Mind Games

You know how when you hear about someone who has dealt with a traumatic experience they have certain ways of coping with things that help them get through the experience?  Well, I think I am reaching for whatever type of means of coping I can grasp on to in order to get through this divorce.  I realize I am not the first person to get divorced.  I know there are a lot of people out there that are going through similar situations, but for me this is my life, my divorce and man, it fucking sucks.

My mind is my worst enemy most days.  It likes to tell stories.  It likes to embellish things that might or have happened to bring about my anxiety and then I can be found buffing the stainless steel refrigerator for an hour to make sure there are so streaks, hazy spots or smears.  My mind loves to fuck with me with "what if" sceneraio's or "if I just would have" thoughts that I find myself consumed with trying to think back at all the things I missed that caused me to end up in this position.  My mind speculates about what the future will hold for me and flips back to the past and makes me wish I was still living in that time.  It likes to distort reality and bring in all the great things about the past and weave it in with all the bad things about the present to create all kinds of uncertainty about the future.

I deal with things by being passive aggressive, sarcastic or sleeping.  I have been worried about the court date and the open house and meeting Her and how my Marble's will adjust to His house and home.  I have worried about what I am going to say when I see Her and all the things that I want to say to Him about how bad he's messed everything up for everyone. 

I think both Him and Her are selfish.  Possibly the most selfish people who are walking this planet at this moment right now.  I don't understand it and I know it's not for me to understand but perhaps someone can explain to me how two adults can think it's best for one adult to leave his family and another adult thinks it's right to move her children in with said guy and expect things to work out and be harmonious?  I think about how my Marble's are going to be ten years from now.  And, how her children are going to be ten years from now.  Because, really, these five kids are the ones who have undoubtedly suffered the most in this.  Neither Him nor Her had the children's best interests in mind.  They moved forward for their own selfish desires and left this mess in their wake.

August 20th will be my 13 year wedding anniversary.  On that day, I will still be married.  But, the marriage has been broken.  Thanks to them there are six people suffering from their choices.  My mind won't rest for a long time.  I'm stuck in this hell trying to cope with seeing her with my husband and my Marble's.  I have to take my Marble's to a therapist so they can articulate exactly how they feel about this situation.  It's sad.  I think my mind is fucked up, I can't imagine what runs through my Marble's minds in all this chaos. 

I have to be the strong, stable one.  I have to be positive and remain the mother that I know I can be.  I have to push these thoughts out of my head and regroup and move forward.  I can only be accountable for my actions and the way I handle the situations that come before me.  God, I wish I could convince myself of this for real and not just on this blog.

Acceptance

It has been a long road these last eight months.  There have been days when lying in my bed even took too much energy.  There have been days when I didn't think I could make it another second without collapsing into myself and never being able to come out as anything more than damaged goods.  The five stages of grief are pretty dead on.  I held on to the first four stages and dug my nails into them for longer than what I would have liked, but I find that I might be moving on to the last and final stage, Acceptance.

I genuinely feel I am good at split second decisions.  My job as taught me that not only do I have gut instinct but my intuition is dead on and if I follow my gut instinct it always ends up being right.  But, yesterday I found myself in a situation where my integrity, morals, character, gut instinct and overall motherly abilities where on the line and I was given about half of a half of a second to either do what I needed to do to prove to my Marble's that I am resilient or I could put on the boxing gloves and jump into the ring. 

Him and I had been fighting all morning about when I was supposed to come get my two Marble's from his house who had been with him since they had returned from Michigan.  He refused to give me the gate code to his uber-Pleasantville residential community and he was just being difficult about my time with the Marble's.  So, I told him I would be at this house at 10am to get the Marble's and after a heated exchange he hung up on me.

There were a few things I knew before going into this "pick-up" at his new house.

1.  I knew I didn't want to go by myself to his house.(But I did.)

2.  I knew She wasn't working and would be there and ultimately, I'd be meeting her. (Put on cute jeans, lip gloss and did my hair.)

3.  I knew what the Marble's had told me about their new rooms at His house and their new this and that He had gotten for them and all I could think about was what a shit place I must live in because I couldn't afford to get my Marble's anything new while they were away visiting in Michigan.

4.  I knew I had to get Blue Marble to at least go to His house with me.  If only for a second, so the transition could start for her.  (This took tons of coaxing and a little bribing.)

5. I knew my anxiety level was at its peak.  My heart was racing.  I was nervous.  I wish this wasn't happening.

When I arrived at his house, his truck was not there.  There was some confusion, yet relief because I wasn't going to have to deal with Him and Her at the same time.  My Yellow Marble threw open the door of his "new" house and wanted me to come in and see her "new" room.  I asked if her daddy was home and she told me no, so I asked if I could speak to Her to see if it was ok for me to come into their house to see Yellow Marble's room.  At that moment, she appeared at the door and invited me into the house that she moved from Michigan to live in with my husband.  I was staring her in the face.  I had played this moment over in my head a million times about what I would do or say when I first met her.  Was I going to just lay into her and let her know exactly how bad she fucked everything up?  Was I going to claw her face off and kick her in the gut and try to cause as much physical pain on her as she caused emotionally on me?  I had a hundred different one liners that I wanted to say; little jabs to make her aware of the havoc she has caused in my life and the lives of my Marble's.  But, there she was.  And there I was.  I looked at her in person I saw a homely, unkempt, slightly overweight woman with graying hair and zits on her chin and I almost busted out laughing at the weed he chose to leave me for on his greener grass over there on the other side.

This woman who had caused me such heart ache and such devastation stood before me and the only thing I could think to do was pity her for diving into the mess that she had gotten herself into with my family.  What a fucking fool you are, Lady!

Her two kids and my Yellow Marble were all very excited to have me in the house.  Her kids are six and two and a half and I am positive they had no clue who I was.  They were overly excited to show me their rooms and all their toys and everything "new" to them in their new environment.  My Pink and Yellow Marble were the same way.  "Mom, look at this.  Look at my new room.  Look at our new bathroom."  I smiled and acted like that I was seeing was the most amazing thing ever.  Her kids would show me their baby doll and I acted like it was the most incredible baby doll I had ever laid eyes on.  My Marble would point out something in the house and I acted like it was the most amazing object that ever graced a home in Southwest Florida.  The whole situation was surreal and utter chaos.

I'm not sure when it all came about because in all the craziness of five kids all wanting my undivided attention, two of which were my nemesis' little ones, it was mentioned that Her kids should see my Marble's rooms at my house.  The excitement built.  You would have thought Santa had walked into the room carrying puppies for everyone.  Kids were jumping on the beds cheering.  One of Her kids had already run to her room to pack a bag for a sleepover at my house.  I felt like I was cornered.  Everyone thought it was the best idea in the world to have Her kids come to MY house to see MY Marble's stuff and I was the only one looking like a deer in head lights thinking, "What the fuck is going on?" She made no attempts to quiet her kids about coming over.  In fact, She pretty much wanted to push her children into my arms and send all six of us out the door immediately.  I didn't know what to do or what to say in this situation. This was not the scene I play out in my head at all.  I was already overcome with every emotion imaginable.  I had just met the woman who fucked up my life.  I am standing the home that she has made now with my husband looking at the places where my Marble's are going to sleep when they are in that house.  Everyone was all excited except for me and I was forced to say something so......

I agreed.

Cheer erupted from all corners of the house.  My two Marble's were all excited that Her kids got to see my house.  Her kids were all excited to see my house.  She was all excited to get everyone out of her house and next thing I knew I had Her daughter in my car and She was following me to my house with my Pink Marble and her baby in the car behind me so everyone could have one big happy dysfunctional playdate.

When we arrived in my driveway I knew She was going to come in and get a tour from the Marble's and they did just that.  My house isn't just a house, it's a home.  I made sure of that when we bought our house that I made it into a place that showed it was us who lived there.  There are family pictures still on the walls.  There are pictures of Him and me still lingering on the walls, in the laundry room and hung up with magnets on the Marble's school lockers in the laundry room.  She went from room to room not nearly acting as excited about what she was seeing as I was acting when I was at Her house.  I wondered what was going through her mind.  Now, within minutes the tables were turned.  She was on my turf.  She was in the home that I shared with her new boyfriend.  What the fuck was going through her mind?

Her children stayed at my house for six hours.  I tended to them as if they were my own including making sure the little one went to the bathroom on the potty because She was potty training the baby.  I watched them like a hawk in the pool, made sure they had full bellies and played with them like I would anyone else's children.  I did this because I am a mother.  I define myself first as a mom.  A good mother.  And, it was absolutely necessary for my Marble's to see me and Her tolerate each others presence and be cordial so there was peace in that moment.  It was necessary for my Marble's to see their mother have respect for someone who disrespected me, be kind to someone who was not kind to me and be strong when I feel I am at the weakest point in my life.  I didn't want the Marble's to feel scared that I was going to do anything to Her nor did I want them to witness any kind of fighting.  There might have been another way YOU would have handled that situation, but as a mother of three Marble's who are going through a living hell right now taking Her children to my house for a play date was possibly what needed to happen at that moment.

