Doing a little reflection as usual. I figure I'd better use the time I have left before going back to work to contemplate as much as I can while my mind is relatively clear. Of course thinking about life has a tendency to provoke dreams, most of which I don't care for and others which are just weird to me.
So funny sometimes to watch TV or movies and see how marriage and divorce are handled. I mean once upon a time you would never even contemplate divorce. If you were in an unhappy marriage you were stuck. Makes me wonder how lightly we take marriage now. When I got married it was a time when the divorce rate was actually very high. Mainly because of the no-fault divorce and also because it was becoming more acceptable to be divorced. The stigma was lesser than it had been in the past. Although I was only 18 when I got married I took it VERY seriously. I wanted to be married, I wanted to devote my life to my husband. Of course at that time I didn't realize that I was not only devoting my life to him but I was giving up myself AND my life to him. Even now I can't seem to get rid of him in my head. The abuse that I suffered at his hands has stayed with me even all of these years after we divorced. The fact that we had children together binds us. Although, thankfully, I have no more contact with him. Except for the fact that he still owes almost $3,000.00 in back child support that I will most certainly never get. He won't work unless it's under the table so he will never be forced to pay it. This coming from a man who swore never to "fuck me over". Ha!
To talk about divorce means to go into the end of my marriage. There were a couple of deal breakers for me when it came to marriage. One was infidelity and the other was drug or alcohol abuse. ALL of these he was guilty of. I tried to ride it out, which I did for a time....until one night many years ago when he decided to purge himself of all of his guilt by puking his secret life all over me. It was a night of betrayal and pain of which I still have not recovered. The truth of the matter is that I endured abuse at his hands, both physical, emotional and then some, and for some reason I thought that it would make me immune to all of this. I mean I did anything and everything he wanted for the most part. Still it was never enough, I realized years later that it was not my fault. What he wanted could never be given to him by another. He was unhappy with himself and always expecting others to fix his life, to make him perfect and happy. You can't ever make a person happy if they are not happy with themselves first. In any case. I found out in one night...that inevitably stretched out into the following day...all of the things he had done during our marriage that I had not known. ALL of the cheating, some with people I knew, and all of the times I had suspected and he had slapped me down and tortured me with for YEARS, I had been right about all along but had been made to feel like a piece of crap for even thinking these things. Oh yeah, I found out how my life had been at risk thanks to him not using protection...a couple of these liasons were with hookers. The latest one was with a 19 year old employee of ours. A girl that he had tried to get me to fire at one point, while he was sleeping with her I might add. It was a little game with him, a sick and twisted game. There isn't enough blog space to type all of the humiliating things he did to me, positions he put me in. All of this for his amusement.
To learn in one night that I was betrayed by my husband for years, betrayed by people I knew as well, and knowing that I had defended him when there were times that others suspected. Or when things actually happened and he lied about them to me. One of the women he cheated with had a husband who told me that I had a problem and of course I thought that HE was the one who had a problem because his wife had come on to my husband but he had refused her. Later he would bed her and claim it was to get her to leave him alone, he blamed it on peer pressure...LoL... The woman was so devastated by this original rejection that she tried to kill herself. My husband had to go to the hospital because he was her supervisor in a top secret security position in the military. He had to stay there because she was so out of it that she was spouting stuff that she was claiming was military secrets. All the while I stayed at home and then stuck by my husband when he was called in by his superiors for this "incident".
To find out that I was a fool for YEARS was probably one of the worst things that could have happened to me. To be betrayed by my husband and at least one person whom I considered to be a friend was more than I could bear. To have been humiliated and degraded by someone whom I loved and devoted all of my adult life to at that point....it was the worse betrayal I have ever endured in my life and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. I trusted him with my life and my happiness. I gave him everything I had and then some. I wanted a marriage and a family.
