... ‘So, I’m still right here where she left me
Along with all the other things
she don’t care about anymore.
Mmmm, like that picture from our honeymoon
that night in Frisco Bay
She said, give it away
Well, I can’t give it away
And that big four-poster king-size bed
where all our love was made
She said, give it away
Well, I can’t give it away.’

I’ve got a furnished house, a diamond ring and a lonely broken heart full of love and I can’t even give it away. How did this happen to me? I really don’t know.

It was so beautiful for almost eight years and then one day she stormed around the house yelling about giving everything away because she doesn’t want anything to remind her of me.

My wife was leaving me, why? Well according to her as we sat calmly at the kitchen table that she had only been in lust with me not love. About six months ago she woke up one morning and realized that she no longer loved me and just didn’t want to be with me any longer. Since then, day by day she grew to like me less and less until it turned to almost downright hate. She could no longer live like that so the only answer was divorce. She was leaving me and this house and didn’t want any reminders of what was. She needed a clean break and wanted nothing from me except half of our meager savings and the equity in the house.

I tried to explain that the equity wasn’t much and the savings were only about $7,000 and the equity would be much less than that. “All told you will only get about that much if you’re lucky. Is that all you want is money?” I asked.

She responded by, “No, I just want enough to leave here and nothing else. Everything else you can keep or give it away I don’t care what you do with it.”

Well, all that went on seventeen months ago. I am slowly getting better but there are days when I am wandering around the house alone that I get all balled up and weepy in remembering certain times when I really thought that we were happy. I guess I know now that it was just me that was happy and not both of us.

My name is Jerome Jason Jackson or JJ to just about everyone except my boss when he is pissed at me and then he calls me by all three names. He knows all my name because he and I started school together and his family was much more well off than mine and he got to go to college. Me not so much, I had to work to help support my family once my dad was killed in a drunk driving accident when I was just 17. My mother worked at a low paying job as a clerk at the grocery store near us. Dad’s insurance paid off the house and a couple of bills but that was it. So as soon as I could I found employment first working after school at the same grocery store my mom worked at. Then I found work at Greg Harding’s dad’s factory. I started as a lowly mailroom flunky but with hard work and ingenuity, I worked my way up to a mid-level supervisor over the past 12 years. So now at age 30, I sit with a small starter house that is half paid off and an eight-year marriage and nothing to show for it. I have no wife I have no one to share my life with and I just can’t understand what I did to change into this being that no one loves except my family.