Divorced Daddy - Sneak Peek

  MOM. A mixed-orientation-marriage. There were names for everything nowadays. I wasn’t sure who’d come up with this catchy new societal acronym, but MOM wasn’t something that made me feel good about anything I was going through. No, the more I thought about it, the more unrealistic it sounded. Sure I talked to people online, and when I’d ventured into human interactions with others in my situation, I’d meet people who all said it was possible, but I saw no scenario where it would work for my life. 
   I also knew the answer wasn’t running off into hiding or, even worse, some elaborate murder for hire scenario like the ones depicted on some of my wife’s favorite television shows. I suppose a part of me should be more concerned about her acting out one of those crimes, but after twenty-five years together, I knew she didn’t have it in her. Lucky for me, because I don’t think there’s a judge who would convict her and certainly not a jury of her peers.
    Tagging this situation with that label, MOM, believe it or not, made it so much worse. My mother would not be pleased. Thinking about my wife’s reaction was hard enough that I wasn’t even going to consider my mother’s. The vision of a double funeral floated across my mind, but I wasn’t sure who’d end up in the caskets: me and my wife. I figure murder-suicide. My wife and my mother. Death by shock. No one would be surprised. I am an idiot. I’m an idiot at a red light laughing at my stupid dad joke.
    The closer I got to my therapist’s office, I knew my secrets were just as close to trapping me. I had been outrunning my inner demons--truths--Mason wanted me to call them truths. He said that surrounding honesty with negative speak and connotations would only confuse things in my head more and hold me back with unnecessary guilt. What would he know about it? I liked Mason as a therapist. He was smart as hell and incredibly insightful in this situation. I even really loved him as a person—my person—but sometimes the fact that he’d always been an out gay man angered me. 
    So what if it wasn’t rational. I was in a crisis. Rational didn’t have to play a factor. I wouldn’t trade my family life, my children, or twenty-five years of memories for anything. I didn’t regret them. They suddenly just feel like an anchor around my leg. In Mason, I saw what my second act could be, and I wanted it. Getting it meant hurting the people closest to me, though, and I would literally be blowing up my past to secure my future. Yeah, sometimes I resented the hell out of Mason.
    I jogged from the parking lot into the building. My anger was more surface than  I would have liked, but there wasn’t enough drive left for me to work through my bullshit with Mason before I had to dive into the bullshit in my head.
    Of course, he was sitting at the receptionist’s desk, tsking at the clock as soon as I opened the door.
    “You’re late.”