I did not take the decision to divorce lightly. I tried to save the marriage even before I found out all of this stuff. But the thing is that when you don't have all of the information it is hard to succeed. Even after all of this I still didn't give up right away, but I will say that it was the last straw for me. I did not take divorce lightly. We had 4 children together for one thing. I also had spent all of my adult life with him so I didn't want to throw away all of those years. But in the end I had already done that by staying married to him when I knew that I was not happy nor was I being treated the way I deserved to be treated. Of course when you have low self esteem you think you ARE being treated the way you deserve to be. Especially when you are with someone who continually makes you feel as though you are lucky to be with them and that no one else would want you.
So in the end, divorce was the only option and it was the right one. I wish I had done it sooner, but if I did then I would never have had all of my children so regret can only go so far. I learned a lot from my marriage and divorce. The problem is that I am damaged in a way that I don't think can ever be repaired. I will never blindly trust in that way again. I gave away my love and trust to someone who deserved neither. Now I have none left to give. I tried once again, not marriage but love, and I got smacked by that as well. I know that I probably need to get a different attitude, just for self-preservation.
When I was going through my divorce I lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone's business. It was especially painful there as everyone knew the circumstances (at least some of them) and everyone observed his crazy behavior. The heartening part was I was told by a good friend, who was the director at my daughter's preschool, that I was known around town as the rock. She said that so many people admired me for being so strong, being there for my kids, and taking over the business that my husband and I owned. All of this with a smile on my face and pain in my heart. It was nice to hear because it was better than the pity I was sure people felt towards me. Believe me, when Elin Woods and Sandra Bullock were going through their public break-ups I felt as though I understood more than the average woman about it. Only because living in a small town with the most public business made me a small town pseudo-celebrity at the time. Everyone knew me even if I didn't know them. To have such a public airing of what should be private was something that was extremely painful. I truly understood much of what they were going through, besides the obvious betrayal, on a smaller scale. It is tough enough to go through this kind of thing without having all of the gossip surrounding it. So my hats off to these ladies who have to go through this stuff on a much larger stage. I feel for them because I know a tenth of what it is like and it SUCKS!
Divorce is complicated and should never be taken lightly. Marriage is a commitment that every couple should strive to save. But sometimes no matter how committed you are your partner might not be. If I could give ANYONE a piece of advice when it comes to marriage, or life in general, it would be to trust your instincts. It could save you a world of pain later on. If I would have maybe I'd be in a better place right now....
Man, if it isn't always something! Kick me when I'm down why dontcha. I am just trying to make it to go back to work and it seems like there is a conspiracy to make me crazy....or is that keep me crazy? It just seems like everything just keeps going wrong and I don't know how much more I can handle. I have never felt so helpless. This time it's my car. Now I have been having problems with it the past month or two...or should I say my daughter has because I don't even drive it except to see my doctor every 2 weeks. Well we keep replacing things, hoping that it will fix the problem. So far, nothing has worked. We don't have any money to fix anything else, seriously. Now I THOUGHT we might have had the problem solved and those hopes just got dashed.
I was already thinking about selling my car, an SUV, as it was, I was looking for something smaller...but it has back due registration, the air conditioner doesn't work ($800 to fix), and the windshield has a big crack in it (at the bottom, thankfully). Anyway, my son's friends sister asked my son if I wanted to sell my car yesterday or the day before. Now her boyfriend who lives with her is a mechanic so she had no problem with the issues and she knew about the registration. So I thought about it and after my daughter called me telling me that the last thing we fixed on it yesterday STILL didn't fix the problem I said "YES!". Well my son just informed me that she no longer wants to buy the car. Seems she got into trouble at work today so I am assuming that she is worried about her job now. Anyway, she said that she no longer wants to buy it. Now, do I believe this? I don't know, I guess prior experience has made me skeptical. One thing I DO know is that I have had people ask me in the past if I wanted to sell my car (whichever one I had at the time) and the same thing has happened to my kids about their cars. People sound interested and they ask....then when you take them up on it, all of a sudden they have every excuse in the book for why they can't. Hey people if you are interested, say "Let me know if you ever want to sell your car, can't guarantee that I'll buy it but ask me first OK?". Now THAT is the way to do it. Not act all interested and tell someone that you want to buy their car and then as soon as they say OK...say oh no I can't....That is just not right. I'm not saying this is the case here....just saying that it is an experience I'm familiar with.
