The Hardest Thing

– Prologue to Life Before You –

Fate is a cruel friend.

At one time in my life, I thought I had it all. A fantastic career, fantastic friends, a wonderfully supportive family, money, and the best wife in the entire world. I was on top of the world. What never occurred to me is how easily the perfection I'd always known – or thought I had known – could crumble.

Suddenly, my job wasn't as important. My family and friends couldn't provide the comfort they once could. All of the money in the world couldn't satisfy me. And what's worse, the woman whom I had once deemed the love of my life suddenly paled in comparison to her.

The day she waltzed through the door and into my life had forever altered me.

If only I'd met her earlier in life; when we were young. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that things would have gone so differently had that happened. We would have been together. The passion, the warmth, the spark, the pure love I felt when I was with her, would have existed from the start. There wouldn't have been any sneaking around, hushed conversations, stolen glances.

I wouldn't have degraded her into becoming "the other woman," because, honestly, she deserved better.

She deserved a man who could be with her completely. Not one who was obligated to another woman and couldn't sever the ties of his life with said woman, despite the undeniable desire and need to be with the one who walked into his life just a moment too late.

Leaving her, looking into her eyes and telling the cruelest lie ever to leave my lips; that I didn't love her, had nearly killed me. I fought to hold myself together as she began to cry and beg me not to go. When she began to rant and rave about how she didn't mind sharing me as long as I was still a part of her life, I knew it was time to leave. My presence in her life was only making things worse. In the long run, I knew she'd be better off without me. I had to believe that or walking away from her would have been impossible.

I was leaving, staying true to my vows and marriage, because it was what was best for her.

I hated whatever cruel god had brought her into my life at such an inopportune time. It's amazing how you can think you have everything you could possibly dream of. How, until the one person you didn't know you've been missing comes along, you think you're complete.

I didn't even know what complete was until I met her.

Yes, it was a cruel practical joke of fate that she and I would cross paths when there was simply no hope for us to be together. I was a fairly virtuous person. I played by the rules, I went to church with my parents when I was a boy, I rarely drank or gambled, I was a lawyer that brought justice to victims of heinous crimes for Christ's sake. What could I have possibly done to deserve this? What had an angel such as herself done to deserve this?

The answer was nothing.

Sometimes life throws something at us and we are powerless to stop it. We are enticed, like a moth to the flame, we give in to the temptation. We indulge and we get burned.

Losing her was a burn that I wasn't sure would ever heal.

Still, I had to be strong for the both of us. I had to do the right thing. I had to fight not to show a single trace of emotion when I walked away from her. I had to be cruel and let her down so that someday she could find happiness again. I had to stay with the woman I pledged my life to because it was the right thing to do. Because that woman had never done anything to deserve my infidelity. We may not have had the perfect marriage, but she did her best.

We were married young. It was a marriage of convenience. We both came from prominent, well-off families and although my parents wanted me to be happy and would never force me to do something I didn't want to, marrying her seemed like the best thing for all parties involved. With our marriage, family names and fortunes would be carried on. Everything would be the way it was supposed to.

I thought it was fate.

I wish I had waited. If I'd held out a few more years, if I had just thought things through more clearly, I might have taken a completely different path. I might have been with the love of my life. The passionate, supportive, headstrong, beautiful, and sexy woman that I was completely consumed by. I might not have been trapped within a loveless marriage to a woman, who although trying her best, simply wasn't providing me with what I needed; and I suspected she felt the same way about me.

So why not get out? Why not do what I wanted, what my heart was screaming for, and leave? Take the "other woman" and run.

Because it wasn't the right thing to do. Because I couldn't get past my damn conscious and it's damn righteousness. I had made the choice to marry Tanya and in my mind, that equated to "until death do us part." I couldn't break those vows, I couldn't break my promise. I couldn't let her down. On the other hand, that's exactly what I was doing to the love of my life by lying to her and leaving.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Never in my life had so many conflicting thoughts and emotions run a muck through my brain. While one side of me, the more rational one, was telling me to stay with Tanya and let go of my boyish fantasies, the less virtuous side of me was aching for her. When the better half of me said to go home to my wife, the other was telling me that she was waiting for me and she was the one I truly wanted. I couldn't argue.

She was always on my mind.

The woman who had turned my world upside down. The woman who changed my life completely. The courageous, feisty woman who was always there when I needed her. The woman who was, as hard as it was for me to admit, everything my wife never could be. My only reason for existing.

She was like a drug to me and I was a helpless addict, hungry for another hit.

Despite the sadness and pain we had inevitably caused each other, I didn't want to even acknowledge my life before her. I wasn't sure I even had a life before her. She had brought me to life, made me see and feel things I never even knew I was capable of seeing or feeling. She filled me with hope, elation, passion, lust, hunger, love.

She was everything.. and I had chosen to walk away.

No, not chosen. I didn't really have a choice in this case. I did the only thing I could do. I left, I gave up, because it was the best thing for both of us. If we had even a glimmer of hope to move on, I had to let her go. I had to be a man about it and take responsibility for my actions. I had to shut off the voice in my head that screamed for me to go back to her and take her in my arms and kiss her and...

No. I couldn't do that anymore.

It was quite possibly the hardest thing I had ever done and would ever do in my life, but I had to leave. I had to hurt her in order to help her. I had to believe that I was doing the right thing. Otherwise, I didn't know if I would survive the separation I had willingly caused.

Fate is cruel.

Just when we think we have everything we could ever need, it taunts us with the one thing we never even knew we wanted. It makes us take a good, hard look at what we've been missing. And just when we think that tantalizing thing is within our grasp, fate snatches it out from under us. It shatters every hope we had of someday calling that beautiful thing our own.

I would never call her my own.

I would never see her again or hear her beautiful voice. Never feel her soft skin, or kiss her full lips and hear her sigh in satisfaction when I held her close to me. She was a part of my past, but without her around, I wasn't all that sure I had much of a future. I didn't have much of anything.

I had a wife and an obligation to that wife, but I didn't have happiness. There was no spark or consuming feeling; I didn't have love or spontaneity or passion and fire.

I didn't have her.