January 2008

Realizing you really meant nothing…it hurts….a lot. January 11, 2008

I’m hurting, and I can’t even put it into words why, so I’m going to ramble along until it falls out. If you feel like rambling along with me, we shall press on, but this may be a long journey, so you may want to bail now..

So…on Tuesday morning at 10:00 I received a text that said “Tell my girls i love them and i am sorry. tell them i was a good dad. tell them goodbye 4 me!” from Ross. That moment was something I will never forget as long as I live; all I could think was “please don’t let it be too late!” Since that text, several things have conspired, and I am left with more information than I should possess that I now have to process and figure out

The honest truth

My husband did not love me. For a long, long time. And I didn’t know. Because he kept saying he did, and he kept acting like he did. And it hurts more than anything. It doesn’t hurt because I want him back; I have come to realize that the man I was married to is dead. The person who he is today is somebody I don’t even recognize. It hurts because I trusted him with my everything; he knew everything about me. I realize now that our marriage wasn’t the awesome thing I thought it was, but I really believe that we did love eachother. Or at least I believe I loved him. He told me last summer that he had only truly loved me the first year of our marriage and the years our girls were born. That’s three of the nine years we were married. That’s six years he didn’t love me and I loved him. Six years I trusted him and he deceived me. That hurts

It makes me think…I don’t know what love is. I wouldn’t know it if I saw it. And it makes me so, so scared to try it, because if the one person in the world who I trusted and believed in more than anyone else was lying to me the entire time, then how the hell do I know who to trust? How do I know? Why would I let myself be destroyed again? Does everyone lie? Am I such a horrible person, am I so incredibly terrible, that it was no problem to lie to me? I know I’m not perfect; I’m far from it. I’m messy and I’m fat and I’m not particularly pretty, but does that mean that I deserved this? And is the fact that he hadn’t loved me for years justification enough for him moving .. he got rid of me? Is that right

I know that my friends would tell me it’s not, and that everything I’ve written isn’t true. And yet, if I look at it and use the past to define the present, then it is true. Because my past obviously demonstrates the fact that anyone could lie and anyone could use you and anyone could rip you apart and throw you away without looking back. Because he didn’t look back. He seriously didn’t love me. And that is not a lie; trust me; because if it was a lie I would not have been treated as if I didn’t exist after he left (except for the times when he did have to acknowledge my presence, which he usually did by screaming at me and demeaning me). And am I so invaluable that his family, the family I knew for 10 1/2 years, the only family I ever really felt a part of, could toss me out like an old sock? Because that’s how it feels; his mother is pissed off that I called 911 after that text, and she acts as if what he did was fine because he was so miserable. His father? I don’t know how he feels, but his silence speaks volumes. His aunts and uncles and cousins? A couple sent Christmas cards, but everyone else appears to believe that I am a toxic b***. I must not be a very nice person for so many people to think nothing of throwing me away like a piece of trash

I know this sounds horribly depressing, and I’m sorry…I am overwhelmed with the fact that it was all a lie. A total and complete lie. I do not know how to accept that. And I know that it’s probably not this bad at all, but I’m feeling it right now, and that makes it real to me. I’m not done thinking this through, but am off to supper with Dawn, so it’ll have to do for now. More later!

tired mumblings January 12, 2008

So…here I am…27 years old, and realizing that the last 10.5 years of my life were pretty much all a lie. How do you just let that go? I know I have to, because if I don’t it will destroy me, but seriously…do you know what I gave up to marry him? I had one foot in the door at the Air Force Academy-Princeton was trying to recruit me-I had huge plans for my life, and I walked away from all of it because I fell in love

It’s not that good things didn’t happen during that time; I had two amazing daughters, became a teacher, and got to spend time with my best friend (or so I thought). And there lies the problem…I thought he was my best friend, I thought he was the love of my life, and I thought he was as crazy for me as I was for him, and I was wrong. So…it was all a lie. Dawn says that I’m wrong; she says that it was real for me, because I was there living it and I was sincere. She says that I was not living a lie; he was. He was lying to me, his daughters, his family, our friends, the world. I was truly living what I thought was a great life. Granted, I now know that it wasn’t as great as I led myself to believe. I see now that I let myself be defined by him; it’s been wonderful getting to know ME

Maybe that is worth 10.5 years…me…some people go their whole lives without knowing themselves, without finding out what they’re made of or how amazing the majority of people really are. I have gotten to do all of those things. And…I got Madeline and Belle; they are worth a lifetime all on their own

It’s still hard to wrap my brain around the lies, but I’ll get there; I just need to make sure I keep myself healthy for the girls while I’m getting there, because depressed mommy=not much fun

As for trusting again…I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get there…guess we’ll see

I know this is kind of rambly an doesn’t make a lot of sense, but i am exhausted!! Haven’t been sleeping much lately…maybe i’ll get caught up someday! Maybe I’ll redo this one tomorrow when i’m awake…