So now I am really in a bad situation, more so than before. My daughter's car is still broken and she needs to get to school and work. I am supposed to go back to work the first couple of days of January....now how am I going to get there....great, just great. It just seems like I can't catch a break! It's just one thing after another after another.....DAMMIT! I really don't know what I am going to do in the short term not to mention the long term. I mean the car's air conditioning already doesn't work. I was originally thinking of selling it just for that reason alone....but I would keep it if I had to but I can't afford even the smallest car repair right now. My son paid for some of the recent repair and my daughter paid for some of the last repair. It is only fair since she is the one driving it. But she can't keep paying for this and I can't...so I don't know what I am going to do now....
I just truly don't know how many more setbacks I can handle. I mean in the scheme of things this isn't so bad...IF I WAS WORKING! But with only living off of disability and food stamps (a whole $37 worth of those!) I am barely surviving as it is....to try to fix the car too???? Like I said, if I was working it wouldn't be so bad. I mean one of the parts is like $40, if it another part then I am looking at almost $200, which I pray it isn't that! But I have no way of knowing until we put the part in. Not like you can take these parts back either....*sigh*
You know what is sad? I was finally working myself into another mode, preparing to go back to work....trying to find a way to deal with that....then I was looking into trying to fix some of the financial messes I've gotten into since being on disability. So I was going in the right direction....I am trying so damn hard and I feel like no matter how hard I try the fates are conspiring against me. I mean karma is kicking my ass from years ago. My hormones are NOT helping my depression either. I figured out some ways to deal with some of these issues. But when you get to a certain point....it's like I just want to give up!!!!! I have been through much worse things, don't get me wrong....I am just much more vulnerable now that I've been breaking down my walls in therapy. Makes me begin to wonder if it's worth it. Sometimes I wonder if my mother used to cry when she was dealing with this kind of stuff. I don't really remember her ever crying about anything, maybe she cried when her dad died....She just never showed that kind of thing to me. Maybe she cried to my dad....although I never heard her cry. I saw her depressed A LOT. Always deep in thought. My mom spent most of her days, when she wasn't actually doing some chore or errand or volunteer work, she would be pacing in the house, in the kitchen, listening to the radio and drinking a beer. She would nurse that beer for HOURS. She was an unusual alcoholic in that she didn't get drunk. She drank every single day, but never got drunk. It is really weird. She was still a great mom considering all of the abuse she suffered as a child. She always tried her best with me. I never, ever doubted that she loved me. Of that I will forever be grateful.
Well I think that is enough for now....just got off of the phone with my son who seems convinced that I can still sell my car to someone on Craig's List....umm I doubt it....even I wouldn't buy my car. It is a great car, don't get me wrong....but with not knowing what the problem is and knowing that the AC doesn't work, the registration is behind, AND the windshield is cracked....ummm nope, wouldn't buy it. But my son did say that he will buy me a new fuel filter and we will see if that is the problem. It is the last "cheap" thing we can try.....I hope that is it.....*sigh*
Once upon a time...I was a little girl. Yep, I know, weird. Any woman over the age of 35-40 must remember all of the fairy tale propaganda we were fed as little girls. I know I do. I, was not only fed it, but I believed it. It wasn't until I was 19-20 years old that the fairy tale began to get chipped away. Truth be told it should have been chipped away before that, but I was a naive young woman. You would think with some of the life experiences I had had up to that point that I would have been spoiled against the fairy tale already. But I think I wasn't because I thought that although I was traumatized by incidents at a young age, I STILL thought that one day my prince would come and I would live happily ever after.
