I Hyperventilate, Looking For Hope Somehow, Somewhere, and No One Cares

I have to preface this with that I chose to write this here, anonymously, because it is my last ‘safe’ (ha) shelter. Words are the only power I have left, and don’t think I don’t know how little power they even hold. I used to believe that what I could say, or write, or feel, or think, were all immensely powerful things. How naive I was. None of those things seem to dent at all the condition of my reality most of the time. But still I feel them. And still I think them. And still from me they pour relentlessly, as if holding them back would be a slow death. I chose to write this here, because to write something more aimed, more succinct, addressed to any one person, or even a group of people, I’m not sure is possible (for one), and is not meant to be aimed at anyone. It’s just how I feel. It’s not anyone’s fault but my own.

I compromised myself into this life. I don’t mean that, necessarily, as it sounds. I made compromises, so many times, trying to be better than I was. I made compromises to try to change for the better, to be deserving, to be gracious, to be generous. In my early adulthood, I cannot necessarily say I was any of those things. I was not necessarily selfish, but kept what was mine (be it belongings, income or debt) to myself. I kept myself very independent. I did not share these aspects of myself. I needed, then, to assert myself on my own, to practice as much self-reliance as I could. Finances were simple. My ex paid the rent (I paid the damage deposit), I paid all of the bills and bought all of the groceries (which meant that I also did all of the grocery shopping). In all, I can easily say that most of the time I spent more- significantly more. Groceries often included lots of snacks, and drinks- and food would disappear almost overnight because of his eating habits. Bills included hydro, cable, laundry (which was apartment coin-operated laundry), home phone, cell phone (a bill he loved to rack up into the hundreds of dollars each month). In the time we were together, I paid an entire year of his car insurance- $1700 (and though we ‘shared’ the van, I seldom had access to it and bought bus passes every month for 5 years), and even allowed him to put the vehicle in his name after a car accident drove his insurance rates into the outrageously unaffordable range. I risked the integrity of my license, and a perfect, clean 5 year license that he managed to ruin with parking tickets, so that he could continue to drive, instead of taking the bus also. Almost every occasion of going out to eat we either paid for ourselves, or one of us were paid for by my participation in points programs and coupons.

No matter where we lived (each time we moved, our rent increased), it wasn’t good enough for him. He always wanted bigger and better and more expensive. On the north shore, of all places. It was a miracle that we’d managed to find a rent-controlled apartment that was so cheap in such a small building, that was on a major bus route.

And yet, somehow, I was always made to feel like a poor contributor. It didn’t matter that in order to afford to pay the bills, I was eating food I should absolutely not have been eating. It didn’t matter that in order to afford to pay the bills, there were months that I was forced to choose between my medication and my food. Admittedly, I live much more sparingly than I used to, then, and am much better with my priorities. It took several years of growing up and realizing what I could comfortably live without to get here.

I did not see one cent of help from either of my parents from the moment I turned 18, until I was released from the hospital, 4 years and 5 months later. Nor did I expect it. Nor did I ever ask. I was not raised to look for help. My Dad attached a great deal of shame to that. I could barely breathe from the suffocating stress the first time he gave me money. I felt like such a failure. I felt ashamed. I felt embarrassed. I had to accept so much help during that year that I had to swallow my pride until I could be comfortable enough to be gracious. But I am still not good at it. Still, inside, hiding it, feel ashamed: I still feel like a failure. I still feel embarrassed. And to make it worse, my constant failures since have been made such a public forum topic that I have no chance to find a way to feel good about it (I mean, forgive myself and move on). Month after month, there is a mounting shame. People wonder why I don’t sleep. I’m a failure. I’m ashamed. I’m embarrassed. I feel so often like a burden. I try not to share my guilt by keeping those feelings to myself, to shut up and be gracious. And I have tried to discourage the help whenever I thought that however difficult, I might actually get by.

People don’t seem to want me to be too proud. I get that. And I will admit, sometimes I want to be. I’m not proud. I’ve had times over the years when I felt like I was on the right track. But every time I felt myself giving in to the illusion that I was finally doing it, it was promptly pointed out to me in rather grand fashion that not only was I not succeeding, I was failing like it was my mastered craft to do so.

I feel so horribly backed into a corner that I don’t know how to get out of it. I feel like every time something goes wrong, people are pulling out an index of every mistake I’ve made and strapping on their riot gear. This didn’t get done and that didn’t get done. I’m so tired of trying to justify myself, to defend myself, that I can barely exert the effort anymore. I am so tired of trying to protect whatever inch of pride I have at any moment that I am almost willing to be exactly how I feel, in order to make everyone else just stop.

There is this dialogue in my head that goes like this:

“You’re right. I can’t even go a month without screwing up. I’m a screw up. You’re right. And I’m sorry.”

“You’re right. What the hell was I thinking? Wanting anything out of my life? I should have known when I couldn’t get a student loan and my common-law husband left me for a minor that I would always be nothing. Always be trash. I should have known that I would never have the freedom to try to succeed, or even dream I could. I should have known the moment I was diagnosed that I was destined to fail. You’re right. And I’m sorry my denial cost you.”

“You’re right. What was I thinking marrying for love when the man I married was neck deep in complicated relationships and debt? I should have walked away. His life might actually be better for it. Love doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right. What the hell was I thinking letting myself get pregnant? It was the one thing I think kept my life from falling apart only a few years ago. Thank God me and that dick didn’t have any kids. Thank God I got away clean, even if it cost me everything else. But now I don’t have that. Now I’m pregnant. I am such an idiot. Well, it’s not permanent until 20 weeks. I have 2 weeks to make this problem disappear.”

“I should pack my bags and leave. Without a word. In the middle of the night, I should just go. I make everything worse. I won’t even tell a soul where I’m going.”

The things I begin to feel and think when I feel this defeated scare me. Things I think are the kinds of things they strap you down to the bed and medicate you for. The things I think are for people with no hope left, who have only one other option. And it feels like a selfish thing to consider.

The history of my finances are so simple. I never bought anything with money I didn’t have. I never owed anyone anything. My taxes were always paid. I had no credit cards. My bills were always, always paid on time, even if doing so hurt. I always had a savings pad, just in case what I had from paycheques fell short of my need. It was like living off of a work-paid allowance. Once the money was gone, it was gone. I never had anyone to repay.