When the day was over and I laid in bed last night thinking about the events of the day, I wasn't sure I did the right thing.  I talked to a lot of people yesterday, including my therapist, about the situation and I tried to pick their brains for what Her motivation might have been to so eagerly send her children with me to my house.  In the end, I figured out what it was.  In fact, She told me what it was.  She needed a break.  She had not had a break in six weeks and She needed a break.  Apparently, I was the one who was going to give it to her.  Somehow She felt that raging bitch who called her twice many months ago and screamed every derogatory word you could call a female was okay enough to hang out with her kids.  I don't get it.  I don't know if I will ever do it again.  But, it bridged a gap.  The meeting yesterday was nothing I expected it to be but made me accept the change that is happening in my life and for a brief moment I was okay with what I had seen at their house and what I had seen looking at her and I felt like I was going to pull through this.  

Which Way is Out

I started down the path of doing things for myself which included seeking help with this depression thingie I have going on.  I felt like I was standing in the woods and all I could see before me were trees.  There was no clear, defined way out.  After going to the psychiatrist and counselor, I have been able to vaguely see a path off in the distance which I think is the one I am supposed to take to get me out of this mess of emotions I have been dealing with.

The psychiatrist said I have "situational depression", anxiety and OCD.  I really didn't need to go to her to be given that diagnosis.  I already knew these things and I think every one around me was well aware of these three things that trigger the tears that seem to fall from my eyes on a daily basis.  My therapist wants me to go have "fun".  I am not even sure I know what that is.  I know it's fun to hang out with my friends. I know it's fun to travel.  I know it's fun to play games with the Marble's, but am I really having fun while I am doing it?

This past week I found myself in situations where I was on the verge of tears.  I have gotten pretty good at my eyes filling up with tears and somehow being able to not let them fall from my eyes when I am in social situations.  However, in doing that my face gets red, my lips start to quiver and I take a defensive sitting position in which my arms are folded across my chest and my legs are crossed tightly one over the other.  I took this position the other night at the Blue's house when they had a small gathering of friends over.  The men started talking about the child support that they **had** to pay and I could feel myself not only getting angry but I was on the verge of a huge cry.  I grabbed my things, said bye to everyone and asked my friend Blue to drive me home.  As soon as we got in the car he asked me if I was ok.  Before he would even get the "ok" out he said, "Nevermind I know you're not." And, the crying began.  Those big, fat tears that don't roll down my cheeks but instead fall from my eyes gushed out of me.  There are certain people I feel safe crying around.  The Blue's are two of them.  I cry nonstop and I cry nonstop around them.  I can't imagine why they continue to stick around and still come by and still invite me to do things when I am such a crazy mess.

I was explaining this particular crying spell to my therapist and she told me I am giving Him power.  Why did he do this to me?  How could he do this to our family?  Why doesn't he love me anymore?  Why he did have the affair?  I am allowing myself to be a victim.  In being the victim, I am giving him the power to have me feel this way.  I do feel like I am a victim in this but I have never been the type of person to play the victim card or sit back and allow someone to make me feel as horrible as he makes me feel.  I have to take that power away from him.  I am not sure how to do it but I am going to try.

In the meantime, I am going to continue to cling to the Blue's and to my friends and family up north for support.  I swear if I didn't hear the voices of my mom and A on a daily basis I would probably have collapsed into a puddle of goo by now.  My therapist also said I need to allow time to work itself out.  I don't like hearing that but deep down I know it's true.  Right now Time can kiss my ass because it's working way too slow.  I want to fast forward and not have to work through this uncomfortableness.  I want to not have to put so much effort into pretending to be strong when I know that I am not strong right now.

I'm am taking baby steps toward that clearing in the woods; toward that path that will lead me out of this mess.  I just hope it doesn't take too much longer to reach the end.

Reference

I'm at this very transitional place right now where I don't know what to refer to him as when I am talking about my divorce.  I could say "exhusband" but I feel like that implies that we are already divorced.  I could call him my "husband" but that would imply that we are still married.  Perhaps people might even assume, happily married?  I could refer to him as "the asshole", "dick", "cheater" but then those names have to be followed by an explanation as to why I am referring to him with such hostility. 

When I talk about him to someone and I have to make reference back to him I find myself stumbling over my words because I don't know what to say.  These are the little things that pop up every day that I find just keep being a constant reminder of my plight. 

What to Say?

Though I liken these feelings I have of this divorce to what it might feel like to experience the sudden death of someone I deeply love, I am thankful that it's only a divorce I am going through and I'm only going to court in a couple weeks and not a funeral.  The reason being is because no one knows what to say when you're sad.  I've been placed in a situation where I've had to say something to someone when they have experienced a tragedy and I've been that person that just says the cliche, "I'm so sorry."  "It will get better. "  "It takes time."  But what do these phrases really mean?  To me, they're just filler for people who don't know what else to say. 

I feel like I am coming off like the biggest bitch right now and I feel like it might convey that I don't appreciate the thoughtfulness of those around me and the pick-me-ups they try to say, because I do.  I'm just so far into this funk that now it all sounds redundant.  It's all stuff I have heard a gazillion times and, frankly, I am sick of hearing it.

It is mean of me to say these things because i know all the people I have talked to when things seem like shit are people I adore and trust.  But each day brings about a greater struggle to get myself up and moving and in the frame of mind to conquer the day.  Sleep is my salvation.  With depression sleep can go either way.  You either don't sleep at all or you sleep all the time.  I flip flop back and forth.  Right now all I want to do is sleep.  It's the only time I have peace.  It's the only time my brain gets quiet from the rumblings of everything I have going on and I can just disappear into my bed and not be bothered. 

Since the Marble's have been gone, I come home from work and go right to bed.  Sometimes I will eat.  But, most of the times I am not hungry.  I call it the Divorce Diet.  I'm not hungry much at all.  I hear my stomach saying "Feed me!" but I have no appetite.  I might turn on the TV or I might just lay in silence in my bed.  I have been able to go a few days without crying but today I cried most of the day. 

It seems like even the smallest issue that gets thrown my way becomes this huge hurdle to overcome.  Every day this week there has been something to fuck up my day.  And the things always happen right in the morning and then other little things continue through the day and eventually it all adds up to this steamy, smelly, heaping pile of shit that I carry around day in and day out. 

I want to feel better.  I took my friends advice and I am seeing a psychiatrist and a counselor to try to navigate my way through all these feelings.  This isn't fun.  This isn't a refreshing place to be in.  I am angry, sad, bitter, hurt, frustrated, scared, pathetic, ugly, fat, tired, depressed 35 year old woman.  What a shitty time to be me right now.

Festering

He probably has no idea how his actions have trickled down into every facet of my life. 

I curse him daily for leaving me with the mess that he did.  I curse him daily for running off with her and leaving me standing there alone, in our beautiful home, with our beautiful daughters while he set out to embark on some new journey in his life.  Then, as if it was something that had been going on for years, he finds it okay to subject our kids to the life he has left me for.  I don't understand it. 

His absence is felt a million times over.  And, I don't want him back.  But, I never wanted him to leave.  The small things that are occurring right now seem insurmountable.  The three screen panes that have torn and blown off in the midst of the series of storms we have had in the last few weeks create such anxiety for me.  The idea of trying to repair the screens myself is paralyzing.  I stood outside by the smallest screen to repair, the screen to the lanai door, and I cried.  It's not my "job" to fix it.  It was his job.  I feel my heart racing when I have to make decisions without him. 

People tell me it's going to get better.  God! I am so sick of hearing that.  People tell me that I need to smile.  Smile at what?  The court papers I just got saying my wages are going to be garnished because there was an outstanding debt him and I never paid.  People say I need to be happy that my Marble's are healthy and I have supportive friends.  Yeah, I am thankful for that but that doesn't mean that it's going to make all these other stresses go away.

How do you go from knowing what a person is doing 24/7 to having them not giving a fuck about whether you're safe or happy or just alright?  How can someone who told you they loved you for over a decade just not give a fuck about you anymore?  I don't get it.  I constantly wonder what I did to deserve this because I had to have done something.  No good person would be forced to live through the grief that I have been living through if I had not done something awful to deserve it.