My first problem was the "prince". Like most young girls I pictured tall, dark, and handsome. But most of my boyfriends were short, skinny, albeit attractive. Or even if he was tall there was something that got in the way. Usually something stupid, like my age. I was just thinking today about my last boyfriend I had, before I met the boyfriend who would eventually become my husband... Good ole Matt. I still think of him from time to time. The what-if's of life always cause you to do that. I met Matt at my first job when I was just turning 17. He went to a rival school, the same one my ex-husband went to as a matter of fact. This job was great for me, I was able to show what a go-getter I was. But more importantly I was a "mystery" to the people who worked there. The guys didn't know me so they had no preconceived notions about my high school rep, which trust me I didn't really have. I was involved in drama the first couple of years of high school and then yearbook the last 2. Exciting, I know! Anyway, the point is that for some reason I was very interesting to the guys there and I was very interested in them as well. It went both ways. I didn't know their reps either. All I knew is that most of them were very cute. Matt happened to be one of them. But of course he also happened to be short....like maybe 2-3 inches taller than me, but short for a guy. And skinny. I wasn't fat at the time, but I felt fat next to the skinny guys. He happened to be great on paper when you think about it. He came from a close Catholic family of 10 kids, held down 2 jobs in high school, was going to college to be a nuclear physicist when he got out of high school (he actually DID become one), and saved up enough to buy a really cool pristine Dodge Charger...all in the space of the small amount of time I knew him. Our first "date" was a group date with friends, some that I knew from work, and several that I didn't know. It was kinda scary for me, I was shy around people I didn't know. Our "official" first date was to dinner and then the state fair. Now you may ask, what was wrong? Well nothing, on the surface....but under the surface...Well first of all, our first date also entailed a visit to meet his parents, as well as several of his brothers and sisters. Now I had never formally met anyone's parents, especially a boyfriends. I was petrified. He moved too fast. Then there was the issue of chemistry. He felt it and I didn't. I was more experienced, which wasn't a lot, but it showed. God love him, he tried. I just never felt it. I felt more chemistry with a guy that I had only met once a few years earlier than I had with Matt. He was a nice guy. Problem one. The fairy tales don't tell you that you probably won't have physical chemistry with the nice guy. The bad boys? Oh hell yeah, chemistry galore. But the nice guys, the ones you SHOULD be wanting to marry....nope no chemistry. So although he tried, I never felt the necessary chemistry to keep up the relationship and I *gulp* broke his heart. I found this out many years later when I was working with a girl who had been good friends with him after high school. She said I was the one who broke his heart and it took him years to get over me. Talk about karma and a kick to the head.
I had broken a few hearts, when I was younger of course. I regret it terribly. Nothing I can do to make up for it. Sometimes I think my bad luck with relationships is my karmic payback. Although I think that my payback waaay outweighed the heartbreak I caused. I do feel terrible about it, I truly do. Not because I haven't been able to find a man to love me the way I deserve, I feel terrible because I didn't do it the right way. I hurt these boys without being truthful about it, being upfront. I wasn't mindful of their feelings, I just was too scared to tell them that it just wasn't going to work out. It's not you, it's me. That would have been much kinder than just not telling them why.
Now you must wonder, what was it that made me start to realize that life was not a fairy tale and that I wasn't going to be living happily ever after. Truthfully, it was simply finding out that someone who worked with my husband at the time was having an affair. Actually it was a couple of guys that worked with my husband. I was shocked! I was only around 20 and I knew both the husbands and the wives, and I knew the "other women". They all worked together. Little did I know that my own husband would also enter into his first affair right after the birth of my 2nd child, which wasn't too long after that. In fact most of my husbands affairs were preceded by the birth of one of our children. The last affair? It was after I almost died giving birth to our 4th and last child. This is when he decided it was time to tell me about ALL of the women he had slept with while we were married, most were when I was pregnant or right after I had a baby. Each time he sited that I was bitchy with the pregnancy. (!) The last one? He was afraid that I was going to die, I almost did, so he thought he should have someone just in case I died. Nice huh? But guess what ladies....this is not unusual. Many men would rather be with someone, anyone, than to be alone. I am not the only one to learn this. I think it is why I am terrified to be with anyone again. I've been the "anyone" and that is no way to live. No thank you.
So in conclusion I have to say that ignorance was bliss for me, for many years....I enjoyed it and if I knew then what I know now? I would have probably never fulfilled my life-long dream to get married and have children. So I guess the telling of fairy tales is good for something.
