Thursday, February 27, 2014

CHAPTER TWO, continued: DENIAL: December 2009

If you have not been following my divorce memoir, please start at the beginning.

(All names are changed)


December 26, 2009

What a nice Christmas Day. All the kids are here so I am extremely happy. Well, all but one are here.
Our youngest daughter, Kelsie, and her husband, Patrick, flew into Philly on the twentieth then drove up to Maine with his family for Christmas. But they’re coming back at the end of the month so we’ll see them again and have our News Year’s Eve Seafood Feast before they go back to college.
 
I took some pictures of our Christmas trees, but not many. I kept forgetting to get my camera out. That is so not me.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for a wonderful day.
 
 
December 27, 2009
We all went to my brother’s house to celebrate the holidays with the cousins. My mom and her husband flew up from Florida. Six of us siblings were there. My one brother just had twin girls. They are so darling. I brought my camera and remembered to take lots of pictures.
It’s heartwarming to see the older cousins, all in, or just out of, college, interact with the younger cousins. My kids all love getting together with my family. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to do it. Two are in college and my oldest two just graduated and have jobs out west, so it’s hard for them to get time off to come back east.
I will savor this holiday season. I don’t know how many more will be like this. My children are getting older and who knows where they’ll all be next year. Matt will be on his mission.
Empty nesting is for the birds.
 

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 . . .

Thursday, February 20, 2014

CHAPTER TWO, continued: DENIAL DEVICE: December 2009

Please start reading my memoir from the beginning.

(All names are changed)


December 10, 2009

Jerry came downstairs to the family room tonight and begged me, in a dramatic way, “Promise me you’ll stop me if I try to go to the funeral.”

Since I work at a dementia community, and a man just died there, I said, “Why would you want to go to his funeral? I’m not even going.”

He twisted his mouth, shook off what I said, and told me, “Just promise me.”

I said, “Did you take your meds? You’re acting weird.”

He raised his eyebrow at me and said, “She just told me the doctors found a spot on her lung.” His voice caught.

“Who?” I wondered if he was talking about his sister. Why wouldn’t he want to go to her funeral? Then I realized, no, it’s his girlfriend.

 “How do you know they found a spot on her lung? You told me you weren’t going to email her anymore.”

“I know, I know. But this was important. She felt she had to tell me.”

 I got up from the couch and started pacing and huffing in disgust. I turned to him and made a gesture like he stabbed me in the heart with a knife and was turning it. “Why are you doing this to me?” I wailed. “Stop. emailing. her. She has a husband to confide in and doesn’t need to confide in you.” It was hard to hold back my wrath.

Still pacing, I spoke, as if to myself, “I must be the stupidest wife on the planet.”

“No, you’re not.” He plopped down on the coffee table and held his head in his  hands.

“I am. I told you to stop your contact with her and I believed you when you said you would. Now you’re on Facebook with her and you’re still emailing her. I want you to stop.” I stamped my foot. "Stop lying to me!"

“But she could die.” He gave me a horrified look as if I should join him in sympathy.

“I don’t care if she dies,” I snapped—and I meant it. “You have to stop this. You are a married man. She is a married woman.”

“Okay, okay.” He didn’t look compliant, only angry. “It’s obvious you don’t understand.” He stomped out of the room like a child in a temper tantrum and took off upstairs, calling over his shoulder, “If it upsets you so much, I’ll just stop telling you about it.”

I am the stupidest wife on the planet. Still, I sat back down on the loveseat, fuming, and picked up my crocheting. I told myself, I think he heard me this time.

My reasoning turned off and my inner thoughts took over as I sat in front of the television again in a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder orbit. I remembered all the things he’d done to me in the past on an unceasing loop—thinking, wondering, analyzing.

Crocheting is my coping mechanism, but I’m thinking now it’s my denial device. It helps me forget . . . rather, deny.

I am my mother.

Help me, Lord. I so need Thy help.

Monday, February 17, 2014


Please Join as a Follower.

It's OK to be a follower in this case.

Really.

It's not like jumping off a cliff or anything.




 Please start reading my memoir from the beginning.

 

Saturday, February 15, 2014

CHAPTER TWO: DENIAL: Deceber 2009

Please start reading my memoir from the beginning.

(All names are changed)

December 3, 2009

I won’t deny that the thought of Jerry going to Texas isn’t always in the back of my mind. I try to push it away, but it’s there, plain as day, taunting me. My subconscious, which I symbolically hold underwater, keeps trying to gasp for air, wanting to surface, to scream out, “He’s thinking of her. He’s probably in touch with her. They are probably laughing at you and her husband for being so stupid!”

