Absenteeism

He wasn’t there. That’s right. He could not even manage to be at the house when I went to pick up my stuff. Oh, he insured that his roommate was there and could let me in. Or actually, he insured that if his roommate wasn’t there, they’d at least leave a key. But no. He “had to work late.” Which I might believe except that he was in charge of picking the day and time, and he usually knows a couple of days before when he is likely to have to work late. And he had everything all nicely stacked up in an obvious place, but not necessarily the easiest for loading, meaning he had to plan ahead enough to know that there was a decent chance he wasn’t going to be there. He did email me to let me know he “might not make it home in time,” but I didn’t get that email until after I’d already gone. It was not pleasant. Kind of like being punched in the stomach. Plus I couldn’t get one of my chairs in my car (I swear, my car fits a lot, but somehow the doors never quite open wide enough for anything mildly awkward), so I’m going to go by tonight with a friend with a bigger car and get it. I just told him to leave it on the porch, so there will be no real awkwardness and he can continue avoiding me as much as he wants. Which is mildly entertaining since HE was the one who wanted to stay friends and HE is the one who is pretty much killing any chance of that ever happening.

It has helped me to start feeling closure, though. Not as much maybe as if I’d actually seen him and seen how seeing him made me feel, but at the very least it has reminded me of all the times he put his job ahead of me. And I get that his job is important. But when he could never freaking tell them, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that at this time because I have other commitments,” it got old. It got old fast. Like when he couldn’t take me to the doctor’s office because he had to go to a meeting on his day off which he told me like the day before and I had to completely rearrange my plans to figure out how to get there. Or how when I did ask him to do something that was insanely important to me and so not optional and his response was, “I don’t know if I can miss work then.” Never mind that he managed to miss work for other people, like family or friends. Or how we could never make any kind of real plans, because “what if.” It made me feel pretty crappy and unimportant, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we did get married and have kids whether or not he would ever be there for them. I mean, who wants to have to see their kids’ faces fall when yet again Daddy can’t be there for their performance or game or whatnot because he has to work late AS ALWAYS?