Then I got married, and suddenly… I have still never opened a credit account. I have still never had a credit or financing account. But now I owe money. Now I’m drowning in debts that aren’t even entirely my own. And everyone is looking to me for the answers like I know how to fix it. I have tried so hard to keep what has been given to me without ever touching it. Because I feel GUILTY. Because I never want to absolutely rely on it without ever at least trying to do it on my own, on our own. I have given my husband HUNDREDS of dollars in the last year, on top of what is only owed for bills. Just because I had extra and he NEEDED it.

I thought I was being helpful. I thought I was being generous. I thought I was being gracious. I did not think I would need to defend my integrity for being those things. Now I have no pride, no sleep, no peace of mind, no integrity and no hope. And I have a baby on the way. On top of that, I’m being punished for having a baby on the way. My boss is so caught up in her worry that I will become a fat, useless, money-sucking baby factory that I will be unable to accomplish anything she needs done. Her solution was to put me on a shift where my imminent and inevitable failure would do the least damage. It doesn’t matter that working graves is impossibly terrible for diabetics. It doesn’t matter that working graves is impossibly terrible for pregnant women. I was given very little choice. It isn’t enough that I have always gotten all of my work done, that I average 30 minutes of overtime a day just to make sure that everything gets done. It isn’t enough that I’ve managed to supply our child with a lot of things for practically nothing. That I’ve been spendthrift and smart, that I’ve called in favors to anyone who was just desperate to be rid of baby stuff that they didn’t want anything for it. It doesn’t seem to matter. All that seems to matter is that no matter what I do, I will fail. I will not be a good mother. I will not be a good wife. I will not be a good spouse. I will not be here to fail if I have even one more day feeling this much self-hate.

To top it off, because I’ve been forced into graveyards, because I’ve been forced into barely sleeping, caught between my boss, who pays my wages and I am dependent on for medical coverage and the ability to pay any bills at all, and caught by a controlling, overbearing, nasty troll of a roommate who would sooner point out my failures than admit that he has never even tried to do anything here. It all falls on me. At the end of the day the responsibility for everything that is done or not done falls on me, good or bad. Oh and it gets better. I am so focused on the house, and work, that I forgot entirely to have my antenatal exam done for 8 solid weeks. My doctor YELLED at me. She almost dropped me as a patient, telling everyone in the clinic that I had never had it done like it was some great joke so there was not a soul in there, doctor, patient or nurse, who was unaware of my failure. I left the clinic in TEARS. So now I’m a failure at work. I’m a failure at home. I’m a failure as a wife and now as a mother, too. Great. This just keeps getting better.

And I feel so badly, for not having more friends. I am an introvert. I find too many people and their expectations of my time exhausting. I have kept my circle of friends relatively small because I wanted a group of great friends, instead of a big group of backstabbers. Because of that I can’t find anyone to live here. Nobody wants to live inside my financial failure with me and my baby. If ‘he who moved out’ and my sister both moved out at the announcement of my baby, who the hell is going to want to take their place? Even my best friend here would rather live alone, or with someone else. I get it. I don’t want to live with me either.

I am so tired of being such a goddamn screw up. I am so tired of never being ahead. I am so tired. To add to all of this, for years I’ve been yelled at for just trying to accept my lot in life. I could barely afford my bills and was being yelled at for not taking out loans to go to college. For WHAT? Most of my friends AND MY HUSBAND, even my former ROOMMATE have all been to college, thousands of dollars in debt, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I tried so hard not to make that foolish mistake, because I knew it was a mistake. Everyone keeps telling me I’m just a coward. I’m a coward. I thought I was just trying not to be foolish. I didn’t know incurring MORE debt was the answer to staying out of debt. My own Mother screamed at me in a restaurant not too long ago, for telling me to stop expecting things to be so easy. EASY?! EASY?!?!?!?!?! WHAT IS EASY ABOUT ANY OF THIS?! ARE YOU ME?! DO I HAVE TO OPEN UP EVERY LAST AVENUE OF MY LIFE FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND?! TO BE COMPASSIONATE?! DO I HAVE NO RIGHT TO EVEN AN OUNCE OF PRIVACY WITHOUT BEING ACCUSED OF SELFISHNESS AND OPPORTUNISM?! IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK OF ME?! AND AM I SUPPOSED TO WANT TO KEEP A DEPLORABLE, DISGUSTING EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING ALIVE IF THAT’S WHAT I AM?!

I’m bottomed out. I have nothing left to give. I’m five minutes away from just handing my debit card to my husband, packing a bag and telling him to have a nice life. I’ll sleep in shelters and give my baby up for adoption. Chances are, that’s the best thing to do. This damn disease is going to kill me in the next four years anyway. Because I’m even a failure at that.

I don’t say any of these things to make you feel guilty. I say them because I’ve tried to give what I feel are valid reasons for the things I’ve done, and the situation I’m in. And I really do feel like every last thing I wrote is absolutely the truth. I have no idea who I am. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. I just wanted to try. To have a life. To have anything. To be happy. And I feel like an idiot for ever thinking I could have it.

Everyone else seems to think it should be easy. It’s not. Everyone seems to think it should be simple. It isn’t. Everybody is not me, or the circumstances I’m in. But I know that’s just some lame, whiny excuse. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just noise. It won’t solace the phone calls, or the knocks at my door, or the emails, or the harassment. It won’t solace the anger people have for me, or the resentment that somehow I’ve managed to gain from others. All it can do is fuel the fire. I cannot and will not ever succeed. And this baby will hate me. And this baby will starve to death because of me. And I never should have wanted it. It was doomed years ago. Everything I dream of having is impossible, and turns to crap.

Because I deserve it. And somewhere inside, where nobody can reach to remove it, I will always believe this. I’ve come to hate myself so much that I’ve started to wonder. I’m having a serious emotional crisis. I can’t even figure out if I can stand myself, or if anyone else should have to. I wonder if I manipulated my husband into this marriage and this baby, because I wanted both. I feel like I forced all of this on him. I feel like I’ve ruined his life. And I feel like I deserve for it all to blow up in my face.

Right now I do not want cheering up. I do not want to hear I’m wrong or someone cares. I do not want a moment of energy wasted. I really would love to just wallow in this right now, because it is how I feel and I need to feel it. It really messes with my heart and my head to feel one thing and hear another. Especially when I’m not sure what the hell to believe. Maybe I will feel better later. If my doctor tells me I haven’t killed my baby or given it crazy birth defects. ‘Cause of course, I fully expect, at this point, that I can’t even gestate a baby inside me without failing. Maybe I will slip on my fake ‘it’s okay’ face and pretend for another day. Maybe.