I'm a different person now.  I don't look forward to tomorrow.  I don't look forward to coming home.  I do what I have to do to get me through right now and hope that I can sleep away the rest of the day because there is nothing special about anything I have going on.  When there is no one to hug you when you leave for work and no one to tell you to have a nice day, then what's the point of being eager to stay or go?  When there is no one to come home to and no one to sit with you at night and recap your day, what's the point of even staying awake?  I do what I have to do.  I say what I have to say and every once in a while I crack and a little bit of the depression seeps out and whoever is there at the time gets a glimpse of it.  Sometimes, I will reach out to someone but most of the time I just let it fester. 

I have been following the author of the blog Suburban Bliss and she had a rough year with her divorce.  She has found her way and I hope one day I will find my way back to being the person that I was before all this started.

The Statement

"I don't think he knew just how much you loved him until he left.  And then, once he realized it...it was too late."  

That is what my therapist told me at my last and final meeting with her.  I didn't show him how much I loved him.  I didn't think I needed to.  I thought everything else I did and all the sticking around I did through the crap in our marriage was enough for him to know how deeply and unconditionally I loved him. 

Grief

I went into the main bathroom yesterday to wipe down counters and do my usual OCD cleaning of everything and I happened to open the medicine cabinet which I don't think I have opened since we lived in this house.  Inside I found a variety of men's travel size products.  There were little deodorants, body wash, shaving cream, tooth paste.  Why I never thought to look in that cabinet before for clues to his affair I have no idea, but there it was in plain sight.  Even when he was still living here, he was going there to see her.  He needed to have the travel size items for the airplane.  How did I miss that?

I always thought that I'd never be stupid enough to let my husband get away with an affair.  But, when you trust someone and they have always been good to you a person doesn't think that they would cheat on them.  At least I never did.  But, it happened and I live daily with the questions as to why me.  Why us? Why our family?

This weekend I went out with my friend Blue.  I drank too much and (bless his heart) he was exposed to just how heavily a person can cry and the depths of hurt, depression and anger I feel toward this situation.  Sometimes when I cry I am conscious of just how big my tears are and while sitting on the couch with Blue I had my head down and I felt these huge gigantic tears not slip down my cheeks, but just fall from my eyes. 

I cry a lot.  Most days, in fact.  I just kind of allow myself to get it out and sometimes it's in the presence of someone and sometimes I am alone.  Usually I just find myself crying alone.  But, I'm lucky that I have Blue and Mrs. Blue down here to be physically present almost every day to occupy my time, to talk to me about this situation or to just listen.  I feel like I am a burden on my friends though.  I feel like I am too much to handle sometimes.  I wonder if my friend was in this situation and sad for as long as I have been sad, would I have the patience to continue to be there for them?

I wouldn't blame anyone if they stopped talking to me right now.  I am still a pathetic mess even almost five months after he admitted to his affair and left our family.  But, things keep happening that set me back.  Now, this skank is living down here with him.  She ravaged my family and stole my husband away and now has moved down to the place where we were supposed to be living out our dream.  For five years we worked hard to have what we have.  We left our families and it was just the five of us:  a team!  We figured it out together.  Now, he has her living down here.  He wants our Marble's go to there and play family with him, the skank and her bastard children.  He wasn't strong enough to resist it.  And now my life and my Marble's life have been flipped upside down.

Am I going to be ok?  I don't know.  People keep telling me I'm strong but I don't see it right now.  I just look to my friend who has been down this road and I listen to her and try to take her advice because she is strong.  I want to be happy again.  Really truly happy.  Like I was last year at this time.  I just want to be at peace.

Possibilities

I guess at some point it is possible to think I will be able to go longer than a day without crying.  I didn't cry today.  That's not to say that I didn't feel like I was going to but it seems like I have talked about this divorce enough that emotions don't come rushing through me like they might have just a few months ago.

It's not getting any easier.  In fact, it's pretty much still the same.  He is moving his girlfriend down here this weekend and I can't for the life of me understand why.  I still reflect back on the 14 years that I spent with him and nothing would have ever indicted to me that he would go and do this.  Nothing ever.  I feel like he drove this huge machete into my heart and is constantly twisting it over and over with each fucked up action that he does.

But, I am trying to find my peace.  I am trying to be ok with being home alone and doing absolutely nothing.  There are things that I found that I am good at and things that require me to call on one of my male friends to help me with.  My heart is a gaping wound right now and the first hint of someone being nice to me I want to jump into their arms and beg them to hug me.

I returned back to Florida from a trip up to Michigan.  Being up there made me miss everything.  My family.  My friends.  The scenery.  But, the memories are everywhere.  It didn't matter where I went each city, highway, store, restaurant had a memory. 

I drove by the store where he met me on our first date.  He thought that it would be too confusing for me to navigate my way to his house so he met me at a little liquor store and drove up on his Harley and had me follow him back to his house.  I got choked up passing that store.  Then there was the street where we got married.  The place where we had our reception.  I remember taking my hoop skirt off and giving it to him at the end of the night on our wedding night and he was so drunk he threw it in the dumpster.  There was the hospital where I had the Marble's and the restaurant in Waterford where we'd get nacho's that were gigantic.  It was hard going back and being there among all the memories knowing there will never be an us anymore.  And, what is left of us is filled with hurt, anger and hostility. 

I haven't moved on.  Maybe I have but if so, I don't know what that feels like.  I still feel as sad and heart broken as I did when he walked out in February.  I have so many questions and no answers.  I probably will never have the answers to my questions.

Ever.

Change

I don't feel the suns comin' out today
its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery, I don't
think I'll ever see the sun from here.

And oh as I fade away,
they'll all look at me and say, and they'll say,
Hey look at him! I'll never live that way.
But that's okay
they're just afraid to change.

When you feel your life ain't worth living
you've got to stand up and
take a look around you then a look way up to the sky.
And when your deepest thoughts are broken,
keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die.

And as we all play parts of tomorrow,
some ways will work and other ways we'll play.
But I know we all can't stay here forever,
so I want to write my words on the face of today.
and then they'll paint it

And oh as I fade away,
they'll all look at me and they'll say,
Hey look at him and where he is these days.
When life is hard, you have to change.

Part 2 of Online Article

It doesn't matter who leaves the marriage, the wife or the husband, the person left behind to deal with the betrayal experiences a hellish nightmare


Being demonized will produce feelings of shock and dismay. They will question their own sanity and replay their marriage in their mind trying to find some hint of all the unhappiness they are told of. They will question how their spouse, someone they have loved and trusted could betray them in such a way. First to have an affair and then to rewrite the history of their marriage in such a way as to try and lay blame at their feet.

They will wonder how their spouse could not only blame them for having to have an affair but also how they could defame their character after many years of being given love, respect and trust. They will wonder how their spouse cannot see how their words and blaming does damage to the children by depicting their mother in a bad light.

Someone needs to give him this article.

The faithful spouse will question her own memories of what they thought were years and years of a happy marriage. He/She will wonder if the marriage was never anything but a sham and a figment of their imagination. They will wonder why the unfaithful spouse never complained if they were really that unhappy or why they never made a request for changes in the relationship. Being punished for your spouse's misery is a mind-boggling state to find yourself in.

It's absolute hell!!!!

 

If all this isn't bad enough the unfaithful spouse now demands that their partner accept this other man or other woman and rejoice in their well-deserved happiness. They also expect their spouse to encourage the children to embrace and love this new person and welcome her into the fold…so to speak.

Just reading such a scenario is painful, imagine actually living it? If you are reading this article you may be living it yourself at this moment. It is a crazy making time isn't it? Such severe distortions of what the marriage was actually like can cause the left behind spouse to question their sanity and every action they take. Recovery from such a profound emotional trauma is slow.

What can a left behind spouse do under circumstances like these?

Most importantly they can realize that all the distortions have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the leaving spouse and their need to justify their actions.

Understand that these distortions and negative behaviors are your partner's way of dealing with their guilt. It's his/her perceptions that are wrong and not yours.

Surround yourself with a support group that can affirm your view of what your marriage was and that the distortions you are being fed are for your partner's self-exoneration. Surround yourself daily with people who love and care for you.

Remember that every parent earns his or her separate relationship with the children of the marriage. Children will ultimately process these events appropriately and make their own choices and come to their own conclusions based on their memories and moral beliefs.

This nightmare will end!! With time, healing does come and you will laugh again and love again and the sun will shine again; All you have to do to survive is trust your memories and never forget that, this insanity is not of your making.

Was This Article Written About My Divorce?

I found an article online that pretty much touched on exactly what I am going through.

When a third party enters a marriage and a spouse in that marriage becomes romantically involved with this person certain psychological things start to happen in the mind of the unfaithful spouse in order to justify their actions.

At first they lavish in the attention and feel energized by the adoration of someone new. In time they begin to compare their feelings for their spouse with those they have for this new person. If a decision is made the break up the marriage and move onto a life with this new person several psychological stages will be gone through which only exacerbate the pain of this type of divorce.

