After the incident at the house, my husband apologized for upsetting me.

In a text message.

He stated that he could see by how upset I was that I was obviously hurting as much as he was.

Huh.

The mask might be working too well.

He suggested that if it made me feel more comfortable, he could let me know when he needed to stop by the house.

I suggested that he not come by the house at all.

That went over about as well as can be expected.

We compromised.

From that point on, he came by the house when I was at work during the week and was out before I got home. We also agreed to meet in public from time to time to talk until he got his money together to get us to therapy.

I still refused to find us a relationship counselor myself, or pay for it on my own. (Not that I could afford it, I was in therapy myself at this point). If he wanted to save this relationship he was going to have to invest in it just like I felt I had.

With all the new parameters, I felt more comfortable at home knowing that I wouldn’t be ambushed by an onslaught of unscheduled crazy every time I walked through the door.

I like my crazy to stick to schedule whenever possible.

Apparently, my husband did not share the same view, because after a couple of weeks, things started getting weird.

Like the day I came home and couldn’t find my car.

Living in New York, I, like many other homeowners, own a car, but only on very rare occasions do I drive said car into the borough of Manhattan on weekday during rush hour.

It’s just not worth the aggravation.

So I walked home from the subway one evening, rounded the corner to my block, walked through my gate and stopped dead to realize that my car is not where I’d parked it the day before.

I’m absent minded on a good day, so I looked across the street, then down the block, then around the corner. I could feel panic rising in my throat until my phone buzzed a few times with texts and emails that I’d missed while I was on the train.

I moved your car.  

(He moved my…what? Why?)

Why?

Did you forget?  Alternate side of the street parking. Tomorrow is Thursday.

(No dumbass I didn’t forget. Why did you…)

Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.

No problem. Have a good night.

Wait. WHERE is the car?

Oh right. It’s at the other end of the block down by the church.

Thx.

I ran through the gamut of conflicting emotions. I was happy that the car was not, in fact stolen, but angry that he’d moved it without telling me. (Ok, yes, he did tell me, but not before I’d had a mild heart attack, which I realize that he had no control over.) I knew I should be grateful that he’d helped, but I was also angry at his meddling.

I didn’t want to rely on him.

We were separated.

I couldn’t count on him.

I vowed to try to be nicer.

And I was too, until I came home and I was out of seltzer water.

Um…hey, where’s the seltzer?

Oh, I finished it.

(He finished it! I’d had exactly 2 sips.)

I had noticed food in the fridge disappearing a bit faster than I thought, soap getting smaller, laundry detergent running out quicker. I just thought I was going through it and I wrote it off as me being absent -minded again.

Then one day I ran into a neighbor and a friend, (the only one on the block who actually knew that we weren’t living together anymore at the time). Jokingly, he said to me,

“You know since y’all have been separated, I see your husband now more than I did when you two were together.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your husband, he’s at the house like every day.”

I ran back across the street, up to the kitchen and threw open the fridge.

Dammit.

Apparently, when I was at work, my husband, (who was no longer living there), was apparently using my house as his base of operations. Free hi-speed WiFi, food, laundry, storage and all.

I would come home and it wasn’t just the car that had been moved, but food, clothing, mail. Tons of things would not be where I’d left them. There was always something I needed that I couldn’t find because he moved it.

It was like living with a ghost with OCD and temporary selective amnesia.

Very disturbing.

I had to ask him on more than one occasion if he’d fed the cats. There was always something that I would have to contact him about to help me locate.

After awhile, I got tired of the game, and stopped contacting him entirely.

I would usually just pour myself a glass of wine and hope by the time I’d finished the glass, that whatever I was missing would either magically reappear, or I would magically forget and just not care.

By two glasses, it was usually the latter.