K

 

I Can Still Taste the Poison of Every Thought, Every Breath I Wasted Here

There are people who read this blog who will never, can never understand me. I try not to hang onto things that I feel are trivial, or said without intent or meaning. I’ve struggled with a lot of emotions in the last three years. Doing this; falling in love, getting beyond the past, getting married, being married and getting pregnant have all been huge steps for me.

I come from a broken and abusive life. I was tossed from home to home and parent to parent. I was raped multiple times as a child with no justice or belief on my side. Right on the other side of high school I was diagnosed with an incurable, and incredibly expensive disease that is going to shorten my life by 10 years.

I’ve had two surgeries, lost a lot of jobs, lost a spouse, moved 10 times (just since high school) and died.

But in all of that- I was always determined to make my own life better- to depend on myself more than anyone else to make my life good, if it was possible. I never had people to save me or pick me up when I was down, or fix it all. I never learned to be helpless. I know too many people who are, or who act like it because they know if they do there will be a white knight whose weakness is helping the helpless.

My husband is always telling me that one of the qualities he loves about me most is that I’m capable- his equal. I don’t need to be saved. And for the first months we were together I felt so respected, because he loved that quality. For a change I didn’t feel like the butch freak that guys had made me feel like my whole life (I’m 6 feet tall). He turned one of my insecurities into something to admire. He made me feel better about myself. He always told me how beautiful I was and how he’d never been with anyone as beautiful as me.

But there had already been a red flag that went up that I didn’t see. And it was on our first official date. Now, before certain individuals read this- I am not doing this to make you feel… insecure, or awaken feelings that are hard to live with. I think an important step to whatever evolution we have going on here is some understanding. Our first date, we stayed up all night together watching movies. At some point, the last movie ended and we cuddled on the couch and talked. He was the first guy I’d dated since my major break-up, and it came up in conversation. I was still to fragile to let a man too close without laying down some ground rules. So I bared my soul, and I begged him not to hurt me, to let me go if he wasn’t in this for the long haul. I’ve never been someone who dates without hope for the future. I bared my soul and he bared his. He admitted to once having been the kind of man who was quite like my ex- a man who strays.

We agreed that night was a new start for both of us, as we poured out our pasts to one another to let them go (or try to). That night, he showed me the picture of someone he used to know. He had her photo in his iPod. It was okay to me at the time, because he had pictures of a few friends, so I didn’t think anything of it when I should have. He simply said he had known her once, that something almost happened between them but they just missed each other. He sounded so passive about it at the time- not forlorn or hurt, or nostalgic. But I didn’t know him as well as I do now. Sometimes I wonder if it was there and I just missed it.

Something they used to do together became a regular part of our time together without my even knowing. My love for this person grew, so fast, so terrifyingly fast. Our romance began one September, and I had moved in by October. By November, he had made it known his intention was to spend the rest of his life with me. By December, I was asked to select an engagement ring of my choosing, and by January we were engaged. In February- it all began to fall apart. He would sneak away from group activities while I was distracted to be alone on his computer. It didn’t concern me at first because he played a lot of PC games, and I am a firm believer in having alone time. But it was when he began slipping away during cuddle sessions, thinking I was asleep, and sneaking out of bed at night, that I began to worry. It was the night that I walked up behind him to say hello and give him a kiss that my worries became legitimate. The window was on a chat. He was talking to someone about a naked photo of himself. A photo I took. He hid the window from sight, hoping I hadn’t caught it, and from that day on became extremely secretive. With some excessive prying, he came clean about who he was chatting to, and told me I had nothing to worry about. But I did. I had that one bit of information he hoped I’d missed.

His sneakiness, his omissions, his half truths… they told me one by one that I could no longer trust his word, his touch, his body language. They told me one by one that every moment of every day was an orchestrated cover story. I am not someone you want to cross. Especially after admitting to being a cheater. Then, almost out of nowhere, he began to blog. He hadn’t written a word in over a year- and then one day, there it was. The photo of the vampire, and lyrics to a song that cried about feelings he had that he had carried as a cross for so long- why did their creator have to come back just to torture him? The panic began to set in as the pieces of the puzzle I did have began to form a warning sign. And everything after that came unhinged.

I have been honest with my husband since the somewhat-resolution we had, but it took the better part of a year and a hospitalization to get through it. Maybe at times there hadn’t been enough of a progression yet, but I knew him too well to know it was nothing. Chat logs between him and this person contained sexual innuendo, reminiscing about almost-sexual encounters, the neck biting that he loved to subject me to had begun with this person (hence his regular reference to vampire photos when he was trying to veil his references to her). One chat log, they flirted back and forth for awhile before he said he needed to log out and take a cold shower. He was aroused by this person, this person who he’d almost something with once. This person he was not engaged to. This person who was not me.

They both claimed that nothing was going on I needed to worry about, but he began to hide photos of her in his computer- any photo he could find. When he realized that I had found them, they would move somewhere else, or their filenames would change. But when I continued to find them, a new folder would pop up somewhere with files containing odd and unrecognizable file formats. When I realized they were photos with augmented extensions, they disappeared completely, into invisible encrypted folders.

My access to these hidden nooks and crannies began with a simple email hack. Suddenly I had access to everything. If he became suspicious, his password would change. But I was never kept out for long. His emails back and forth became more intimate, emotionally, not just sexually. The whys they asked one another about why they’d never ended up together became more frequent. Sometimes arriving in the middle of the night. He would write her back- flowery, poetic, beautiful things about his feelings- feelings he hadn’t ever shared with me. It dawned on me that years of his blog posts, the ones so beautiful, so heart breaking, so expressive, so lost, were about her. I felt like I didn’t even know this person I was engaged to, this mysterious liar that I would never know, who reserved his vulnerable, emotional self for another woman that I could never amount to. The more I announced by concern and my worry, the more he lied.

It began to drive me insane. He would tell me all the time, that he loved me, that he wasn’t going anywhere, that he wanted me. She would confirm this, just saying she wanted their friendship back. This went on for several months, while I was disbelieving entirely of both of them, sure I was a fool all over again, until he told me that he used to be in love with her. During several of his previous relationships he had loved her. But she had never seen him. He had pulled her out of the pit of her broken relationships, or a devastating life experience, picked her up and dusted her off, just to have her disappear into the night again with another heartbreaker. He loved her, and crazily his love grew as a result of her ignorance. For the better part of 10 years he loved her, hoping and waiting, that someday she would realize what he had done for her for all those years, that he had held back is feelings so she had a place to feel safe. Hearing this ripped me apart. He had omitted this love for this woman whose picture he carried with him every day. I’ve never wanted out of anything so badly in my life. What’s worse, is that this sneaking around was such a thrill for him, this chase to keep her talking, this constant effort to keep it concealed, didn’t just reawaken the feelings he had for her, but turned them into an obsession.