A third party entered our marriage and I was compared to her in ways from how I act socially to that I don't like to do outdoor activities or drink beer.

It makes me feel like for the 14 years we were together I was useless.

  Normally a spouse who falls prey to infidelity is a decent person that is aware of their behavior and how it is frowned upon by society. 

 so basically this means he knew what he was doing when he started the affair.

Even though they are aware of the immorality of their actions they continue with the relationship, which means dealing with feelings of guilt. These feelings of guilt motivate to demonize the faithful spouse in an attempt to justify their behavior. They will attribute many negative and unforgivable traits and behaviors. The faithful spouse may be portrayed as an inadequate wife and mother and even accused of being evil.

Wow.  This is like a daily thing for me.  If he isn't saying what a shitty wife I was then he is running his mouth about me being a shitty mom.  He is always telling me how everything was my fault and that I pretty much pushed him into the arms of this other woman who lives in Michigan.

 Not only will the faithful spouse be demonized, history will be rewritten to make it appear that he/she has been faulty for the entire duration of the marriage. The unfaithful spouse will recreate the marriage and what happened during the marriage to make it appear that they have suffered much pain and unhappiness throughout the entire marriage. They may say things such as, "I was forced into marrying you" or, "You've never loved me the way I needed to be loved" or, "I have lived in hell for 20 years." He/She will say anything as long as it will enable him/her to appear to have been the victim of the marriage and fully justified in abandoning the family.

Yup.  That's him.  I love the line that he hasn't been happy for six months.  No wait!  One year.  No, no... last week it was two years.  It keeps getting longer.

 

The unfaithful spouse will tell their story often and to anyone who will listen, to the point that they will finally begin to truly believe that the left behind spouse deserves to be punished. The faithful spouse is the offender and the persecutor and needs to be dealt with harshly. Punishment will come in the way of financial withholding or, even worse, fighting over custody for any children of the marriage. They may begin to believe that the faithful, demonized spouse is not entitled to receive any future benefits from them, sometimes not even those allowed by law. In many cases the children will be used as tools to punish the faithful spouse, which leads to bitterness and emotional detriment to the children.

Wow.  He's doing that too!

The unfaithful spouse will expect the left behind spouse to accept their new life and to even be happy for them. They want the faithful spouse to take full blame for their need to escape an "unhappy marriage." In their mind, for this to be done properly the left behind spouse should also accept the other man or woman and make peace with them. Since the left behind spouse does not share any of these views with the unfaithful spouse, he/she is often unwilling to embrace and bestow their well wishes on this new life. If you have been a party to this type of divorce or know someone who has you are well aware of the emotional turmoil that takes place.

It's true.  Such bullshit but it's happening to me!!!!

The second part of the article deals more with what the faithful spouse goes through ....... that will be in part 2.

 

 

Trying To Maintain Normalcy

Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. 

The "Everything" that has changed is that he's gone.  It's a huge absence in the house.  The barbeque grill that he used on a near daily basis has been left to rust out on the lanai.  The sound of the garage door opening at 430 in the afternoon has gone silent.  There is no anticipation of his arrival home.  There is no one to talk to in the morning about my day.

When I'd be coming home from work in the morning I used to get excited when I'd see the light in my bathroom on as I drove down the road toward my house.  It meant that he was awake and in the shower and that I'd have his attention to excitedly recap my night to him. I laugh to myself thinking about how I essentially cornered him and forced him to listen.  He never cared about my job or what I did.  He'd say, "It's all cop talk!" and just nod his head probably not even paying attention to a word I was saying and instead thinking about his next "fishing trip" to see her.   But, it's the little things I miss.  It's the little things that are hard to adjust to and hard to not notice that they're not there.

However, I have tried to maintain as much  normalcy for the sake of the Marble's as I possibly can.  Bedtime is still 830 sharp.  Only now they sleep in each others rooms or in my bed or we pull Yellow Marble's mattress from her bunk and plop it down on the floor of my room and all four of us fall asleep watching Good Luck Charlie.  Laundry still gets folded, separated into piles and laid out on the floor in the living room.  Only difference is none of his stuff is coming through the wash.  I still don't make dinner and if I do it's chicken or spaghetti.  All the family pictures are still on display in the house, except our wedding picture which was hanging up in my room and facing my bed so I stared at it every night torturing myself as I tried to fall asleep.  I took the picture down and put it in the closet.  It was my favorite picture.  It was the picture that captured how happy were were the day we got married.  Funny how those words we promised to each other meant something for 12 years yet in a few months they could go from having meaning to meaning absolutely nothing.

I still maintain an impeccably clean house and stress out when things are out of place.  I still have my areas that I allow to get messy and sometimes I let dust collect on the tables longer than I would have in the past.  I still spend my evenings on the lanai.  Just sitting there pondering what will come of all this and how I am going to deal with what lies in front of me.  I still get the Marble's to and from school every single day.  They know they can count on me to get them there on time and be there early to pick them up.  Nothing there has changed.  I still pack Blue Marble's lunch all the time because I know exactly how she likes her sandwich right down to the way it's cut and placed in the Ziploc bag.

I am trying to keep things how they were before he left in an attempt to create stability for the Marble's.  I want them to endure.  I want them to one day look back at this time in their lives and see that I was the glue that was holding it all together.  Even though inside I am shattered into a million pieces, I want them to know that all the things I am doing... I am doing for them.  And, I hope that these choices and decisions and mistakes and fights and outbursts and crying and laughing and everything that's all smooched up that is going on right now will play out in their heads in years to come and they will come to me with a simple "Thank you" and I will know that all this pain and shit that I have been wading in didn't change them from being the wonderful girls I want them to grow up to be. 

Choice: Strength?

It's Mother's Day.

I'll be spending my first Mother's Day as a single mom at work without my Marble's.  I am making it a point to get up earlier than normal, drive to his condo and go to lunch with them.  I am going to bask in those few hours I have with each one of them because they are what keep me waking up every day.  I know that there is no way I could ever leave my Blue Marble without me.  I know that there is no one else who can scoop up Yellow Marble and baby talk her and still to this day, nine years later, convince her that she is still a "tiny baby".  I've referred to her as a tiny baby ever since the day she was born.  I could never leave Pink Marble because I am her biggest cheerleader.  There is no one else on this planet who has the faith in her that I do.  No one else who believes in her ability to accomplish great things like I do.  She is so incredibly gifted and I wake up each day wondering what amazing thing she will accomplish in the the world.

But, they're the only thing that keeps me going right now.  I feel like a big engine on a steam train that has been screeching to a halt for months and metal on metal is piercing my ear drums but I can't stop.  I want to stop.  Everything in me is telling me to give up; to press the breaks a little bit harder and just stop.  But I keep chugging along.  It's by no means fun.  In fact, it's been quite depressing.  Sometimes I think I am fooling those around me but I get the messages that say, "I'm worried about you." or "Go talk to someone."    I am fielding questions and looking for answers that I have no idea about.  I get asked how I'm doing and I lie because does it even matter?  The person who has made me feel like this doesn't care how I'm feeling so explaining to anyone how I feel on any given day will just be the same redundant crap that I have been saying for months.  Honestly, I feel like shit.  I feel like I am a walking open wound.  An infected one.  That's all pussy and crusty around the edges.  I feel like I look like that too.  So, it's difficult to conduct myself in a way that is pleasant and fun to be around when I have this gaping hole dead center in my chest.

The other night I was sitting on the couch talking to Pink Marble.  She told me she misses me when she is at his condo.  It was the first time she expressed an emotion like that to me in a long time.  I started crying and told her how much I missed her when she is gone.  She was consoling me.  My 12 year old was telling me it was going to be ok.  Somehow, she already knows that it's going to be ok and I don't.  She has somehow seen into the future and can tell me that I am going to be ok even though I am convinced I will never be ok.  It's amazing to me how my Marble's have handled this divorce.  They have gone through a lot of changes in their lives.  But they hang on.  They look for the good in situations.  They look for the good in other people.  People they shouldn't look for the good in they do.  Is that a reflection on how I've raised them?  That even though that woman has so painfully and mercilessly driven a wedge between our family, these Marble's (well two of them) can find good in her??

When the Marble's were younger and we lived in Michigan and we had the influence of family around I was always doted on for my creative ways for redirecting bad behavior and being able to use words to express what I wanted my Marble's to do instead of actions.  And, I would tell the Marble's the same things.  "Use your words," I'd tell them when they'd come to me whining about something  "Put on your listening ears."  I'd say and with a smug look on their face they'd reach their hands to their ears and twist as if they were putting on "listening" ears.  When they would hit each other I'd take their little chubby hands and brush it over their sisters arm and say, "Nice touches."  Those little things I did with them when they were little were seen as great alternatives to spanking or time outs.  I never agreed with spanking and time outs weren't anything that I was a fan of, so I always tried to redirect the behavior.  Even when the Marble's would fall, they'd look at me about to cry and I'd start clapping my hands and act all happy and immediately their demeanor would change and the tears would disappear and they'd get right back up and press on.

