Sometimes Its A Bitch

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Max and Scout on our last trip to LaSalle before we moved to Indiana

Sunday, January 31, 2021

God damn you, husband.

(In the first place, there is no guartanty I am going to really publish this one. But I need to write it.)

Dear Husband:

God damn you. God damn you for being a liar from the very start. God damn you for pretending to be the man I needed. For pretending to be supportive of my dreams and for figuring out how to feel like my safe place, even though apparently you never were.

God damn you for every time you told me it would be ok. For every time you promised to change. For the times it seemed like you really were changing and I fell for it. God damn you for abusing my hope and my faith in you. God damn you for taking advantage of my optimism and my love for you, my patience and my kindness and my good will and good nature.

God damn you for wasting all these years of my life. Damn you for the kids I never had and the career I abandoned because I put you first. Damn you for not being the man I always believed you could be. Damn you for not making the effort.

And while we are at it, damn you for being a rotten father for the one child we did have. Damn you for the emotional neglect and the name calling and the sly verbal abuse when I wan't around to see it. Damn you for being a rotten example of any possible virtue I tried to instill, for not teaching your son how to be a decent adult. Damn you for the problems with relationships and people he will have to struggle to overcome. Damn you for all the completely unnecessary pain you have created in this young person who you helped bring into this world. Damn you for destroying our family. Damn you for not even trying to save it.

Damn you and your stupid stroke. It is entirely your own fault, you know. You made the decision to go to sleep instead of going to the emergency room. You knew what the consequences could be. You laid your lazy self down in this bed, had a stroke, and left me to deal with the consequences. Now you are going about your life as you choose, and I am left behind in all this pain. Damn you and your laziness and your selfishness. Damn you, you son of a bitch.

And damn that bitch, too, the miserable cow. Damn her for continuing the abuse cycle left over from her own bastard of a father. Damn her for the cruelty she laid on you, because she would rather neglect and damage her own children than break that chain. Damn her for her cowardice, her laziness, and her selfish need for....for whatever it was.

Damn your father, too for letting her get away with it. And damn my parents, for the same reasons. We all have our pain, but when we become parents, we have a responsibility to get over ourselves and be the best people we can for our children. Damn all of them for not putting on their big-kid pants and being better parents. Screw them. Screw you.

And damn me, too. I let you do this to me for so long. I kept believing your lies, even when I knew I shouldn't. Damn me for all the times I didn't leave when I knew I should. For all the times I let you get the better of me. Damn me for all the screaming arguments when I didn't shield our son from the violence. All the times I focused on my own pain and misery and didn't protect him.

Monday, September 28, 2020

Crumbling foundations of house and marriage

Today really is the fist day of the rest of my life. I know that could be said about any day, but this is a big one. Things have ended or are ending and other things are about to begin.

To start with, there is a huge RV in my driveway. It arrived here yesterday from Ohio, where I found it on Craig's list just 3 weeks ago. It is going to be my and my son's new home, once my divorce is final and we can no longer stay in the house. I signed all the papers pertaining to it with my maiden name, and that in itself was horrifying.

The house itself, my history with it and and my anticipated escape from it, are a metaphor for the marriage that has played out within its walls for the past 14 years. The house, like the marriage, was a fixer-upper from the start. There were issues with both from the beginning, some obvious, some not so much. Fixing the issues of both the house and the marriage was always my project. I dreamed and planned for the futures of both the house and the marriage. I had dreams and plans for myself, too, which were intertwined with my plans for the house and the marriage. I planned garden parties and a hobby farm, more children and a small business. I planned comfortable rooms and a place to find peace. My house and my marriage were supposed to be my safe space, the place to come home to.

I approached both my home and my marriage with the absolute best of intentions. Even though I was terrified on my wedding day and on closing day, I promised myself, my husband, and the house that I would give my best to them. These were supposed to be my forever: My forever husband, and my forever home.

For years I buzzed around, trying to make things nicer: a day trip here, a throw pillow there. This week a date night, next week a garden project. I never believed there was anything I couldn't fix with a book and my own two hands. My bookshelves and my browser bookmarks list are cram-packed with ideas I tried or wanted to try. I plowed ahead, ignoring all the warning signs. The emotional neglect, the ominous scratching in the attic, the explosive arguments, the holes in the drywall. If I just worked a little harder, I could fix it. Just a little more time to get it right, just one more trip to Menards to buy one more thing. I threw time and money at my problems like there was no tomorrow.

As it turns out, both the marriage and the home were doomed, for pretty much the same reason: The foundations were bad. As hard as it is to accept, there are things I cannot fix by myself. I cannot make my husband be someone he isn't, no matter what I do. I can't love him into being a better man. No amount of dialogue or love-language speaking is going to change who he is or make him into the man I need him to be. I can't change him any more than I can fix the foundations in this house with paint. eventually I realized the only thing to do is to cut my losses and walk away.

The RV in my driveway is my new start. Now that it is here, my imminent departure from my home and my marriage are suddenly real things. My heart feels like it is being pulled from the frozen flagpole it licked so many years ago. If I pay attention, I can feel a huge raw spot on my soul like a fresh scrape or a chemical burn. The frightened child within my soul weeps for the loss. She wants to turn around and run headlong into the past, the rickety house and the rickety marriage that once seemed so safe. She does not care that the safety was only ever an illusion, it would be good enough for now. She wants to be held once more, coddled and petted like a child and told everything will be ok. Even if it's not true, she wants to believe.