I knew I was in the way. I knew if I were not in the mix, he would go to her, they would be together and ride off into the sunset and be happy. And in some morbid way I knew he wished that were the case, despite his protests then (and now) to the contrary. I tried to reconcile that he just hadn’t got his closure, because I hadn’t had mine, and I understood it. But after a year I was not in love with my ex anymore- let alone after 10. And I was common-law with my ex for 6 years. We actually were together. He assured me these feelings were in the past, that now he wanted just a friendship, just knowing she was okay, to start over and get to know her as she is now. But neither one of them could start over. Their emails were always soul-baring and emotional. And then one day not long after his admission he told me that she had told him she was still in love with him.

Fuck. I could understand why. Especially if she finally had realized everything he had done for her. How could you not find love in your heart for someone who had reserved theirs for you for decade? Hell, even when she was dating his best friend, he had loved her. I don’t think there is a friend of my husband’s who is a mutual friend of hers who has not admitted to someone I know that they are or have been in love with her.

I have almost never seen love in my lifetime, never been afforded it. So yes, I was jealous, that she had all of these good but invisible men in her life who had loved her all this time, just waiting for her to be ready. My fairy tale was tainted by someone else’s romance story. My husband became distant, lied to me. By that summer, almost all we ever did was argue. I’d had one miscarriage during this emotional battle, sick with stress. I forced myself to make love to a man who I loved but I felt did not love me. After all, what man would say no to free sex? Even if his heart wasn’t in it? In the dark, I would cover up my body I had learned to hate, and cry silently while he made love to me, knowing that when his eyes were shut it wasn’t me he was imagining underneath him.

In april, an email arrived, from her, via an online photo sharing site, to view a private folder. This email had already been exchanged several times, where they had written back and forth, talking suggestively about a topless photo. I freaked out. Finally some inch of mistake they had made that gave me some kind of concrete proof, some outright border crossing they had done, after all of my warnings. Minutes after my freak out became known, the email disappeared. My husband, caught in his lies, lied (thinking I must be some kind of idiot) saying his email had been hacked and it was faked. Phished email doesn’t contain chains of correspondence back and forth between two people using multiple email accounts- not unless they had all been hacked and the phishing engine was aware of their relationship. So despite that lie, I knew better.

That summer, in the middle of the night, awake paranoid, digging for new material, I finally found it. My proof. After all the lies I was told about “just friendship”, I found a .thumbs file in his recycle bin. Thumbs files contain pictures, if you know how to open them. So I did. They were photos of her. Naked. So I went into his email and I found a new folder I had ignored for awhile, in his email. Inside were two emails he’d sent himself about his car. They were file attachments with unusual extensions I did not recognize. So I downloaded them. And I changed their file extensions to .jpeg. These were the same photos, he’d attempted to hide, intended to keep.

I was gutted. By both of them. He insists to this day she sent them by accident and didn’t even know he had them. I have resigned myself to the decisions I have made since then about our involvements despite the fact that I don’t believe that claim. Not after the lying, and the subterfuge. I’d spent nearly a year insane with suspicion, doubting him, and her, and myself, but sure of my instincts. I’d been told so many times that I was being a crazy, jealous woman, when the whole time I’d had every right to know where all of this was going.

I still don’t know everything. How far it went. If he intended to leave me or not. I can’t even be sure it ever stopped. But I’ve tried to have faith. I’ve tried to believe that he gave up on it, and trying to lie to me. But he is smart. He knows my methods, and I can’t be sure he did not best me.

I have done what I can to maintain my contact with her, after demanding that he did not. That might seem unfair to you but I have my reasons. He becomes a deceitful prick when he has any involvement with her, even if she doesn’t know about it. He maintained his silence with her for more than a year. About a year and a half. And we slowly began to heal. He stopped lying (I hope), and became emotionally intimate with me again. We started having fun again, and laughing together. He stopped sneaking off at night, and we’d wake up together no matter how long I slept in. I didn’t wake up alone anymore. We got married, and we got our first anniversary in.

Now, only a few months later, I am pregnant. He’d told me all our relationship that he wanted the picket fence dream with me. Married, nice home, kids. For two years, following my miscarriage, I regularly asked him if he wanted kids, just to make sure he did still. He never changed his mind. But when I got pregnant, he started blogging again (as he only does when he is upset). Whether he says now that he was being an idiot or not, he basically said that I had ruined all of our plans, that now all the things he wanted to do I had taken away from him with my uterus. I was crushed. I had never been led to believe that this was a mistake. We’d been planning our pregnancy since our wedding.

He was generally unenthusiastic, and between my morning sickness and insomnia, and his unhappiness, he started to become distant. 6 weeks into my pregnancy, I discovered the line of communication between them had been breached. He swears they never spoke, but again, he cannot talk about her without lying. It is more him that I distrust in this situation than anything. Strangely I do believe him. But he sought her out. He spent a few hours trolling her facebook to see her pictures. If I had not found out, I doubt he would have told me, and I doubt it would not have progressed. After all, my daily surveillance had completely stopped. We had a small fight about it. I think if he had just told me he wanted to try and resume contact, been open with me, I would probably have been wary but okay with it. But it was knowing that the very first time, in the very first inch, he had lied, that made me realize that he could never be trustworthy with her. And I felt as badly for her as I felt for me.

Our fight ended with him pulling a surprise move: Telling me that he could do what he wanted with her and I could not stop him. I felt… I don’t even know. Put in my place? Let down? Scared? Hopeful that what he wanted was innocent?
Two days ago, a surprise conversation yielded some great heartbreak. He had spoken to someone about her, not thinking this person would come to me. After everything, after all of this, after all of the assurance and all the words to the contrary, I never thought my Husband would be showing people photos of this person, not a year into our marriage, and months into a pregnancy with our first child, did I think he’d be showing photos of her to people and referring to her as the woman he would have married had he not married me.