I need to press on, too, don't I?  I want to but my thinking is the person who was my cheerleader, the man who stood up and clapped for me when I fell has left and I'm laying here on the ground listening for that positive energy and it's not coming.

Whenever my friend ends her messages with me she writes, "You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have."  Somehow I have managed to be strong enough to get me through this far and my Marble's have shown tremendous strength.  Because, she's right.  Right now, being strong IS the only choice I have.

Fuck.

Modern Family

Last night on Modern Family Jay Pritchett said of his divorce that staying with his children when they were little was more important to him than divorcing his wife. 

I wish more men thought this way.

He went on to say that he waited until his children were grown to get his divorce. 

Choosing to stay with your family over getting a divorce to be with your skank who lives 1200 miles away would have been the RIGHT thing to do.  But, doing the right thing doesn't apply to him anymore.  And that causes me so much confusion and sadness.

Clarity

In my moment of clarity, I know I did nothing wrong.  But those moments are once a week at best.  They come when someone says something poignant to me, something that no one else has said yet and I think to myself, "Yeah.  It's not me.  It was him."

 The self-loathing is what I'm good at, though.  And issues that were put on the back burner throughout the course of my marriage have crept back up with such force that they have taken over me and I accept all my flaws as truths.

 I need to not do that.  I need to, everyone once in a while, listen to what those people are telling me and not brush off their compliments.

Today, not only did I accept a compliment but my moment of clarity lasted well over nine hours. 

What I determined as I emerged from my haze is that if given the opportunity and the temptation, a man will cheat.  That husband of yours that you think is so loyal and true to you will screw you over in a second if the time is right.  You think it won't happen to you?  So did I. 

My marriage wasn't perfect.  I know that.  But, it was my marriage and to me it was as perfect as it could get.  We didn't enjoy the same past times but what time we didn't spend together on our own social lives we made up for in family time.  We did a lot of things as a family.  We were a phenomenal team.  The way we handled situations as a couple were admired by our family and friends.  But then this other person showed up and while I was off working overnights so our Marble's didn't have to live in day care, he was drinking on the lanai reminiscing about 1990 with his old girlfriend from high school.  That's the opportunity part there.  I wasn't there to monitor the situation, therefore he felt he could carry on this affair.  Then the temptation came and it was all downhill.  Somehow she made it seem like life with her would be so much better than life with me and he took the bait and away he went.

Any one of you could have this happen to you.  All it takes is that one email or facebook friend request, one girl giving him the googly eyes at work and paying a little bit more attention to him that you are and suddenly what was a loving, trusting marriage falls apart right before you and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

These moments of clarity tend to make me a man hater.  I guess I am entitled to feel like that right now.  Perhaps it's better to hate on all the males in the world then hate on myself?

I'm still flip flopping between denial and depression.  Only the denial now comes in the form of wondering how he could just not help me at all financially with bills.  The mortgage payment is stressing me out.  It's so important that it gets paid.  I don't want to have another foreclosure.  We worked so hard to buy this house, why would he just want to see it fall apart?  This is where his children live.  This is our home.  Doesn't he see that?  What part of his brain is allowing him to make these decisions that are so negatively affecting us? 

I'm so sick of crying every day.  I am so sick of hearing what my friends have done over the weekend with their families and I look around that my family that has been torn apart.  I want to just stop talking to everyone because I don't really care about what anyone has going on in their lives right now.  I am starting not to even care what is going on in mine.  I hate myself for how I can't pull myself out of this and move forward.  I hate how I look.  I hate that my hair is frizzy and thighs are big and my ass is huge.  I hate that flab of skin I have that is a constant reminder of how fat I was and how I still haven't reached the goal that I have been striving to achieve for years now.  I have ugly hands.  My chin has zits all over it.  My eyes are blood shot and red and puffy because I cry nonstop. 

Why did he do this to us?  Why doesn't he care?

When Something Was Broken, We'd Fix It

So much for positive thinking.  It's entirely too difficult to think positive when everything around me is a constant reminder of the poor choices he made.

I saw this today online:

This was us.  We always fixed it. 

Our marriage was not broken when he had his affair.  Sure, he will tell you otherwise, but I can say with all confidence that our marriage was 100% intact.  I am not sure what he felt was missing although he has run the gamut telling me all his reasons.  The best one he said was the one where he told me he felt like a stay-at-home-dad because I worked nights and he had no one to talk to at night.  I find this amusing because for almost eight years I was a stay-at-home-mom at his request.  He was all about me staying home with the kids until the last one went to school full time and that is exactly what I did.  Then, when I did get a job I needed to find one with health insurance.  I found the job I currently have and the only way to make it work was for me to accept the position on nights. 

When I left the house in the evening for the 14 days a month that I worked, I wasn't out gallivanting around town whoring it up with a beer in my hand. I actually was doing a very stressful job that was completely different than the stress I was used to when I was home raising the Marbles.  I supplemented our income so he could have his boat, our mini vacations, nice houses and reliable cars.  If me working nights was such a big deal why didn't he tell me before it got so bad for him that he had to resort to answering calls from his exgirlfriend whom he dated in 1991. 

What does it take for a man to toe the line between doing what's right and having an affair?  He told me that she liked to fish, go to the beach and drink beer.  He knew 13 years ago I didn't enjoy any of those things.  He told me that he never fell out of love with her.  Yet, every time her name was ever mentioned he wasted no time talking about what a psycho she was. 

My heart is completely broken and he tells me that wasn't his intention.  What did he think was going to happen to me when he did these things?  Did he really think I wasn't going to figure it all out?  Did he really think that morning he returned home from his "fishing trip" where he didn't catch any fish, he didn't have a sunburn and he didn't take his boat that I was really buying that he indeed was in Everglades City fishing?  And, I think about that friend of his who invited us to dinner one night.  I went because the Marble's wanted me to go dancing with them.  That friend of his knew about the affair yet looked me in the eyes and talked to me as if he was the most honest, trustworthy friend a person could have.  It's amazing what kind of people there are in this world.  I never thought I married a man that could so quickly turn his back on this family and move right on to another relationship. 

He doesn't have to feel what being alone feels like since he jumped into things with her.  He probably gets text messages from her in the morning telling him to have a good day when I was able to say it to his face.  He has that reassurance that when things get bad there is someone there on his team to listen to him vent and offer a sympathetic ear.  He hasn't felt that pain of feeling your heart break into a thousand tiny pieces all while still trying maintain a career and home life.  He has no idea what it feels like to fall asleep at night knowing that when you wake up all the remnants of this divorce will continue to play out hour after hour, minute by minute. 

When something was broken, we would fix it.  He would fix it.  He fixed everything.  Why didn't he feel it was important enough to fix what he felt was broken in our marriage? 

An Attempt at Positivity

Maybe it's the fact that Cheat Day was today and I gorged on pretty much everything that passed in front of my mouth.  Maybe it's due to the fact that I was able to get in some serious house maintenance today which included work that he would do outside the house that involved weed whipping and driving the tractor.  Or maybe it's the Ambien.  Whatever it is, I am determined to come up with ten things that I feel positive about starting right now (and I am going to write them in complete sentences):

1.  I feel positive today because I was able to find Pink Marble an article of clothing in the size she needed at JCPenney where I have convinced myself it's the only store that sells these specific articles of clothing for women in sizes suitable for every woman's body.  And Pink Marble was pleased.

2.  I was asked to wash Yellow Marble's hair today while she was in the bath tub.  This was something we used to do when she was younger.  I'd be scrubbing her hair and ask her questions like she was at the hair salon.  Today's question was, "So, did you hang out with any cool people today?"  (ME! ME! Say your mom!!)  She giggled and said, "Yea, Myselffffffff!"  It made me laugh.  We also made sure we wash all of her hair which includes, obviously, the hair on her head, her eyebrows, her back hair, her armpit hair and her chest hair.  She tries to convince me every time that she doesn't have hair on her back, armpits or chest but I believe it's there and needed to be cleaned.

3.  I am thankful that I was able to get the weed whipper started and was able to edge around the house and flower beds and around the palm trees.  I even wore my gardening gloves.  Then I charged the battery on the tractor and got it to start and cut the grass.  Now, my outside looks like the Jones'.

....this is getting difficult.....

4.  The Marble's have been happy all weekend because we have the Blue's dog visiting us while they are away on a mini vacation.

