I met my husband when I was 18 and he was still just a boy. Fast forward five years and he came back into my life after a period of darkness. Back then a verbal declaration of love was all it took to have me. I'd have to go into my entire relationship history to explain why this ridiculous notion was a thing. But it was and I distinctly remember it was only a couple of weeks before the reality of the person I had let into my life became obvious. I tried to be laid back and cool about it, but the more I had to walk on eggshells the more I began to respond to his anger with my own. Everything that came out of my mouth was a criticism to be responded to with great wrath. The first time we argued he took a knife from the kitchen and ran out of the house threatening to use it on himself. I don't recall what I had said to incur such a reaction, all I remember is sitting on the stairs and crying wondering what the hell was going on. As I type it I am dumbfounded at the girl who did not run away from the madness that night. I often want to speak with my 23 year old self and tell her one day life wont be so lonely. Ten years ago the concept that I'd be truly content was an alien one.
I want to say that my marriage wasn't all bad. That we experienced good times, and on some level I like to think that we did. We had holidays and day trips and moments at home that weren't littered with bitterness and resentment but for the most part they weren't filled with love either. Perhaps a unity of indifference. Of familiarity. I didn't realise at the time that I was floating on a breeze. On the fact he hadn't called me a fat bitch for six months. He hadn't hit me for almost a year. I thought because we were married and lived in the same house that we were a family. But I was wrong. I had my son, who he had supposedly taken on as his own but never really treated him as such as the years went by, and our daughter who was somehow this tiny little thing that was too huge for him to ever take real responsibility of.
We seperated twice. Both on account of his wanting the life of a man who was neither married nor a father. And both those seperations came to an end because apparently that life wasn't sustainable after a while. And I was lonely again. He would tell me he loved me, and again that verbal declaration was all it took.We were these things which existed in the same house but were a seperate entity. He could maintain some sort of love and devotion for a while. And I found him most supportive during the first six months after a seperation. But it never lasted. And deep down I knew it wouldn't because I knew it did not come naturally to him. I had to include him in my social circle, but I also had to put up with him sending sexual messages to women at work. Women who did not respond to his advances, and therefore women I was never allowed to meet. I was not included in his social circle, and the reasons were always lies.I was not allowed to join him for work social occasions. But I was expected to be in the crowd at his "gigs". Because that was the real issue in the end. It wasn't the fact that he said I was a control freak, it was the fact I had no control over my marriage and in my vain attempts to grasp some I was becoming the sort of person I didn't want to be. And I wasn't the sort of person he wanted me to be either. He wanted me to stay at home and do the housewife thing and keep my mouth shut when he wanted drunken nights on a wednesday coming in at 4am stinking of booze and waking me up before having the get the kids up at 7. He wanted me to say yes every time he had a hairbrained idea that it would be ok to go off for an entire weekend to a different city under the pretense that it was for another "gig"when in reality it was just another piss up. He wanted me to stay quiet and accept these things and support them without question while I drowned under the weight of my own body and mind.
I do not mean to sound bitter or paint a one sided picture in black and white. Perhaps there is another version of events, his version, where a suffocated man had to live in misery with a woman who did nothing but beg him to spend time with his children and put "the music" second. But that is not my story. And I can't carve any understanding for this other version. I did not live it. But I acknowledge that there are 2 sides to a marriage, whether it is a happy or a sad one. And I can only do that now that I know what it is to be loved, and supported and be a priority to someone. And perhaps this entire blog post reads as a whining testament from someone who hasn't found the strength to move on. I write this not as an epitaph but as a witness statement, entirely removed from the events as if I watched them unfold upon someone else. I thought I was happy and content. Because I had made my marriage "work" despite the seperations and violent outbursts and verbal abuse. We still lived under the same roof didn't we?
But the truth was my marriage was over long before I found the strength to walk away. My mental health has never been what it could have been. Even as a child I was melancholy and lonely and would sit at my window trying to piece together my emotions. It followed me into adulthood and manifested itself in one bad decision after another. But it also became my anchor, tethering me to something that wanted to be free. Did I ever really have a marriage? We had nothing to show for it save for our daughter and I had already proved being a good mother did not mean I had to participate in a partnership. I'd been doing this shit on my own all along. I remember being pregnant and my excitement each time she had kicked inside me. I hadn't shared that with the father of my son, but now I had a husband to share my joy. But he had been indifferent and put his hand on my belly because I'd asked him to not because he cared to feel our child move. In the end I had stopped asking him to feel it. And I had buried that memory until this very moment of writing it down. When you tell yourself that you're part of something it numbs the loneliness. But not forever. And when it catches up to you, its hard to reconcile. I'd been alone the entire time.
