I Swear

I swear by all that is good and holy, that after I returned home from being absent for four days after my wife's first domestic assault, if she had met me at the door with an apology and a desire to discover a pathway to healing, I would have crumbled at her feet in full surrender.
And that moment continues to reverberate through my mind because I was willing; but I was met with silence, and anger and  an unspoken line was drawn. Drawn in a circle, a very familiar circle, a circle of control and containment.
But I would have still returned to her.
And I realize, fully, that it would have been the wrong decision. One born out of familiarity.
And here I am...her anger continues like nuclear fallout. It spreads across the land and everyone is sick. I look back into history and ask if there was any way in which I could have avoided seeing that doomsday button being pushed. And I don't know what I could have done. I feel as though I have been dancing around looking to avoid this day for years, and years, and years. I guess that I finally run out of steam.
And some cast blame as though it is unthinkable that I could or would pull up lame. And others speak to me about my happiness - and I find that thought just as foreign. As though I have let the world down because my happiness is to be placed perpetually at the bottom of the list.
And all I can hear now is, "Martyr"!!!
I swear by all that is good and holy......I never wanted any of this to happen.
Never.