5.  I am thankful for a new friend that I have and whom I will soon be working with that has a great, funny, positive attitude and I am looking forward for great things to happen in the months to come.

6.  I feel better after reading an article on DETNEWS.com that a reporter wrote about the suicide of that football player.  The reporter wrote about his own battles with depression and some of the things he talked about were things that I have felt.  It made me feel like in dealing with this depression I'm not abnormal.  A few things that I took away from the article was where he wrote, "With depression, there are no bright colors. A good day is a light gray or a muted blue. Most days are just gray. A bad day is pitch black."
Most of my days right now are gray.  A few times a week I travel into the pitch black.  I haven't seen the light gray or muted blue until today.  He also discussed his philosophy, " As a working philosophy, "just get through the day," doesn't leave much room for joy or happiness or contentment or love or anything other than the relief of getting through. An unanswerable question for people like me is, "What do you do for fun?"  I realized that my depression causes me not to really do anything fun.  So, maybe I need to start back doing the things I enjoyed.  Like running.....I'd love to start running again and maybe if I just "get through" that first one it will be the catalyst to get me through more.

7.  I am happy tonight because I have my two Marble's home with me.  One is in my bed snoring away and the other claimed her spot on the couch.  I love having them with me.  Pink Marble is spending the night at her friends house.

....I need to come up with three more....

8.  I got to take a two hour nap today on the softest, whitest sheets ever.  They feel like I am sleeping on the softest cotton.

9.  I'm thankful the first question my mom asked me today when she called me was how I was doing.  Because, even though I might sound fine on text, facebook or even just shooting the shit on the phone, I'm not fine.  I'm exactly what that above article said, "Just getting through the day".  But, I appreciate her asking because it shows she is thinking about me and that she cares.

10.  Finally, I feel blessed that I have the most wonderful Marble's on the planet.  They are my strength and they are what keeps me going.  Had all this happened and I didn't have them, I would be making a lot different decisions that I am now.  I hope one day they see just how much a mother can love her child and how ferocious that love can be when it gets tested.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120505/OPINION03/205050381#ixzz1u408Oj9h

Going From Mom to The Asshole

The transition from Mom to Asshole has been a quick one.  It's one I have not noticed and didn't realize it was even taking place, but it's pointed out to me on a regular basis.  No, the Marble doesn't come out and say I'm an asshole but her attitude toward me is one of utter disdain.

Sometimes I get caught up wallowing in my own sadness that I forget to mention there are three Marble's that have had their entire world pulled out from underneath them.  Three Daddy's Girls have gone from seeing Him every day to sporadic visits here and there when I have to go to work.

I see my Marble's every day.  Even on the nights that I work I pick them up from school and in the mornings when I return home from work I sit in my den on my cute little red Ikea chair and watch out the window waiting for Him to bring them home from an overnight at his house.  Blue Marble always exits his car and runs directly into my arms.  I kiss her forehead and she happily marches into the house to shower for school.  She refuses to shower at his house or let him pack her a lunch.  The other two Marble's do not show this same affection toward me when they are leaving Him.  I can see the pain in their faces when they have to say goodbye.  It seems like each time they have to leave Him their hugs get longer and tighter.  Yellow Marble is the youngest and perhaps the one who most craved the bonding that she had with him.  It's something that I can't duplicate.  It's a bond that she had with him from the time she was a baby.  I can see in her face her desire to have him back in the house but also knowing that him coming back brings anger.  She puts her fingers in her ears when there is yelling so she doesn't have to hear it.  She used to be the happiest child.  She was adaptable to any situation.  Now, her tantrums are frequent and her need to be held and cuddled makes her attached to me all the time.  I don't think I'm an asshole to her.  I think she just goes with the flow and whatever someone says that sounds good at the time she will agree with them but for the most part she doesn't want to talk about anything.

I'm the asshole to the Pink Marble and it's apparent to everyone who is around us.  Pink Marble and I have always butted heads.  She is intelligent beyond her years academically and tries to interject that intelligence into her every day life.  This causes the problem of her thinking she knows everything.  A trait typical in her age but one that needs to be corrected when she thinks she knows everything about affairs and divorce.

I am on the fence about how much I should divulge about the situation.  She knows a lot because unfortunately when he was still living here she got tossed around in the fighting and was able to understand what was going on though she didn't thoroughly comprehend the magnitude of what was to come.  Now that the situation is brimming over with tension, hostility and pain she has found that blaming me for all the worlds problems somehow negates the fact that her dad left our family for a girl he dated he dated in high school and thus had an affair on his wife (her mom) after a good twelve years of marriage.

He brings this woman around my Marble's and all of a sudden Pink Marble sees unicorn, cotton candy and rainbows.  Suddenly, the woman who, after given two chances by me to leave my husband the FUCK ALONE decided it wasn't her responsibility to do that kept answering His calls to her knowing his marriage was fragile.  I still believe that had she been a decent woman and hung up the phone and let Him figure things out with me, then him and I wouldn't be in this situation.  And, I know this from experience.  I know what it's like to have a hurting wife come to you and say, "Back off".  I know what it feels like to then have anger for being told to back off and how it feels to let that anger stew.  I also know how it feels to back off and allow a marriage that was balancing on sand attempt to reform and turn into stone.  It can't be done when a third person is involved.  It took me a while to fully grasp what I might have been doing in my friendship with one person, was causing pain in my other friendship.  I am a good person.  I never want to hurt anyone least of all people who I consider family.  It was a no brainer for me to step out of the picture for months to allow these two friends of mine the chance to repair or sever this marriage.  However it was going to play out, it was not my place to be involved.

I wished that this woman would have done the same thing because then I wouldn't have one Marble thinking I'm the Asshole because I want her home on a weekend that his skank was is in town.  What Pink Marble fails to understand and I know that she is too young to really know how a marriage works but in explaining it to her, Pink Marble needs to understand that when a wife/mother says to a woman who is compromising the marriage to get the fuck away for a while, that woman should do just that.  But, here's the thing, this woman couldn't because she had no one to go back to .  She failed at her own marriage and then decided to come fuck with mine.  In the process of her fucking with my marriage she also meddled her way into fucking with my Marble's and a mothers love is something fierce (isn't it Sandra?) and I will be God Damned if I allow my Marble's any additional seconds in the presence of that Home Wrecker than the court is going to allow.  Quite frankly I hope the court sees what he has done and sees how he has exposed our Marble's to this terrible situation.

In the meantime, while I am left picking up the pieces of my marriage, I am also left trying to convince my beautiful, round faced, blue eyes hidden in black framed glasses Pink Marble that my love for her is not conditional on anything.  I want her to know that it's ok to like this woman or like the fact that he is happy with her.   But, it's not ok to think I'm an Asshole because I don't.  It's also not ok to mull around the house with a scowl on your face because you can't spend more weekends with him.  The weekends he doesn't have the Marble's he has been flying to Michigan and the weekends he does have them this woman is in town.  I am sure they are having a lovely bonding time with her being in the picture.  I am sure they are on the road to healing when they have to share a small condo with a complete stranger.

But, I'm the asshole even though their rooms are tidy when they get home, their lunches are made, their clothes are clean, there is food in the fridge. Pink Marble has a bag of Teryaki beef jerky waiting for her in the morning.  Yellow Marble has her milk. Blue Marble her bagels.  I know how each one of them likes their lunches and the right way to put them in their bags.  I tell them how beautiful they are and how proud I am of them in all the things they have achieved this year.  I am their biggest protector when it comes to things that they need to be protected about and I will fight for them whether they want that fight or not.  But, somehow, doing these things makes me the Asshole.

I didn't run out on my family for a girl who I met on facebook.  I didn't promise my wife i'd work things out and in tears reconcile only to be back in this affair-mode the next day.  I didn't grab a gray suitcase and storm out of the house with the Marble's standing there screaming for me not to leave.  In fact, I was the one wiping the tears, holding them in my arms and comforting them the entire weekend he left and no one knew where he was.

I'm sick of being the Asshole.  I hope one day these Marble's will realize that i was hurting too through all of this.  That I was new at divorce just like they are and i was just trying to do the best that I knew how to do at that time.  If being the best mom I can be in the wake of my depression gets me one gigantic hug a day, I'd take being called The Asshole because I know my Marble's and they know I love my hugs, and when I have them in my arms they know they're safe.  I'll be the Asshole until I am sure that all their needs have been met and I will stop at nothing to protect them from toxic people in their lives.

Stuck in Reverse. Again.

I'm giving him a lot of my energy.  I spend countless hours mulling over the things I used to do for him and how I am reminded that I am not doing those things anymore.  I used to keep two baskets in our linen closet in the bathroom each one containing our underwear.  It's silly to discuss on here, but I'd see his underwear basket everyday and as the pairs dwindled down and only his least favorite pairs remained, I started up the washer to make sure his favorite ones were clean.  I find myself wondering if his favorite ones are clean today.

