nimh--
nimh wrote:Like, any attempt to add flourish to description would just violate the truth of it, or something..
Yes. <nods>
Thank you for the thinking and the answering.
Boomer~~
Thanks!!
Attempting some kind of explanation: I'd started writing about my husband and the beginning of our marriage about three months after his death--last December. I was laying a foundation, so I could ... work through my (our) last five years, and his death. I'd been avoiding thinking about it in a way that I knew was unhealthy. I was able to get these written and one or two more, but I haven't been able to go any further.
It's almost been a year since he died, but I'm still refusing to think about a lot of things that happened, and didn't happen. I try, but it's too horrible for me. I'm protecting myself from a spike in depression--so there are
movies I won't see if I think they're going to be too sad.
I think I'm writing it to
reclaim myself in some way.
I know this isn't pretty, and people may wonder why the hell I'm plastering it here. I have to see it, and own it and survive it. And, answer to it, I think. That's my best explanation, and not a good one.
If it gets awful and ugly, don't feel you have to say anything positive.
If it's boring to anyone, just scroll it. I don't want to kill the thread.
Better yet, if
anyone wants to examine or share something in your life, or just need to say something out loud, you are welcome here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The worst thing I did
I try to see things as they are. I know we have a tendency to see a skewed vision of events, so that we come out a little more innocent than we were, or arguably justified. I'll try to be as fair as I can telling this part of what happened. The rest is lost without the background.
My overbearing upbringing had done quite a job on me. If I have Psych 101 right, my id was completely pulverized, my ego was a wisp, running around the periphery of my mind, frantically trying to escape the crushing super ego that had my stomach in knots all the time.
So, like clockwork, when my son was born, my parent's standards crushed in on me--I immediately quit drinking, smoking, partying and anything remotely irresponsible. I transformed overnight. I was going to be a good mother. I lived sacrificially--I stopped short of beating myself with a cat of nine tails, but just short...
So, now I noticed how much he drank--that he became very tense and short-tempered if we weren't home at around 4 or 5 in the afternoon; later, understanding he'd needed a drink. Money was missing, bills were unpaid, he'd disappear, and I can't count the nights I sat stupidly crying by the phone, imagining him dead in a ditch, rather than where he was--in a strip club, tipping my rent money to someone who hadn't given birth to his children. It is still amazing to me how the mind tries to protect you, subconsciously preferring him in the ditch each time, no matter how many times the exact scene had played out before, with the same results... ...relevant, which was easier to accept.
Before, I'd maintained a degree of deference toward him as "the man" in the relationship. Seeing him so weak, and staggering around so often; I learned to despise the stupid, brainless look on his drunk face. I lost respect for him. I remember thinking, still an adherent of stereotypical, conservative roles, that if the house caught on fire (odd, I know), I couldn't rely on my husband to save me and his children. I'd have to save him. He would be unable to help me protect our children. His inability--or refusal--to be reliable on the spot to protect our children, began eating a hole in me. This one scenario and those like it, changed my feelings for him. I became aware that everything good that came to my children came from me--that I was working overtime, literally and figuratively, to try to counteract the damage my husband was doing to all of us. Every step forward I took, he shoved me back two, and the children with me.
However, he was a very gentle father. He never spanked either of our children. My son told me only recently, that the one time I asked my husband to discipline our son due to a clear violation, they went into my son's room, where my husband waled on some inanimate object, and cued my son when to yell. He said they were red-faced, suppressing laughter through the whole thing. That still makes me smile.
It was important to me to do the right things, possibly even moreso since my husband was amassing a repetoire of behavior that made me ashamed of my name. I taught our son's Sunday School class, volunteered in my daughter's grammar school class twice a week. I tried hard to do everything I should. The nights crying by the phone came more frequently, the lies were more careless, the utilities were shut off much more often. He took my paycheck and I never saw any of it again. His refusal to discuss our finances and the drinking caused constant, vicious arguments. I didn't want to fail at marriage. But, when I was arrested because of a lie he told me, I shut down on him. I quit loving him that day. I felt it happen. I told him I wanted a divorce. There was nothing of any value to fight over. I just wanted to put together a peaceful life, in a house where I knew whether or not the light bill had been paid.
During the "good cycles", I'd had glimmers of hopefulness and sympathy. I knew he had evil parents, who had alternately bailed him out of financial messes, after causing them with broken promises. I knew he had deep issues there. His stories of childhood still flashed across my thoughts, and they broke my heart for him. His life had been ruined by his parents before he ever had a chance to live it. The prospect of leaving him, though I knew I should, made me almost unbearably sad for him.
And, true to cliche, he'd be contrite, kind, attentive...The repetitive Alcoholic waltz... heaven for a while, then cycling back through Hell...no drinking...hidden drinking...light drinking...heavy drinking...convincing lies...sloppy lies. How many times do you hope? When I asked him for a divorce, his ready remark knocked the breath out of me. I'd been depressed <surprise!>, and had taken anti-depressants--his father was a very high-powered atty, well connected--and my husband said if I left, I'd never see my children again. He said he'd say I was mentally ill, and the anti-depressants proved it. Saying it now, it sounds crazy that I'd believe he could do that..but I had nothing, and his father was a
very powerful man locally. My children were everything to me, so I stayed put. I now hated him passionately. I wished him dead. The memory of those very real feelings was a special torture when, later, it was clear he soon would be.
I also started an affair. It was 1998, a month after our 18th anniversary. I didn't consciously have an affair to get back at him, but what he'd done to me all those years was nothing compared to the hell he went through over those six months.
I still say that affair saved my life. That, in no way, justifies it. Nothing justifies an affair, ...to me, anyway. It may
explain it. All those horrible years had beaten me down to an unrecognizable creature. I was ugly, sad and fat. The reason he had his father hire the PI, was that I lost weight, started caring how I looked, and sang in the kitchen again.
We all sat there marooned in a sea of acronyms and technical terms we'd never heard of before... it was awful.
