leave public comment. Thanks.

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The tears are unstoppable. Only they decide when they will reappear and to what extent. I sit on my own in a near-empty house, willing myself to remain calm. Then my inner voice reminds me that I stayed calm last time. And nothing came of it. My hurt was shrugged off an unfeeling shoulder and I was brushed aside in a consciousness. My feelings became the laughing stock of some section of mind that never breaks the surface.

This time, I tell myself, I will react differently. But I am unsure of how I will do it. If I am immediately confrontational, he will start out defensive. If I am calm like last time, he will ignore my feelings. If I am crying when he walks through the door, I will be regarded as a simpering fool. In all scenarios I play in my head, I can never win. Somehow, I will become the bad guy in the story, and I will feel the guilt that he so willingly passes off onto my shoulders. I will be the affected, the afflicted. And he will go about his days without so much as a backward glance to what has transpired between us.

Where do I draw the line? Where do I give up and find completion somewhere else? When do I say enough is enough and walk away, bleeding my heart through tear ducts that feel as though they will never be dry again? Where is my breaking point?

I fear that I will subject myself to too many lies, too many heartbreaks before I can allow myself to admit failure. I fear that I may never understand that love isn't really enough. That sometimes, some people cannot commit themselves to one person completely. There will always be something else, lingering like the stink of death, to keep one person always a little more distant. A little less willing to give their whole heart.

It is as though I have been slapped with a concrete column, jerked out of its supportive place at the front of a majestic plantation. As the awning collapses, so do the supports in my soul. The trust and faith that I forced upon myself. The hope that I so foolishly have continued to foster, only to watch it collapse and be rebuilt upon a shaky foundation again and again. I wonder how long it will be before I fall to empty promises and falsehoods again. I wonder if I will ever learn that I cannot trust my heart. I wonder why I do not listen to the instincts calling from the back of my mind.

I cannot pause to think, or I will be afraid of the thoughts that creep up on me. I feel myself crumbling at the thoughts of what I would want to take with me if I left. I do not want to think of leaving. I cannot understand why I still want this to work, but understanding is apparently not necessary. I don't know how much more I can give. I feel as though somehow, by my not being the perfect housewife, I have brought this pain and sorrow upon myself. As if maybe he wouldn't lie to me if I would just clean the kitchen more often, if I would simply be a better maid. And yet, the best I can give him is all that I have, and I have given more than I ever believed was possible. I am not perfect, nor do I claim to be. I know I should be more to him. After all, I do stay home with the baby while he goes to work everyday. Still, I am unable to be the person I want to be for him. And the more I try to be, the worse I become.

I hear the door and my stomach jumps. My mind races as I go through the list of things I want to scream at him and cry over. And I can't do anything but cry. He gives me another excuse that I want to believe. Another excuse that my heart breaks over. Because the promises he has made, the promises he has broken, have all become one. And I don't know what other promises he will break before the end.

At length, we talk and come to another compromise. A compromise similar to ones we have come to and failed at before. This one should be easier, though. Hope shines through pinholes that this one is a smaller step and therefore one that he can take without feeling as if he is losing himself. We somehow do not degrade into a shouting match, one with slammed doors and threats of leaving. We are learning through all of this, somehow. We are learning to talk and cry like lovers instead of enemies. My heart still hurts, and bleeds like a tiny crack in a shattered vase that was glued together by a concentrating child. But it is better than it was. And I see that he truly does not want to hurt me, although he cannot help himself at times.

We calm down and change the subject, having come to an acceptable stopping point. We are both satisfied that we can successfully change something this small but with such destructive capability. We do not have make-up sex, but instead cuddle up next to each other in a cocoon of such love and safety that it is almost hard to believe we were both crying helpless tears minutes ago. And we fall into a comforting sleep, waking with our arms still wrapped around each other and still as totally in love as we were the day we married. For a fleeting moment I ponder how we can still love so passionately, and then I understand that our love is one that defies description and can only be understood by observation. I smile sleepily, burrow into the safety of his strong arms, and doze in perfect contentment.