I very much enjoyed being a wife and mother.  Those two things were the things I set out to do in life.  Ask my friends when we were younger and it was a no brainer that I was going to be the first of us to get married and have children.  And sure enough I was.  I spent eight years at home raising my Marble's and taking care of the house.  I took care of him too.  I thought I did at least.  I guess I didn't hold up my end of the bargain.

I started dealing with some major issues after my grandpa passed away in 2008.  The loss of him changed me deeply and changed how I viewed death in general.  As my grandpa was entering the last stage of Alzheimer's I flew up to Michigan to visit him in the hospital and stayed for three weeks.  I was told that he wouldn't know who I was so I prepared myself for that and upon entering his hospital room he was calling out to the nurses, "Rita.  Rita??"  Rita was my grandma.  He thought the nurses were her taking care of him.  I sat down at this bedside and he had no clue who I was.  I talked to him like I would have talked to him any other time before the Alzheimer's took over and as we spoke he was wadding up the blanket on his bed into a very tightly wound square.  After a while, when the blanket was wrapped tight and neatly he turned to me, handed me the blanket and said, "Here Bug, go put this in the shed."  I was his Bug.  I worked with him in his shed.  He knew it was me sitting there.

 The last time I saw my grandpa was about a week later and I was again sitting in his hospital room this time with my mom and he was talking to me about helping him change a tire on a car that was out in the hallway of the hospital.  The Alzheimer's took over his amazing mind and left him disorientated and confused.  I told him I'd help him change the tire.  I asked him if he wanted me to go into his shed and get his tools.  It was easier for me to go along with his delusions then try to tell him that there was no car in the hallway of the hospital and that all his tools were no longer available to him.  I knew that day that I was going to be returning to Florida and that it was going to be the last time I saw him alive.  I cried in my moms arms in the hallway of the hospital after my emotional goodbye to my grandpa and I never laid eyes on him again.

About two weeks later I got a call at my work that he had passed away.  When I returned home from work, I feel into the arms of my husband and cried.  His warm embrace was just what I needed at that moment when I had lost the most wonderful man in my life.  He stayed up almost the entire night with me and I laid with my head on my chest, my tears wetting the skin on his chest.  He stroked my head and comforted me.  That was the last time that I felt sadness until this situation with the divorce.  Only now when I cry, he isn't here to hold me.  I don't even think he cares that I am crying daily about all of this.  He tells me hurting me was never his intention, but what did he think this was going to do to me?  Once my grandpa died, my husband was the only man left in my life to play the role of protector, caregiver, companion.  But, how he's gone too.

I have cried so much lately that my eyes are constantly red and puffy.  I look and feel like shit.  All I want to do is take my medication and sleep in hopes that the next day I wake up something will be different.  I know my reality is that I will end up going through tomorrow just as lost as I have gone through the last several months.  It is complete and total bewilderment.  Life now is sadness.  Moving on feels like an insurmountable task.

The "D" Word Out of My Marriage...Yea Right!

He used to tell me that we have taken the "D" word right out of our marriage.  That "D" word being DIVORCE.  When my friends would have marital problems I would tell them about our solution to remove divorce from the equation entirely and then you are forced to work things out.  You can imagine my disbelief when the D word made its way not only into my marriage but into my life.

When you have been told something for years and you believe it with everything that you are, it's absolutely devastating to then one day watch it slip away from you.  When I questioned him about his rule to take the D word out of a marriage he told me, "Things change."  Yes, things change.  Things like the weather, the leaves on a tree in Fall, our bodies after 12 years of marriage, our financial stability, the tide from day to night, your career....yes, things do change but THIS!!!!  I didn't realize we were in need of such a big change??

Betrayed doesn't even begin to describe the way I feel about this whole situation.  Betrayed doesn't have enough letters or syllables or oomph to even put a finger on just how awful it is to be told that your husband is in love with someone else. I feel like my whole marriage was a lie.

Everyone keeps telling me it will get better.  And that's great!  But when?  When will it get better?  And how do I deal with the right now when it's not better?  No one is telling me how I am supposed to get through this crap of feeling like shit everysinglefuckingdayoftheweek.  No one is telling me how to cope with being completely blindsided and then constantly having this affair thrown into my face and suffocating me until I am choking and gagging.  I realize that someday it will be better.  I realize the people telling me this probably have no idea what else to say to me at this point.  I realize that those words are fillers for a whole slew of people who have no idea what it's like to go through this or know what it's like but have come through it and see the light.  I want to know how I am supposed to handle the right now.  The this minute.  I want to know how I am supposed to believe anything anyone says to me when he was telling me shit for years and obviously it meant nothing.  He watched as his family members behaved in the exact same way that he behaved and he would say, "That's not going to be us.  Those poor kids have to go through that."  Then he did just what he was lamenting about not ever doing!  Who does that? 

Who fucking does that?  Apparently he does.

The Five Stages

One of the requirements to get divorced in Florida is to take an online parenting class.  Apparently, some big whig in some big office somewhere thinks divorcing couples will benefit from a "four hour", $40 class that you can basically skim through in about 45 minutes. What I didn't need to learn about how to co-parent the class made up for in talking about how adults handle the divorce. 

What I found most fitting to my situation was the Five Stages of Grief.  Much like how I had talked about the other day that this divorce feels like a death, people who are divorcing often grieve the same way someone would who has lost a loved one.  I guess I am normal in the way I am dealing with this.  I have gone through the first three stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining and I am stuck on the fourth:  Depression and I haven't even gotten close to reaching the fifth: Acceptance.

The first stage is Denial.  I was in denial for several months and sometimes I still feel like I am in denial.  The course said that it is ok to be going through a couple of the grief stages at the same time so, again, I am normal.  When I first found out that he wanted to get divorced and that he was "in love" with someone else I kept thinking that it wasn't true.  I thought that he was just confused or upset with me and he needed to cool off and he'd come back.  My friend kept telling me that I needed to realize that he wasn't coming back and I would say to her, "I just can't believe this is happening."  She would tell me that I had to believe it. But I couldn't.  None of it seemed real to me because I was so invested in my marriage that I never thought he would do anything remotely close to what he did.  As I tried to sort out all these feeling I had I eventually found myself moving into the next phase of grief which is Anger.

Once the reality of him not coming back home settled in I got pissed.  How could he do this to us?  How could he just walk out on his family for someone else?  How could he look into the face of his little girls and say that they aren't important enough to be with and just take off leaving us alone?  I felt an enormous amount of guilt which triggered my anger even more.  I'd scream at him so loud while standing in my garage that I was sure the neighbors were going to call the police on me.  I was enraged at the sight of him because all I could think about was what he was doing with some other woman.  He was sharing things with another person that he should be sharing with me.  He couldn't resist the temptation and instead acted upon his weakness and in doing so destroyed a wonderful family.  So, while I had all this anger I'd see him and stage three Bargaining would happen.  Or what I like to call "Being Pathetic".

I think I have been pathetic more than any other thing during this whole process.  If I wasn't bargaining with him, then I was bargaining with God, myself, deceased relatives, anyone that I could think of that could help me get through the most horrible time in my life.  The "What if's" played out in my head constantly.  I still think that what if I had been a better wife?  What if I didn't work nights?  What if I listened more or talked less?  ...would he had stayed.  Then there are the "If Only's".  These ones fuck me up all the time when they start rummaging through my head.  If Only I had given him more sex.  If only I had lost more weight?  If only I had seen the lapse in communication and tackled it instead of withdrawing into myself and succumbing to my own issues.  There were days he'd come to the house and I'd beg him to come back.  I'd cry so heavily that I'd feel like I was going to be physically ill.  "I will do anything."  I'd tell him.  "Anything.  Just please give me another chance.  I promise I will make it better."  Make what better I have no idea.  But, whatever it was that took him away, I was willing to mend to bring him back.  I would have done anything too.  I would have bargained for whatever he wanted to have him back with me.  It didn't work.  I am still alone.  He is there in his condo and I am here in our bed, alone.

So, now I've reached stage four Depression.  I recognize that I am depressed.  I look at myself in the mirror every day and I feel like I am a walking blob.  Some days I feel like if someone would just give me a hug, I'd feel better.  And, most days the Marble's are there to hug on me and it's comforting but a hug from your child and a hug from your spouse are two entirely different things and when one type of hug is missing you search it out in other people.  I go into work and hope that someone will hug me there.  I see my friends and hope that they will hug me.  Then I wonder if I am holding onto that hug for longer than I should.  Some days, i want to hug someone and never let go.  I want them to just pick me up and move me like six months into the future so I don't have to go through this anymore.  The depression is awful.  It consumes every part of who I am and makes me completely miserable.  I worry that because he left me that my friends will tire of me and leave me too.  I worry that I am too much to handle right now and if the person who I thought would stand by me for better or worse would leave me then why wouldn't my friends just leave me too.

