Here as in Maine. Here as in this weird old "Inn" that looks like it's seen better days. Here as in... staring down divorce shortly after my 35th birthday.
Laura and I haven't completely thrown in the towel yet, but things aren't looking good. We've been together for ten years and I don't know how else to put it but it simply feels like the relationship has... run out of gas. We've become strangers to each other. We seem to be happier apart. We fight over really stupid things and just walk around pissed off. I think the resentment has just built and built because of certain decisions that I made, but if she can't understand where I was coming from with them, then I don't think it was meant to be. We're several years into this situation and nothing's going to change, besides getting worse.
Someone wise once said if you do what you always do you always get what you've always gotten.
When Laura met me, I was finishing law school. I was clean cut, upwardly mobile, and energetic. She was a budding entrepreneur, and, same as she is today, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. We had something of a tempestuous dating period, broke up, got back together, got married, and decided to try to find our way together.
The usual sticking points -- where to live, whether to have kids -- troubled us, but there was always love. But I didn't feel right in my life. 80-hour weeks were killing me, I cracked. I quit my job and became a rideshare driver while I tried to figure out what was next.
She didn't approve. That makes it sounds like she's some kind of harpy, but she had a point. We had a certain standard of living and I had pledged to support her business, which was now reasonably successful and self-sustaining but not "lucrative." She chided me for putting in long days on the road making less money than my long days at the desk had.
Then the pandemic hit. You can fill in the rest.
We decided to take this trip... I'm not sure why. Either as a last ditch effort to see what we love about each other, or as a big send-off before we file. I'm trying to be charming and sweet, and take her out to dinner, go dancing, see the beach, whatever she wants to do. Let's leave Marc and Laura's problems back in Boston. There's a celebratory air here, with people hoping for the first "real" summer in this sleepy resort town in years. Let's try to catch it.
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