Monday, February 24, 2014

CHAPTER TWO, continued: DENIAL DAMAGE: December 2009

Please start reading my memoir from the beginning.

(All names are changed)


December 14, 2009

I saw Jerry posted a picture on Facebook of our house in the newly fallen snow. His post read, “I love winter.” I laughed out loud when I saw it. I’m sure he posted that photo of our house so she could see it. This is so junior high.

It’s actually funny. I’ve lived with the man for over thirty years and he has never loved winter or Christmas. He is always moody and depressed, angry and aggressive during the holidays. It has been hard to celebrate because I love the holidays so much and he ruins them with a temper tantrum or other outburst. It blindsides me. I have always said I wish I could take January first off the calendar. The holidays are wrecked for sure by that date.

He’s been diagnosed with SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, among the myriad of other diagnoses he’s chalked up over the years: ADHD, OCD, ODD, hypomania (a form of Bi-polar). Every time we go for counseling he gets new initials.  

The SAD makes him unbearable from about Labor Day to the beginning of May. I never have happy birthdays because it’s during the winter. Just one year I’d like to have a peaceful birthday. I don’t even want to write about it. There are too many brokenhearted birthdays to remember.

Because of his issues, I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and situational depression. When he gets in his moods, it sets off my PTSD and I can’t stop thinking about his mistreatment of me. It’s like a scratch on a record that keeps playing over and over—and over.


December 15, 2009

I’m still lurking on his Facebook. I saw Jerry posted the pictures of him on his new motorcycle. I took the pictures! How could I not see that coming?
 
It’s so cliché. Middle-aged man on a motorcycle. The Triple M.

He had me take the photos from all angles. He told me to hurry up and email them to him. Now I know why he was so anxious about it. I’m sure he’s told her all about his motorcycle and how he’d love to take her for a ride. Personally, I will never get on a motorcycle with him. I went for a whole year once of never getting in a car with him driving. She doesn’t know about his road rage.

Of course, he had to spend a fortune to get all decked out so he could ride the cycle in the cold. He said it would save on gas if he rode his motorcycle to work. He got battery-operated gloves for warmth and leather breeches that cover his legs and an expensive helmet and expensive all kinds of things. We would have saved a lot more if he didn’t get his motorcycle, I think.

I don’t understand how Jerry can afford to buy all these accessories—a box comes every day in the mail—all while telling me not to go over $75.00 a week for groceries.

He actually made me take food back to the grocery store while I still had two kids living here. I was so embarrassed. Humiliated. He didn’t flinch. I was happy I had kept it under $100.00 for four people, but that wasn’t good enough. I told him to take it back but he yelled at me and gave me those threatening looks and made me go.

I asked the lady at customer service, “Does anybody else ever bring back food because their husbands say they spent too much?”  She just looked away from me and didn’t say a word. Not a word. I gathered not. I just stood there, mortified.

I will never do that again. Why do I let him verbally beat me up like that?
 
How could I not know he would send those pictures to her? I'm so naive! So in denial! So damaged . . .

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