The depression is noticeable at work.  People ask me why I am so quiet yet I still can't say it out loud without crying.  I can't say that I'm getting divorced because i will break down.  So I just say that I'm tired as I am fighting back tears.  I was asked today what diet I am on because I look like I'm losing more weight.  It's the Depression Diet.  The diet that I hope no one ever has to go on.  I am stuck in this stage and I can't move from it.  It actually feels like this is my normal right now.  Feeling like shit is the new normal for me.  I can't see myself being happy if all these changes are going to happen.  I see myself being stuck in this depression for quite some time so being able to move onto the fifth step is nearly impossible to even think about right now.  That fifth step being Acceptance.   I haven't even really accepted that I am getting divorced let alone accept anything else that comes along with it.  At some point maybe I can write a blog post about Acceptance and how I finally reached that milestone.  Until then, the weight on my chest remains.  The tears in my eyes keep coming down and the ache in my heart is profound.

Brick Wall

The hardest times for me are at night.  After I put the Marble's to bed I lay in my room and think about how much there were things still left that I wanted to do in my married life.  As a family, we moved to Florida almost six years ago to build a life for our children that we weren't able to provide while living in Michigan.  I sat back and watched as he moved up in the company and eventually was given the opportunity to further his education and become part owner which was his ultimate goal.  While that was all happening, I worked nights so the Marble's didn't have to be in daycare and it allowed me the ability to be there for them during the day even if that meant I went to their school functions in a zombie state because I had been up all night.  The important thing was that I was there. 

When the time came that we were able to buy a house I was excited.  Even though we hired a realtor, I did all the searching.  I knew exactly what I wanted and when the house came on the market that had everything I had wished for we were the first inside to see it and the first to make an offer on it.  To me buying a house meant being in Florida was official.  We had planted our roots and our Marble's had a home, not just some house we were renting.  Buying our own home meant no more moving year after year.  It meant we had a little piece of Florida that was ours for us to build memories in that a landlord couldn't take away from us.  I was my happiest in my house because we had worked so hard to walk through that front door of a place that was finally ours.

Over the year and half that we lived in the house together we were happy.  At least I thought we were happy.  Everyone else thought we were happy too.  There was a sense of accomplishment that I felt and I thought that he felt it too.  We set out to do a series of things and the last one was buying a house and we did it and now it was time to set goals for the next several years of our life.  We talked about traveling with the kids to the Grand Canyon or the two of us going to the Caribbean.  He would joke that I hated the beach and I would tell him if we went to the beach on a vacation I'd enjoy it.  We discussed college for the Marble's and how one day we'd like to live on the water so he could have his boat behind the house and fish off the dock.  I wanted those things for us.  I saw a future of us babysitting our grandkids and he being just as an amazing grandpa as he was a father.  Then suddenly it all came to a screeching halt.  It stopped so fast I didn't even have time say "wait, hold on...there's still more to do."  It felt like I was running full steam right into a brick wall.

So, now I feel like I am standing at that brick wall just staring at it.  I stare at it every day and wonder why it's there.  What did I do to deserve it to be in my way?  Why won't it crumble so I can move on with the journey that I was on?  While I am still standing there staring at it, he has already found a way around it and is swiftly moving forward with the life he found on the other side of that wall. 

I constantly think about what's going to happen if the Marble's and I have to leave the security of our house.  The one thing I want more than anything is for us to be able to stay here because this is home.  The Marble's have moved around way too much and with all that is going on the last thing I want for them is to have to leave the memories and comfort of their house.  I feel angry that he left us here without him.  I feel sadness when the Marble's say, "Mom, can I sleep on Dad's side of the bed tonight?" Then they pause and correct themselves by saying, "I mean the side you don't sleep on."  I tell them they can still call it "Dad's side".  Because for 12 years it was his side.  That was the side that they laid with him on his chest when they were babies and slept soundly.  That was the side that they snuggled up with him at night when they couldn't sleep.  That was the side of the bed they knew to go to at night when they were scared and needed comfort.  It will always be his side.  I still look at that empty spot and think of it as his side. 

All the uncertainty and lack of closure is frightening.  The not knowing triggers enormous amounts of anxiety and prevents me from sleeping or being able to relax.  I just want my normal back.  I want that life back that I loved living with the person I loved living it with.  But, he changed it for me in a way that I could never be able to go back to and instead I am left to find a new normal by myself without the one person who always held my hand when things got rocky.  It's a lonely, depressing place.  Sometimes I think standing at that brick wall is safer than trying to see what's on the other side.

The Beginning

To understand what I have been going through, one must understand where I've been.  This situation stretches back several months all of which have consumed me with tears each and every day.  I actually can't recall the last time I didn't cry.  I had to have been sometime before Thanksgiving of last year.  Think it's impossible for someone not to cry for that many months in a row?  Well it's not.

It started in November with him telling me he wanted the big D word.  He said it and I laughed.  I was sitting on the lanai and he was across from me on the wicker couch and he said Divorce and it didn't register.  He's just mad at me because I went out the other night.  He is stressed out at work.  He doesn't want to really get divorced because there is nothing wrong in our marriage.  Why would he possibly not want to be married to me anymore?  We are the best team?! 

That night with my anxiety brimming and oozing out of me, I highjacked his cell phone and found the evidence that knocked me completely off kilter.  The photo of a girl on his phone.  It was late when I found it and I shook him from his sleep.  I asked him to explain the picture to me and he wouldn't.  That night started months of lies from a man who never once uttered a single lie about anything to me.  When I realized our trust had been compromised I stopped at nothing to try to scoop it all up and put it neatly back together. But, it always fell from my arms.

The night I found the picture on his phone, I took a picture of it on my phone and went to work the next night and stared at the girl in the photo.  She looked familiar.  She was someone I had met before.  But who?  It didn't take more than a day to figure it out.  When I confronted him it was another lie.  And then the lies continued for months after months after months.  I don't know if he thought I was really believing his lies and he was really fooling me or if he was just buying time to figure out what his next move was and he didn't really care how bizarre his lies were.  Either way, I saw right through it yet I wasn't sure how to handle the information that was coming in.  I knew everything about what he was doing, yet I didn't have the strength to admit that what I knew was going to change everything I knew to be normal for the past twelve years.

Finally, after therapy and arguments and tears from both of us thing erupted into an all out war that ended with the love of my life, the world's greatest dad I had ever known grabbing a little gray suitcase and walking out of our home we worked so hard to obtain.  And, in his departure he took my heart and ripped it from my chest and so carelessly tossed aside.  My feelings meant nothing anymore, though I doubt they meant anything leading up to that point.  The affair was in full swing and out in the open and I was left looking around wondering what the fuck just happened.

He blamed me for his actions but I didn't need him to blame me because I was already blaming myself.  I still blame myself.  I am that woman whose husband runs off  with another woman and then wonders what they could have done to kept him at home.  I can't even think right now of what I could have done because thinking about any of this causes that old friend Anxiety to creep up and completely consume me to where I can't even muster the strength to get out of bed or it causes me to delve into a cleaning frenzy where I am so zoned out even the Marble's know to just let me have my time on my hands and knees with a Magic Eraser cleaning the tops of the baseboards. 

I have been dealing with this now for five months.  He has been involved with her for probably longer.  I don't ask.  I don't want to know.  To know the details of his affair will only cause me to more pain.  I know some people would want to know everything.  I know some people would want every single detail.  But, I want to know nothing.  He was sneaking around and being secretive about the things he was doing.  He was lying about where he was and who he was talking to on his phone.  He put a passcode on his phone and changed his email and facebook passwords.  All things that indicated to me that there was something going on he didn't want me to know about.  So fine, I don't want to know. 

Where am I today?  The same place I was five months ago when he said Divorce.  The same place I was the weekend he left.  The same place I was over easter weekend when his girlfriend was here hanging out with my Marble's and our divorce papers weren't even filed yet.  The same place I was last night when I had to stand next to him at our Marble's school function and act like there wasn't this huge wedge between us.

Twelve years of marriage can be broken with one person coming back into a persons life and not having the decency to realize the marriage is fragile and back off when asked to do so.  Twelve years of happiness with the man who was my everything; my security, my friend, my teammate, my cheerleader can be ripped away from you because he can't resist the temptation and he wasn't strong enough to come to me and figure out how to fix it.  In that time, he moved on.  He move away from the marriage, the family, the life that we had built in Florida that I was so proud of and left for a fantasy.  I can't compete with fantasy.  So, I live in reality.  And my God this reality sucks.  It totally fucking sucks.