All of my doubts, the ones I thought I’d chased away… they’re back. He says he shows his excitement for our marriage and our baby in his own way, but he spent the entire day after seeing our child for the first time brooding and upset. I feel him pulling away. I feel his distance, and his depression. And I can’t help but wonder if he feels he married the wrong person.

I do not want these doubts now. I did not want these doubts on the steps of my first marriage and I do not want them on the steps of my first child. It isn’t fair. It hurts. And I hate that I ever stopped here long enough to put myself in the position to get in the middle of something that sometimes feels so utterly inevitable. Sometimes I feel like I should buy him the fucking bus ticket.

But I want to be wrong. And I spend nights wallowing in the comfort of being too ignorant to suspect. I lay in his arms and feel safe and loved because if I have to feel anything else I think I will just lay down and die. I want the husband back who had never lied to me, the one who could have fun just being near me. I want the husband back who lay in bed with me at night, kissing and laughing, the one who could go for walks with me until 6am, just talking about anything. I want him to be excited about this with me, because its ours, because its beautiful and wonderful, because we love each other and we made it. But now I have the husband who can’t talk to me, no matter how I pry. I have the husband who is in love with someone else and won’t admit it. I have the husband who is so indifferent that he can’t care enough to leave but can’t care enough to really be here either.

I don’t like being stuck awake at night, gripped with fear, wondering who the fuck is sleeping in my bed and if the words that come out of his mouth are the same as the ones in his head. I’m afraid I’m going to be stuck raising this baby alone. I’m afraid his real excitement, his visible enthusiasm, will never come. I’m afraid he hates this baby, and me even more for having it.

And I have nobody to talk to about any of it.

In the morning, when he is awake with his reassurances, I push all of this down and pretend none of it is there, and I am happy. Until he is sleeping. In my nightmares in sleep, it is happening all over again. And I just don’t know what to do.

K.

My Skin is Cellophane, Something is Slipping Away

This is hard for me to write and I don’t have much time. I’m sort-of hoping that I can say what I need to here without reopening some ugly wounds. Saying that is hard, because it seems like nobody has any but me. And I’m tired of being ripped open alone.

It came to light that a door had been reopened on an issue that for the most part, I felt had been handled, without my knowledge. I always knew that was going to be a possibility if I divulged my investigative secrets. Unfortunately, these omissions (lies) have put into question all of the trust that I thought I had cultivated is gone. It has been discussed, but now that the trust is gone I don’t know whether or not I can believe any of the explanations that were given.

Maybe everyone was right. Maybe this never can work. Maybe this never can be okay. I wanted to try, for the other two parties that are or have been involved. I can’t do this again. Even talking about this last night almost sent me into a raging sickness. I start to wonder what the hell I signed on for or why. Can’t you understand? I don’t want to share. And I refuse to.

There is a baby growing inside me that I fear now, only has one invested parent. Behind my back, my husband is telling people that if he’d had life his way, he’d be married to someone else and I would not be pregnant. There is a sucking pain in my chest that I thought was gone. In one day it came back.

He saw his child inside my belly for the first time just two days ago. And he spent the rest of the day brooding alone, looking upset, playing video games and completely unwilling to celebrate or be happy. I’m ready to pack my shit and disappear. If he wants this past he can’t let go of so bad, maybe I should stop being in his way. No matter what I ask for, what I need, he will seek it out. No matter what barriers I set in place, he finds new ways to cross the border. My husband will leave me.

I didn’t want this. I begged him to leave. I told him not to feel sorry, or regretful, or responsible. I simply told him that he had to choose, and it was okay if it was not me. He stayed but the choice is obvious. In bed at night beside him, I still sleep alone with a child inside me who might as well be a bastard. I feel dirty and used and broken. Even one lie, one time, for one day, just to see her face just once, has derailed my life. My marriage is over.

You win, okay? I’m convinced now that it never ended. I’m convinced that I’ve been the fool all this time, that I can’t trust what goes on when I’m not around. I’m not convinced that any computer or access point I can’t monitor hasn’t been breached in a way I demanded it shouldn’t. I can’t trust.

And I won’t. Not ever again. I warned you that you had one shot to earn trust from me. And you fucked it up.

So fucking leave me. I’m going to go swallow some drano. Leave me alone. Don’t stop me or try to save me. I don’t want your help so you can sleep at night. You’re not my friend. You’re not my husband. You’re not anyone I can trust or turn to anymore. I am. Such an idiot. My life was over 20 years ago. It was over 12 years ago. It was over 4 years ago. How many times can I almost die and keep pretending that its ok to keep going?

The Explanation

Recent events finally brought the perfect words from my mouth- one of the most mysterious and indecisive things about me that I have never been able to explain, to quantify before. It has managed to explain a lot of fairly big things that have happened in my life, and how I dealt with them, why I reacted the way I did. At this point, I’m just begging to be understood. To be listened to. Because I realize that I have been emotionally alone all of my life. Everybody I have known has asked me to listen, asked for my empathy and my understanding and my trust. And time and again, while given, my trust was inevitably betrayed, and the boundaries I made clear in order to be able to feel I could live securely were not only disrespected, but broken. Even today, those boundaries have been broken. And I am tired of being lied to.

 

I fantasize about selling everything, taking the car, and just driving and never coming back. These fantasies started when I was 17. And I think I’ve had them ever since. I’m still not sure that I shouldn’t have given in to that desire at least once in my life. Then I could have at least tried to make a life free of the consequences of the lives of others.

 

I was born to a single, poor parent who had five children in 8 years. Of those five, only four survive. Of those four children, only two share the same parents. My Mom worked relentlessly, and depended 110% on school programs, friends, and what supportive family we had to help babysit when she wasn’t home. At times, we had to look after ourselves. Just little children raising each-other. That meant that she had to have implicit trust with those people in order to leave us in their care. But desperate times forced her to do what she had to in order to get us all by. Taking on renters who were sometimes left to take care of us, or having boyfriends move in sooner than perhaps they might if she didn’t need help. These desperate times are what eventually led to the complete destruction of my childhood. Eventually, Mom trusted the wrong man. He would later refer to my Mother and her three daughters as his own personal harem. He molested two of us (the two youngest, of which I was one), and at least at one point made an attempt at the third.

