With this new chapter unfolding I am re-emerging into a new life a totally different person. Now I am a strong woman. It sounds really stupid saying those words out loud but it is true. For years and years I wanted out of my marriage, I knew it was wrong, I knew it was bad but I just didn't have the nerve to do it, to walk away. He had asked me many times over the years for a divorce but I had always asked him to stay. He had. I find it odd when I asked for it that he went so nuts and fought tooth and nail. I think it was more of his controlling personality and since he wasn't controlling it, then GOD DAMMIT, it wasn't happening.
Here's a little about me. I''m not an easy person to live AT ALL. I have an awful lot of energy. I can run many kids ragged in a short amount of time. I am just naturally high energy. I don't sit still. If I sit, I fiddle, with something, anything. I have to move. Always. I don't like going to movies cos that involves sitting. It drove my mother INSANE.
I also have quirks. I cannot deal with mess. Everything has a place, find it, use it. I can't deal with dirt, at all, ever. If I am stressed, I clean, always. I get stressed easily. I am a classic type A personality. I am a minimalist if given a choice, with kids this can't be but I would love to pick up this house and toss the freaking lot. More crap gets me more quirky, more quirky gets me more stressed. it's a circle.
I am highly strung. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am low maintenance and not at all fru fru but love the option. Compared to my sister I am all girl. I am kind and trust worthy. I love to give.
If you hurt me I am done with you forever. Once the door is closed by me it is closed forever, I do not care who you are.
He wasn't a bad person. Really he wasn't. He just wasn't the right person for me. Before the girls it didn't matter and I picked up all the slack without realising it but after 2 kids, the example I was setting to them was messed up. But I covered, all the time, it's what I do, I make things right.
Perhaps I shouldn't write this. Perhaps I should write it for the cathartic value and maybe someone who reads it will gain something from it.
This is going to be raw, unplugged and cover a lot of years. Most of it nobody knows except me. It's not bad, really. He was never a wife beater or anything terrible but I honestly believe he never ever loved me. We were great friends, the best of friends but when you give up your family and your country for one man you tend to cling to that one person and find all the good you can in them. I think he stayed in love with the girlfriend before me and on occasion I would find messages to her that he would write on Facebook. He would absent mindedly leave his page open, or perhaps it wasn't so absent mindedly. Of course he denied it. I wasn't jealous. I know that sounds so strange but I wasn't. I figured she was married now and he had married me and we had decades together I just didn't "get" why he wouldn't let it go. She had let it go and I learnt recently that she blocked him on all social media.
I won't go all the way back to the beginning as that would be nearly 30 years ago, THIRTY years, oh my. That's a long time. I can't tell you how many times, when I have told people that I am getting divorced, that they have said but after so many years why not just stay. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard it, I'd have a lot of dollars. But suffice to say with age comes experience and wisdom. I have always been a very stubborn person and as I always say about Lily, who shares this trait, one day it will serve her well, it's serving me well now. I have forged forward. My personality has emerged and I am strong. We were raised to be strong and independent yet we always knew if we needed anything, anything at all, our family was there, right there.
I was a kid when I met him and a kid when I married him. I lived at home and was a good kid, I came over here and worked as a nanny, met him and we got married pretty quick. I never lived alone, ever. Oh wait I did for a 10 months in London but I hated it and went home every chance I got. I think, as we all do, that I was pretty mature when I got married and started this life but looking back how could I have been? I had just turned 23 and had lived with him for 18 months prior. We got married in the UK and as soon as we got back he got me a job doing something I hated but I learnt to love it and stuck at it for 10 years. I went to college and studied something I wasn't very excited about and changed majors twice before finally saying STOP, I am doing what I want, not what you and your mother want and I became an LMT. That's when it all started to change. I enrolled in college.
He had had a good job a stable job for years but had walked out of it one day, just like that, while I was in school. Decided he needed a change. For a long time he didn't work and our savings dwindled. I worked a couple of days a week while going to school full time. He looked for work but nothing. He chose a career that was based solely on commission. There was never one commission cheque. We put our house up for sale. I put on a brave face, graduated school pretended it was for the best. We rented an apartment, things turned around again.
My career took off with a mind off it's own. I realised very quickly that I was very good at what I did, my client list was filled with all the professional athletes that live here. I worked morning, noon and night. I had a waiting list of people wanting to be in my care. We decided to start a family. It didn't happen so we made an appointment to see a fertility doctor. Off I went with 100% certainty that I was to blame for this. I was very skinny, not good, I had been bulimic for many years, not good (maybe I will touch on this again) I smiled, not good so we both knew, It was my fault. The tests started, things looked good something came up that was fixable, it was fixed. Then and only then was it his turn. hah, it wasn't my fault. I shouldn't have been blamed from the start. He wanted out, told me he wanted a divorce AGAIN. I was crushed. All my dreams went down the drain. I suggested we adopt but he wouldn't even discuss it. Finally we moved through this too with the assumption to all, that it was my problem, the reason we couldn't conceive. I was OK with it, what did it matter anyway.
After we bought home Lily our social circle opened WAY the heck up. I am a very social person and I loved it. We met couples and did things with them. Many times I did things with them as his work schedule is whacky. I started blogging and met more people. happy couples and I started to notice something. They were a team. Couples are a team.
Oh believe me I tried hard not to notice, really I did. I tried not to compare. One day a friend was complaining about the size of her bum and said but Mark, ( fake name) loves me just the way I am he thinks I'm beautiful. I realised at that very second that my own husband had never said that to me. It's ok don't get all upset. He had once told me I was fat, at 112lbs but had never said I was pretty or beautiful. I called him on it and he denied but wouldn't say it. Hmmm. It happened a lot. A friend would be ill and the spouse would support them. It didn't matter what it was. When he found out I was bulimic he went ballistic. I'm not proud of it, I'm not. It is in my past. My family doesn't even know, well they do now. Ask me anything and I will tell you. I am not anymore. I PROMISE. He threatened to leave. Told me it was a self mutilating behaviour and to get my shit together. Yeah, people that love one another do not do this. When we heard his Mother had died I turned to him and said something comforting and he told me to F*ck off.
Yet I stayed.
Don't stay. It doesn't have to be abusive. but that doesn't make it right.
You can be best friends, have fun together but it doesn't make you man and wife.
I chose to focus on the good stuff. The fun stuff.
I believe he is a good person but emotionally crippled.
This next part is really hard to admit.
Right before we bought Rosie home, She already had a name and a face I spoke up and said I couldn't do this again. I couldn't bring another child into this scam. he said he would work on it. We were a family, what about Lily. He was right. Kids need to parents.
I was right. I couldn't do it. I couldn't set this example to my girls.
I searched to the very depth of my soul and finally told him I wanted out. We agreed to take the girls to counselling. To get them comfortable with what was about to happen. But one night he got mad as hell at Lily over her pet fish and just screamed at her that Mummy is breaking up our happy home. Her little face still haunts me. She was gutted and terrified. I looked at him with a venom that sadly has not yet gone away and in that instant everything changed and I hated him. I went to grab Lily and she recoiled.
That part was resolved. I called a therapist the next day and He and I went to see her and then Lily went to see her. It's all been worked out. Lily doesn't have much in common with him and I am working hard on that. I love my father dearly and cannot imagine her not loving hers. But love cannot be forced. I've spent 27+ years proving this theory.
So here I am, a single mother of two.
It's pretty damned scary.
I chose it.
I will embrace it.
I will do anything and everything for my girls.
Oh and don't even ask me if I will do it again cos I will throw a bucket of water at you.
