The Last Person to Know

A few years back my ex-wife announced that she was going to move out of the house we'd lived in for eight years leaving me at home with Colin to get a hang of being a single parent. Our marriage had been having troubles with both of us finding ourselves unhappy with the way things were going. I'm not going to go into all the details about how my marriage fell apart. Millions of people divorce every year and each marriage breaking down has it's own tales of heart ache and anger. I like to think that things like that are in my past now, even though I have to deal with repercussions from the divorce all the time.

During the months between her announcement and her moving out things were difficult to say the least. I was little more than a vessel for my grief, overwhelmed by the changes in my life. I went to work and spent most of the days in my office emotionally dealing with the crisis. I clung to the memories of happier times and told myself that I would fight to make things better between us.

My friends were another story. While I was busy living in the past and trying to figure out how to get back there, they could see all the signs of what was really going on. My ex's late nights at bars with her co-worker was obviously more than just a friendship. The lies and accusations that she hurled at me in arguments were given to justify her actions to her self. Even her claim to need “time to think” wasn't believed by the support group that had come to my aid in the times of trouble. They all told me that she was cheating on me and any time I brought up the matter with my ex she assured me that she wasn't cheating on me and that she had no interest in her co-worker, to whom she is now married.

Inside my head I clung to the hope that my ex really just needed time and that everyone's suspicions were groundless. I was happy to ignore all the evidence that pointed to the fact that there was an affair and it was the reason for her moving out. When I came across a note from her to this guy I steadfastly refused to read between the lines. I was so far in denial that I was the last person defending her against the accusations of her affair. My friends felt pity for me, hanging on like I did.

It wasn't until I saw the two of them leaving her new apartment one morning that I gave up hope that things were going to end well. On that morning, after seeing them leave her place with him locking the door with his key, I made the decision that I had to get ready for a divorce and I stopped turning a blind eye to her activities.

Looking back at my actions now I wonder to myself why I didn't act sooner about the affair. I think it is because the affair was completely opposite from what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that she just needed time to think and I wanted to believe that we were going to get through the separation and come back together stronger and happier. No matter what the harsh reality of the situation was showing, I was in a fantasy world where my desire to get things back to where I wanted clouded my judgment.

I think about how I acted and thought as my marriage fell apart and find myself seeing similarities with Hillary Clinton's campaign. After last night's results were posted in North Carolina and Indiana the writing on the wall for Hillary's aspirations to be the 2008 Democratic candidate is even clearer. There is no chance for her to win the nomination and we've known this since March. Her campaign is over and now she is a figure that more and more people are feeling pity for. When will she see that her campaign is as futile as my attempts to gloss over and defend my ex's actions? Reality is reality and we all have to deal with bad news eventually.

After I dealt with the realities of my ex's infidelity I set on a course of action to make sure that I came out of the divorce with what I wanted; primary custody of my son and my house. The path was a difficult one and it tore me up to go to my lawyers office and deal with the hard realities of a divorce. Eventually the divorce was over and I ended up getting what I wanted. I made the most of a bad situation and turned the loss of my marriage into a divorce on my terms.

Hillary has to understand that the longer that she remains in a futile race the more damage she is doing to herself and the legacy of her husband as President. There is still a chance that Hillary will look at the cold facts of reality and make the decisions that she has to make, but taking that path means admitting that she was wrong, and it doesn't look like she can do that.

For the past eight years we've lived with a President who makes decisions based on what he wants to be true, and not reality. Our current President also has difficult time admitting that he was wrong, and as a nation we have suffered tremendously under this type of leadership. Hillary's decision to continue a failed campaign shows me, more clearly than anything else that she has said or done on the campaign trail, that she is not the right person to be our next President. She is too much like George W. Bush in her refusal to accept the facts about her campaign and make a good decision on the right course of action.

Barak Obama may not be your ideal cup of tea for a President but you can not argue that the man doesn't admit when he is wrong. When facing difficult decisions as President I want someone who will make a decision based on the facts and not based on what they want to be true. Sometimes that takes maturity to admit that you were wrong and to change direction and that takes courage. I hope that Hillary can show her courage to admit defeat and then become an Obama supporter. If she does that then when she runs for the President again, and I'm sure that she will, then I'll be more inclined to vote for her. Otherwise I will continue to view her as being a dangerous person to hold the presidency, another person who can not see the facts for what they are; the truth.