 

I recently realized that though I have mostly come to terms with my molestation, and with my Mother, despite what that cost me, it is with my younger sister that I have issues I have never been able to resolve. While I know that isn’t fair, to some extent, it is in others. I am resentful and I wish I wasn’t. When I was molested, nobody believed me. Counselors told my Mother that I was schizophrenic and having a psychotic break. Thanks to a program being launched in Elementary Schools (“Good Touch, Bad Touch”- to help kids reach out if they were being molested) the Police accused my Mother of allowing me to watch too many movies that were not age appropriate. I knew it was true. But only me. My family was disbanded. My Mother left the country for almost 10 years, with my Step-Dad in tow. All of us children were given to different guardians. I did not see my little brother or sister for 7 years. And all because I cried for help. Imagine my surprise when 11 years later, my little sister started crying rape. My 8 year old sister.

 

After 12 years of being told that I was mad, that what I remembered was a lie, that my nightmares were a figment of my imagination, that I was going insane, after 12 years of being completely disbelieved and unacknowledged, I had begun to accept that my mind had lied to me. I had begun to believe what I was being told. I began to trust my molester. When I discovered that my growing trust had allowed him to attack again, I punished myself. I blamed myself. And so did she. My sister still blames me for not protecting her. She will not accept that I was just a kid, and that I was a victim myself. She refuses to see things from my point of view. And she has on everything ever since.

 

My sister has been a victim. And the crime that was visited on her was so much worse than what was visited on me. I know undeniably that I would have faced the same fate she did if it had not been his first run when he attacked me. She was older than I was, and had far longer established trust in him. They were on a road trip, completely alone. She had nowhere to run, and it was so easy. What she went through was so, so much worse. All the same, I have been resentful. She was never made to question her sanity. Everyone believed her. She had 100% support. My Step-Dad was prosecuted (despite her unwillingness to testify against him- I did for her). She was not forced to live with her rapist the way I was. I never really got over that nobody ever apologized to me, for the traumatizing mind abuse that I was subjected to. Differentiating the real from the fantasy had begun to seem to difficult. My molestation was never prosecuted. The statute of limitations prevented such a thing, but my testimony was enough to have him arrested. My sister never faced the Police concerning her rape.

 

People in her life have always babied and protected her. Every man she knows has this uncontrollable need to “save” her. Even my husband. She has not had to make hard decisions and grow up because she has always had someone there to do things for her. Their constantly coming to her aid, robbing her of her ability to grow, has only served to make her that much more tantalizingly helpless. With no license, she has still almost never had to take a bus. Her grad dress was paid for (at least in part) with money from my stolen recycleables. Friends of the family paid for her grad photos (I never got any), and her braces. At 11 years old she was allowed to have her bellybutton pierced. At 21, she has slept with more than twice as many men as I have at 26. She tried to commit suicide on my Birthday, which, incidentally, everyone had forgotten anyway. She then had a week long succession of parties that amassed hundreds of dollars in gifts.

 

When I was her age, I was given no sympathy, no help. I am not small, and cute. I have always been amazonian and tall. Everyone who talks about me speaks as though they’re talking about a warrior, someone strong, someone who needs no help- someone intimidating. I don’t know why being 7 inches taller than my sister has made me undeserving. I have always been seen as an adult- no matter how young. I can’t even remember a time when someone said to me, “You’re just a kid.” Yet, at 21, and an adult, my sister’s drug-intensive, drinking parties are all acceptable. I was always a good kid. I never partied, really.

 

When I moved out on my own for the first time, at 18, I did so because my Dad was trapped in an abusive marriage and refused to subject me to a divorce. We have not been close since. I left home to save his happiness. And he has blamed me for his loneliness ever since. When I turned 18 he stopped talking to me. Stopped calling. Stopped visiting. I have seen my Father for a total of maybe 1 day’s worth of collective hours in 8 years. He stops by for two hours (on the dot) every few years, on his way through town. Usually because he needs somewhere to park his car. But there was a time when he was dating my Mom (ironically), and trying to raise my little sister. At the time, he had no time for me, his actual daughter. She has had a lot of things in her life that I was denied. Understanding, support, parents all her life. She had some consistency. I was lucky to be raised by the same people for more than two or three years at a time. She didn’t grow up being mentally abused and physically beaten. I did. Everyone falls for her, even if they don’t fall in love with her (which they do most of the time). She is also extremely judgmental of me. She acts like she’s had so much worse, but is still so much better than I am. And it sucks being the shitty sister of the princess that everyone wants to save. People are fucking blind to reality in her presence and she takes 100% advantage of it. I was never allowed to make the mistakes she is making when I was her age.

 

Because of the life I’ve lived, I’ve suffered from depression, suicidal tendencies, PTSD and a pretty severe anxiety disorder. I’ve come to recognize my triggers over the years, which is how I think I’ve managed to overcome being suicidal. But one thing that is a problem for me, is that I have always had extremely raw, completely transparent and passionate feelings. I’ve never found a way to make my feelings less affluent, to subdue them. Because of how deeply, and wholly I have felt about things, I have been an easy target in my family for relentless mocking, singled out to be picked on by large groups against whom I could not defend myself. I would have all of my triggers intentionally prodded, until I would have a massive panic attack, and then told to stop being such a drama queen. So first, there would be acknowledgement of my feelings, emotional torture, and then condescension and being stripped of my right to feel what they’d forced me to. And I’ve grown up that way. For 13 years. I have been emotionally tortured and stripped of my power all my life.

 

So anything I have experienced over the years, where I have been lied to and told “It’s all in my head”, just to discover that I was right all along- that’s a huge betrayal. That’s the same game my molester played with my head. I didn’t need to go through that again. I have done some dishonest things to ascertain the truth, and I have been honest about that. I have been forthright to those whose privacy I’ve had to invade in order to catch them in their lies. The truth is one of the most sacred things in this world to me.

 

When I have ever felt so low that I didn’t know how to keep myself alive, people just got angry at me and told me to stop being so dramatic. I have huge emotional betrayal issues. And the double standard treatment I receive from people vs how they treat my sister has only made those resentments larger.

Now on to why any of this is relevant:

 

Several months ago my sister got pregnant. She was given support by everyone she knows. She was given the social and familial support to make the decision she wanted. She decided that she could not have the baby- that she was too young and it would ruin her future. It was her third pregnancy. I have never been angry that she did not have the baby, and I understand why. If she had chosen to, once again, she would have had unquestioned and unfailing support.

 

I am 6 weeks pregnant. My announcement was met with anger, threats, complete lack of support and excommunication from my home. So here I am: 26, pregnant and alone. Once again, I get completely opposite treatment from my sister, and to the extreme. My husband does not want this baby. I feel betrayed by everyone.