I feel as though I am only an observer in life, no longer a participant. It is shocking and sad not to think of a future. I mean, I'd like to think I have one...but as I get older, with the PTSD being so bad right now, I no longer look to the future as a time of unknown possibilities. I spoke to an old man once who told me that he no longer looked to the future, he said he was just waiting to die, said there wasn't anything else to look forward to. Even in my current condition I am struggling and trying to look forward to something, anything....One thing that happens, unbidden, I think of things I should have done. Just pops into my head, "oh damn I should have done this!". I don't get all maudlin about it, I just think..."dammit that would have been great, I wish I had thought of that. Why didn't I think of doing that?". I have to tell you, it SUCKS!
Right now I am just waiting....I am due to go back to work on Jan. 3rd, I am resigned to that. I don't want to, I have to say. Not because of work per se, mainly because I will have only been on my medication for a week before I go back. That isn't a lot of time. I am worried. But it can't be helped, I can't get into see the county doc until the end of December. So I am not going back to work in the optimum physical and mental state. With all that is going on with the world and the hostility I see every single day, it not only worries me, but it scares me. I don't know that I can handle it. But I have to try. At least until something else comes along. I have starting working on another blogging project and it seems like it could be interesting. It is part of a social experiment I'm doing. I like it because it interests me and I can see potential in it. It grew out of frustration. I look at it as a positive outlet for a lot of my anger. I am interested to see how it goes. I am trying desperately to restart my return to society as it were. I need something that will give me a little pleasure, something to focus on besides my depression. I recently corresponded with a friend of mine who sounds like she is going through much of what I am. I felt so badly. I feel just like she does. How common is this? She is not on medication either. I am here to tell you that some of us desperately NEED medication. It really helps. It is painful not to be on it. People don't realize that medication for people with disorders such as PTSD or depression or anxiety is an essential treatment. Without it we are in horrible pain. Not necessarily physical, although that actually can happen depending on your disorder, but emotional and mental pain. I feel it every day. Like a headache, some days the pain is more severe than others. This morning the pain caused me to have issues with breathing, because I was feeling panic coming on. No rhyme or reason, it just happened. There is not always a known trigger, sometimes it just happens. It starts with anxiety and graduates to panic. Thankfully I caught it both times and was able to get it under control with slow, deep breathing. It is painful, it truly is. Imagine suddenly feeling like you are going to die. Literally. I am just glad that I didn't have to resort to medication as I only have a handful of anti-anxiety medication left. By that I mean, about 5 pills. I always used them sparingly, which is why I still have some left. I haven't been on medication for many months so I am lucky that I handle my meds in this way. So if I can just get through the next month and a half I might just make it. Of course it seems like I can't tell how it is going to go one day to the next.
I am so glad that I am going to see my therapist Tuesday. We really need to get down to the nitty gritty with my therapy. I have to be able to conquer more things before I go back to work. I want to get to the bottom of my issues and it just seems like I keep dealing with what is happening right NOW. That is all well and good but a lot of what is going on right now has it's roots in my past. I am really needing to focus on these things so that I can truly get past them and maybe it will be a little easier to cope with things that are going on right now. I think a lot about my past. Things that I did and didn't do, things that happened and how I dealt with them, or in some cases didn't deal with them. I don't think I have enough time to fully deal with so much that has happened in my life. I mean my doctor has seen trauma in my life that I didn't even realize was traumatic until he mentioned it and I realized how bad it was. I mean, I was always in such a hurry to get through stuff. As a child the trauma's I went through just became bad things in my life that I tried to forget. As an adult I was too busy with kids and staying alive in my marriage to deal with all of the trauma I was experiencing. I didn't have the time and it has caught up to me in a big way as these things tend to do. I think that is why I am falling apart right now. It was just too much to keep inside anymore. Now I am an open wound. It is scary. I need to deal and move on. I will probably be in therapy for many, many years at this point. Although some trauma's are tied to others so maybe I can cut some of the time off? lol.
Well I think this entry is long enough. I know that not many people read this. But those who do...thank you. I hope that if you are a friend that maybe you understand me a little better. If you are an impartial observer, I hope that my sharing my struggles help you to see that you are not alone.