And it wasn't until I left him that I truly fell apart. It was a day like any other when I finally broke. He walked into the living room and announced that he was going away for the weekend to do another gig/weekend of drunkenness with his friends. He didn't ask me, he didn't care. I needed a break from the kids and I don't know what changed inside me. He'd heard me say it so many times before but when I said it was over this time I somehow knew that I meant it. He did his thing of agreeing it was for the best and therefore being able to make out it was a mutual decision. I heard he told people it was his decision but I was the one who packed up and left. By the end of the week I was gone. Previously it had always been him to move out, but this time by me going and taking the kids I hoped it would prove how final it was. My son wanted nothing more to do with him. Their relationship was non existant by the time we left. He'd witnessed the abuse over the years, even when I'd been pregnant it hadn't stopped. My daughter was too young to know the truth. And it hurts because I have to allow this man in her life. This man who does the bare minimum and acts like father of the year. This man who entered into another abusive relationship and allowed her to witness it as my son had witnessed it before. This man who threatened to take me to court if I didn't let him see her. This man who still continues to get drunk at weekends and is too hungover to do anything of value with her. But I digress...
I fell apart when I left him. Our marriage had been exhausting, and I hadn't known how much until I let go. I had a nervous breakdown and so began the spiral into the sort of anxiety I suffer from today. I entered into a relationship with another toxic man, who lied to me and manipulated me. But it kept me from going back. That christmas I allowed my husband to spend it with us because I pitied him being alone. But I thought I was going into something with someone else, so when he began the pattern of wanting us to get back together I had already invested in someone else. And even though this person had no intention of having a proper relationship with me it kept me from saying yes to my husband. I was, for all intents and purposes, a complete mess. But my marriage was over, and the resulting spiral of self worth and promiscuity did nothing to save me. I couldn't be saved. Years and years of loneliness crushed me. Years of being told I was nothing and being treated like I was less weighed heavily on me. There is no way to come out of that without scars. I lost weight and couldn't sleep and never wanted to be in the house. The house was not even mine, it was my mothers and I felt like a child again.
I don't know if I hate him or not. Hate is reserved for bitterness and all consuming resentment. The only time I think of him now is when my daughter has to go with him and the mother within me is constantly screaming to not let her go. I reason with myself that a part of him does love her, but theres this chaos he will never lose. And she has already been caught up in it. She is not willing to go with him on occasion, and I can't deny that I rejoice in that. Does that make me a bad person? She has always been my weakness. She is not like her brother, she is vulnerable. A vulnerability that I have never been able to relinquish the care of to him. But its not just that. Theres a feminist inside me that does not want a man who was able to strike his wife on more than one occasion near the most precious thing to me. I do not like the company he keeps, now more than ever. And dare I say it... I wish to keep her from the man who drove me to the edge of sanity.
There is another reason I want him erased from our future. And he is the one who saved me. I've heard it said before that there is only one person who can save you and its yourself. But thats not true. A person can be saved by another, in every sense of the word. He was the sort of person I never thought I'd find. People like him were for other people, not me. The sort of person who came in the middle of the night when I couldn't breathe. Who doubted himself when he met my children, who loved him anyway. He couldn't believe I loved him, and he didn't take it for granted. Every decision he made was for "us" and he didn't isolate me from his friends. I was welcomed into the circle, and I rose from the ashes. I want my daughter, and my son, to grow up watching how a man should love a woman. And they see it every single day now. Naturally, I wondered when he was going to realise I wasn't worth the trouble. When my children were loud and annoying. When my anxiety was making me unbearable. When I had something on my mind that I feared he may not agree with. In the past it had been met with vitriol and a sense that I was not allowed to have these thoughts and feelings but not now. I was allowed to have a differing opinion and it did not effect our relationship. And if I had something to say I could speak freely without the fear of anger or being told to shut up. Now I know the truth. The truth about love and sacrifice and compromise and devotion and understanding and what it means to love...I mean REALLY love someone. I've waited my entire life for this. From the girl that used to stand at her bedroom window to the woman who made bad decision after bad decision in the pursuit of it.
I keep asking myself why am I writing this? Why am I opening that door and letting people walk inside? I recently came across a comment my soon to be ex-husband made on facebook regarding the fact he was glad that our daughter had decided not to see him that weekend because he was suffering from a hangover. It was a throwaway comment that might not mean much, perhaps ruffle a few feathers of those who know that the part time parent must appear to be devoted at all times. But I knew what it meant. It meant that no matter how many times I asked him to be there for her, he never was because I was always there to do everything leaving him free to do as he pleased. It meant that no matter how many chances I've given him to be the best father he can be since I left there is still that side of him that would rather go out and get drunk. And I knew then that he simply was not good enough for her and never would be. And I am writing this because I am sick of seeing his love pour out on social media, those verbal declarations in such stark contrast to his actions. I was ready to tell my story. And this is simply it. Nothing more and nothing less.
Stay with me.
This new man sounds pretty great.
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