 

I begged him not to marry me if he did not want children. He did anyway. He says he wants the baby, but I keep waiting for his excitement instead of his status quo. He has privately complained that I ruined all of our plans, just to later make retraction. But I’m not sure if he really meant it or if he just wanted me to not be upset. This is not how I imagined my future. I imagined someone as excited as I am to be a parent to our child- as child that by all rights I should not even be able to have. I didn’t imagine growing up constantly judged, always a fuck up, always a pariah. Two months ago I thought I knew what I wanted from my life and now I can’t even remember why.

 

These days every time I close my eyes, I’m behind the wheel of the car- driving anywhere but here.

 

K.M.

Desires (From the Wife)

This getting pregnant thing is a daily conversation. I’m hormonal and moody and I’m not even pregnant yet. I’ve read this is common- I mean, it is true, I’ve always wanted to have kids. I don’t remember a time in my life when I was unsure of that. When I was a little girl I played with baby dolls and doted on them. When I was a teenager I had dreams about giving birth, and experiencing the only moment of true belief that everything would be alright. Since the beginning of adulthood, my eldest sister has been having children, and that desire to become a parent someday just magnified. I held my baby niece in my arms and it was like *BAM* “This is what I want to do.” Some people think that settling down and having a family is a purposeless future. I know I would have argued this with my Grandfather while he was still alive. My Grandfather was very ambitious, and very intelligent. He felt that if the determination was present, then you could do anything.

But this is the thing: I have type 1 diabetes. Nothing I ever want to do is easy. Nothing difficult I ever want to do is as easy for me as it is for other people- so when I want to do something difficult, it is extremely difficult. I could travel the world and see things and take those experiences with me when I leave this life. But that was what he wanted, and my God I am so glad he got to have what he wanted of his life. For me, finding the money to travel would be a chore. It would be perfectly achievable, but is it what I want? I think I could be solaced by a life like that if I had to have a second choice.

I am heartbroken that I could not see my Grandfather hold at least one of my children. My Grandfather was like a Dad to me. As much as it hurts my Mother for me to talk about him that way, he rescued me when she disappeared. Though I understand why she did, I was also just a child. I shouldn’t have had to understand. He pulled me out of a mess of adult crap I didn’t understand and gave me a future. I keep imagining his eyes the last time I saw him.

I’m never going to be much in this world. I’m not going to be a powerful businesswoman, or a famous musician, or an actress. I’m not going to be particularly wealthy, and you know, I’m okay with that. My Mom has cried many times that she was never mentally prepared to be average and that when she turned out to be average, it was a devastating reality that she couldn’t come to terms with. Even now, leaving her forties, my Mom says she feels like being a nobody was a fatal disappointment to our family. Sadly what I think the truth is that being a nobody was a fatal disappointment to herself, and she couldn’t let anyone accept her as she is.

I don’t think less of myself for just wanting to be a Mother. I have dreams about sitting down, looking out the window, just rubbing my big baby belly. I remember afternoons walking around the supermarket with my newborn nephew in his snuggly while he napped (he couldn’t sleep if he was still). People would tell me how adorable he was and for a little while I got to pretend he was mine, kissing his soft head and breathing in his sweet pink baby smell.

If I were to discover what I fear, that my husband does not want another child, I would be devastated. It would leave an aching hole in my heart that would be unfillable by any other means. I say I fear that, because since we made the decision to get pregnant, since we began to discuss children, he has been standoffish. Understandably, he was nervous when I first brought it up. I mean, I warned him before we were married that having children was not optional- I was not going to marry someone who didn’t want the life I wanted, no matter how much we loved each other. I didn’t think that a year (or nearly) into our marriage, starting our family was going to be a point of tension. After several months, and a great deal of thought, I even agreed that one child was enough.

Anyhow, for awhile, I brought up the subject slowly, at random, and in very short conversation. My husband would just smile and abruptly change the subject. Admittedly, his ignorance of my hints hurt a little, but I tried to slowly increase our conversation about it. Now that I am headed for 26, I see a pattern in our timing of things. We’re always somehow late doing things we planned in advance- we even got married 12 months later than we originally planned. I cannot have kids after 30, and the closer to 30 I get the more dangerous for my health it becomes. I had the extreme fortune of finding out that the kidney damage I experienced when I was 19 somehow managed to heal despite my condition. I saw this as a sign that it would be stupid not to thank God for the opportunity to have a baby. The kidney damage would have made childbearing extremely dangerous, and likely improbable.

I finally got tired of the “eventually” and “someday” responses I was getting from my husband and laid down the law. I want to have a baby and I don’t want to wait until it’s too late to try. I may be able to have kids now, but my health is always an issue. I’m healthy (or reasonably) now, and I don’t want to wait until I’m infertile to decide I can’t wait anymore to have a baby. We agreed that in roughly 5 months, we are going to try to have a child. I hoped that finally, finally, my husband would express the same excitement I have, especially since during our few lengthy conversations, he has told me he wants to have a baby, and is excited. I can’t help but feel like he isn’t being honest. He dodges the subject as much as he can, changing the topic as quickly as possible when I discuss it. It seems to stress him out. I mean, hell, he even blogs on occasion (not often at all though) and what does he blog about right after we decide we’re having our first child? He blogs about his desires; his desires to get his bike insurance renewed for the summer, and some Tron-inspired riding gear. I just don’t feel it from him at all. I am getting absolutely zero reciprocation and I am afraid. I have so much fear that he’ll go along with what I want and I’ll be pregnant when he decides to go back on his word. And I don’t want to spend the next 19 years raising a baby alone that he doesn’t want. I don’t want to be just like my step-daughter’s mother, fighting him in court for help supporting our child. In that way, I understand where she’s coming from.

I want this baby assuming he’ll be my husband, there to help me raise our child. If I wanted to have a child alone, I’d have just gone to a sperm bank. I don’t think he realizes that I am scared too. After all, I’m the one who has to have it growing inside me, the one who has to help him learn how to be a full-time parent. I came from a big family and I’ve looked after babies as an adult, so I have experience in that way- I’m really maternal already. I’m not nervous about being a good parent. I am nervous about carrying the baby, and how it will effect my life, my job, my health. I’m nervous about having to look after a baby, and now a basketcase of a husband. It’s a lot of pressure, and I wish he could just bench his anxiety for awhile and be excited with me- get mushy looking at preggo clothes and pick out a baby bed with me, come home with baby booties instead of flowers, surprise me maybe and take me out to buy a onesie. I wish I felt more encouraged and supported by his reaction, but instead most of the time I just feel sad. I feel alone in this decision.

