Eggshells

The thing that I have been threatened with and feared for so many years has finally happened, though perhaps not in the way I thought it would. After 34 years, instead of leaving me in a fit of drunken anger or just plain cruelty, my husband is leaving me because he doesn't want to hurt me anymore. And that is a true thing, but it is also true that, in a lot of ways, I think it was easier for him to leave than to actually try and change or be better. He's refused to try therapy or counselling or anything like that and 

I have stayed because I love him. I have stayed, at times, because I had no choice--literally no choice: stuck in another country with nowhere to return to and no help and a child. I have stayed because there were also good times and because there was always hope and glimmers of the man that I loved. 

I am not perfect either. Though I had tried many times to tell him, I should have tried harder, been more honest instead of scared. Now it's too late.

I'll write more another time. I'm just so exhausted.