Life Sucks; God Must Have It In For Me January 25, 2008

So, there once was this girl, and sometimes life was tough for her but if one looked at the big picture, one would see that it wasn’t that horrible. This girl was born to very young and naive parents who probably shouldn’t have been parents. As she grew up, they loved her the best they could, but the fighting and arguing were sometimes overwhelming. This girl, who would always be an only child, was often left to her own devices, which lead her to make friends with some of the best companions one could ever have: books. They, along with her ragged pink teddy bear and her deer blankie, would be the only reliable companions she would ever have. The bear and the blankie were there for everything; for the shouting, and the spanking, and eventually the beating, for the misplaced blame, the neglect, and the verbal abuse. They were like sentinels, always there to catch the tears and feel the pain. One day the girl discovered that the only person she could truly count on was herself, so she set her sights high and set about pursuing her dreams. If only she had continued on that path of self-reliance, she may have spared herself much pain and embarrassment. But…she chose love instead, something that had always failed her, and would again given time

Putting one’s trust in another person will always fail; this I have learned, a bitter lesson I despise. For I am this girl, this girl who is once again left with nothing but myself to rely on. Of course, I got to live in a bubble for ten years, years in which I felt love and happiness and joy, until one day the bubble was burst and the lies were exposed. For there were lies…years of lies, years of being used, years wasted on a person who thought so little of me that he had no problem tearing me apart piece by piece

His leaving, it was horrible, but I understood; I had been a horrible wife. I had been too busy, too messy, not pretty enough, a terrible mother, and I always had my head buried in a book. I had not praised my husband enough, nor had I spent enough time with him. I took it all; he convinced me that I was the reason my marriage was ending. It was horrible, but it would pale in comparison to the horrors I would later encounter

So here I was, abandoned by my best friend. Sure, I had lived here for a full year, but I had made my life my husband and my children. Anyone who is a wife and parent knows that these responsibilities leave little time for other socializing, especially when your husband is a high and mighty police officer. I had…nobody. Sure, there was a best friend who lived five hours away, and another friend who had just moved six hours away, but I had nobody here to help me pick up these pieces. I made a rogue decision: I would confide in somebody, ask somebody for help, but who? The answer came when I went to church for the first time in months: my pastor’s wife, whom I also work with, and another woman I work with who also went to my church. These two women saved my life, and I am absolutely serious about that

From the realization that he had cheated, to the panic of discovering that, less than two weeks after he moved out, he was taking my children to that woman’s house, to the point less than a month later when he moved in with her and filed for divorce. And the pain…the pain of hearing him say that he hadn’t even loved me for half the time we had been married, and that he knew that we could work it out but he didn’t want to. How does one handle this? The betrayal was heavy on my heart. It was at this point that I took action; I got an apartment and moved out of the house with its malfunctioning air conditioner and old storm windows that wouldn’t even open, and experienced loss yet again as I had to give up my beautiful dog to him

Then there were all of the other horrors; his leaving was mild compared to the screaming and shouting and mean things he said in an effort to tear me down. The things he must have told his family about me, things that I still do not know, but that must have been horrible since most of them, most of the people who were the only real family I ever really knew and loved, do not speak to me. There were the things he told my children about me and about his life, things that they saw that took away their innocence, and the things they brought back and told me, yet another way of tearing me down. The baby was a breaking point for me; while we were still married, he knowingly and purposefully got her pregnant. The realization that I had been wadded up, tossed out, and replaced like a piece of trash was too much, and it truly broke me. Life did not seem worth it any more. If it weren’t for my daughters I would not be here, and if it weren’t for my friends I wouldn’t have recovered from the ensuing depression

Finally, the divorce was final, less than 5 months from the point when I realized anything was wrong. I was left with myself, broken, but still here, and my girls. But the suffering was not over. In the months following the divorce I have been yelled at, and ignored, and I have seen my children suffering. I have seen his life fall apart as he learned the lesson of life; trust noone. Of course, he hasn’t really learned it, because he’s still chasing her. But it wasn’t her he asked for help from when he thought he couldn’t go on; it was me. I do not want it to be me. I want him to leave me alone, and I want him to either step up with his daughters or get the hell out of the way

I am out of family sick days, with four months left in the school year. I am broke from doctor’s visits and prescriptions due to a month’s worth of illness in our home. I am avoiding filling out the bankruptcy papers because it is too too humiliating, and yet I have no choice. I have bill collectors calling on bills I cannot pay, and an exhusband who is continually behind on child support and who has defaulted on things he agreed to pay, leaving me as the target for even more collections. I am not a dishonest person; I have always paid my bills on time, and yet here I am, unable to do it on my salary, a salary that is barely covering us, but that is too great to qualify me for any assistance whatsoever. This is the most embarrassing thing that is happening to me. I do not even want to pay bills or balance the checkbook, because I do not want to see the truth looking at me in black and white

I have two girls who are sick, one of whom just got out of the hospital on Tuesday, who must be confused because their father hasn’t even called to check on them a single time. He is too wrapped up in his life, shocked that the woman he loved so much could have dropped him. He thinks our pain is equivalent, but I have ten years worth of memories to go with that pain

I am depressed. I have forgotten to take my meds all week, don’t even know where they are, and I am sick and I am tired but won’t go to sleep. I do not know why. My life sucks, and nobody is helping me. Why isn’t anyone helping me? Why isn’t God stopping all this misery?