He says he is smiling all the time imagining me pregnant. I feel guilty and stupid that I don’t see it. Right now I can’t tell anyone else about my decision, because too many people are against it. I don’t want my work finding out because it might cost me a promotion that I’m counting on, and have been working so hard for. Especially when there is no guarantee in how long it could take to concieve. It could take more than a year to get pregnant, and then carrying a baby to term is going to be tenuous. I can’t tell my Mom because she is solidly against me risking my health for a baby. She has no faith in my health whatsoever. Unfortunately, behind her there is a small army of mindless automitons who listen to her words and parrot them like they have a clue. I won’t be able to deal with the stress of her condemning my decision, so I would rather just not tell her until it has happened.

I want to get ready. Just like my wedding, I want this time to be exciting, something to look forward to, a steady climb, an emotional high. Instead I’m in the pitts wishing that someone could manage to give as much of a shit about anything I ever want to do with my life as I do. With my luck, I’ll end up getting pregnant, divorced four months in, living with my mother, and giving birth alone while my brother-in-law huffs from the gas mask beside my hospital bed. FML.

K.N.

Someone Who Has Raised the Bar

I’ve written about my past. I’ve been brutally honest, to say the least. Things in my past have been dramatic; life changing; enormous. And you know, despite the years that have passed, I have carried it with me to a large extent. I wish that I had ever managed to sever my feelings about my ex, that life, my past, everything that happened. But when it did happen, I was blindsided. I was completely unprepared.  I was in love, deeply. It is a hard thing to admit further into the future when you’re ready to make a life with someone new- that you have loved someone that much before.  Regardless of our differences, I did love my ex beyond his slim comprehension. I never seriously imagined my life without him in it. I had flights of momentary fancy when I was upset or frustrated, but that’s pretty normal.

When it was over, I prayed it wasn’t really over- that even if our separation was long and well-established, eventually we’d find our way back to each other. I was so convinced, at the time, that our timing was just flawed. I wasn’t just broken-hearted. I was gutted. I felt like he’d reached inside my chest and ripped out my still-beating heart. I don’t think I’ve known a level of misery that intense since, and I definitely hadn’t known it before. I was left mentally unstable by it. Remembering the pain I was in is agonizing. This is a week I have been waiting for since October 2007.

Part of me was sure the universe was going to have the two of them married to one another- a whirlwind relationship that ended in everything he swore he didn’t want. Funny, because in the years since, despite how young I was, I learned from other people that my desires and my frustrations were entirely founded. I mean, honestly, after almost 6 years with anyone at any age, how doesn’t marriage come up? I mean, to even talk about whether that’s what you want? He was made unhappy by some unmet petty conditions he had of me. Anyhow, I digress. The point is that I was so sure that the cosmos was going to ensure my eternal misery by allowing them to end up together. Well, this week, they parted ways. I’m not entirely sure what the reason for it was, but whatever the reason, I am grateful. I am mostly saddened by that though she is unhappy, she still has no idea what I had to go through when she stole my life. It makes me puke up in my mouth a little to see her pathetic self-pitying facebook posts about how hard her life is. She has no fucking clue. She never had to be me. At least he didn’t dump her off after 6 years, cheat on her with a minor, put her in the hospital and boot her out while she was busy possibly dying alone.

So I am revelling in my karmaic justice. Universe: You are awesome. Ms Nova: 1, Man-stealing Whore: 0. Don’t misunderstand me, I am angry for what I have had to endure. But I am glad (beyond glad) that I lived beyond it, and well.

In other news, my husband (who I love so very much!!) and I have decided that we are going to get pregnant in the next few months. I want to get prepared, which means correcting my ways. I have just a bit over a year to nest appropriately before the baby comes (or at least, when we hope it will arrive) but I need to make this a baby-friendly house. I am enlisting friends to help me- anyone who has decent baby things they want to get rid of, maternity clothes they don’t need… CALL ME. We’re going to be spending a bit on a convertible baby bed- one that is good from newborn to a few years old. I will enjoy trolling Walmart, Thyme and Babies R Us.

Husband wants a boy. I’d be happy either way. We’re talking names. So, if all goes well, 5 months to baby time! I am excited!

K.N.

I-I-I Wanna Go-o-o Far Away-ay-ay

I can’t believe he’s in my head again. I need a letting go seminar. I need therapy. I don’t know why this is happening to me. To this person: “You and I will have our confrontation someday. I’m afraid of what it is going to look like.”

I am in the midst of trying to get my shit together. And when that doesn’t look like working my ass off, it generally consists of replacing the broken and useless things I own with nice, functional things, cleaning my house, purging the things I have no desire or need for, and repacking whatever leftover boxes for my future I have into newer, better organized boxes. Well, I’ve been working on my bedroom. When I officially moved in, my husband moved himself to the south end of the Island to work for the government. It was an okay situation because he stayed with friends cost-free and came home on weekends. But who am I kidding? He didn’t ‘live’ here- his stuff did. And hence, there felt like a lot more space with which to move in, and for me to live in. I wasn’t really concerned, at the time, with how he wanted things because he was not here. Well, in the year since he moved back, I have spent 6 months not living here, and the other 6 wanting to rip my hair out because suddenly now we have to find a way to consolidate our belongings and turn our home into a functional and well-oiled engine. Duplicates be gone! I know, I’m married, but on occasion I can literally feel my independence fading.

Well… I could not sleep tonight. With the purchase of a brand new set of plastic storage drawers, I began to sort the miscellany of our room, and a safety pin fell behind my dresser. So I moved my dresser to get it and found a pile of things that had slipped under the dresser over the last year and a half. One of them was an old address book that I got in a stocking stuffer when I was 14. I had it for the entire rest of high school and used it only a few times. Out of my innate curiosity, I went through it.

Have you ever felt the sensation of having all of the available oxygen in a room just get sucked right out of it, and suddenly you can’t breathe? That’s what happens when you open an old address book and find the phone numbers and addresses for everyone in your ex’s family. All the people who saw fit to just forget about you and let someone in their family commit assault, and nearly, negligent homicide. What do you do with that information, especially when so many of the addresses are in your own city? I have unknowingly lived less than ten minutes drive from at least two of them in the last three years.

It’s just fucked up. It’s just fucked up how somehow these things bleed back into my life. Somehow I know that our story is not done yet. I just don’t know how it ends.