I wonder why I care. I’ve been pulling away from my bond to him for the last few years now, thinking it will help me get over all the hurt he causes. But this does bother me. It’s not right. It’s a betrayal. We’re married.

We’ve had the conversation before that if someone wants out of a marriage, they should get a divorce first, then start a new relationship. Jerry was a bishop, for heaven’s sake. He knows that.

Tonight I repressed my thoughts, as usual, and sat on the loveseat, crocheting until my wrist hurt from the repetitive motion. Like a robot, I watched television and worked the hook and yarn as if asleep but awake at the same time.

Jerry came down from his “man cave” and stood at the entrance of the family room. After trying to act nonchalant, he began talking about her. “I just emailed her and she said she’s disappointed we’re not coming to Texas.”

“You what?” My legs brought the recliner up with a bang. “You’re still emailing her?” I knew it.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”

I threw down the yarn. “Listen to me. You are treading on thin ice,” I said, furious, as I stood up to face him. “She is a married woman and you are a married man. Think about what you’re doing.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t email her again,” he said before he ambled back upstairs.

He wasn’t lying, or, at least, I didn’t think he was. He did other things rather than email. I decided to check out his new Facebook page that I knew nothing about until his little trip to Texas. He still hasn’t “friended” me.

When I saw his page, my mouth dropped open. Adrenaline coursed throughout my body. I saw he had sent her a heart. I didn’t know you could do such a thing, so I followed the trail to her Facebook page. She wasn’t feeling well so he sent her some little love note heart to make her feel better.

I haven’t said anything to him yet. I want to watch to see what else transpires over Facebook. I check his page every day. He spends considerable time uploading pictures of himself and she comments about how great he looks.

I noticed, in a day or so after the heart, she changed her profile picture from one of her and her husband, to one of just her, posed with a big smile, like she was beaming at him.

 

December 4, 2009

Jerry changed his Facebook profile. I guess he wants her to see him in his element, with his bicycle, in his latex, skin-tight clothes. She commented on his picture: “You look really fit.”  Blech!

 

December 6, 2009

When the Facebook banter accelerated, I decided I would make a comment after a comment she made so he would know I was watching. I thought it prudent since our kids have started to post on his page, welcoming him to Facebook, even though he's been on FB since August. Hrmph. His posts must have started showing up on their FB pages because I posted something and we're all friends.
 
Funny how he responds to her posts, but to none of ours. Not once.

He is now fully aware that I know about his FB chats and comments. I told him it was inappropriate. He didn’t agree.

“You always tell me I’m too skinny,” he said. “She told me I look ‘fit.’” He stuck his nose up and chin out, triumphant.

"Yeah," I thought, "She doesn't live with you and know you compulsively starved yourself by eating yogurt for every meal for months." Even the kids were worried. He shaved his head, lost weight, and looked like a cancer survivor.

This is so juvenile. I don't want to play this game.

I shouldn't have to!


. . . to be continued

Chapter One -- Discovery, continued

Please start reading my memoir from the beginning.

(All names are changed)

November 24, 2009

Things have been awkward here at the house since last week. We have to watch how we interact because we have someone living here with us. It’s Leah, my oldest daughter Kate’s friend. We’ve known her family since they moved into our ward when Kate was about twelve. I’m glad Leah’s here. She’s so happy all the time, and the way I’m feeling now, I need a little gaiety to brighten up my miserable days.

It seems that we aren’t meant to have an empty house. Word traveled that we had spare bedrooms, so back in February a physician’s assistant moved in with us on her last rotation. We got real close to her, like a daughter. She lived with us until May.

Then Derrick, a friend who lived in our ward previously, got a job back here again and lived with us from April into the summer, until he could buy a house and get his family back here after school let out.

I love having the house full. I hate to admit it’s because I don’t want to be alone with my husband.

I am the loneliest married woman in the world. I can’t talk to my husband because he takes everything I say the wrong way. For instance, I know he likes to ride his bike and he was upset one day because he heard it was going to rain.

“Oh, no, I heard it was going to be sunny,” I told him, smiling.

He yelled, “Do you have to disagree with everything I say?”

I thought it would make him happy to hear it wasn’t going to rain, but it didn’t.

I just try to keep neutral. I neither smile nor frown. When I’m around him, my face is frozen like it’s lost the ability to move a muscle.If he says something to me, I just say, “Uh-huh,” and say nothing more.

I forgot not to comment when I told him about the weather.

I’ve been married over thirty years and except for maybe the first two, I’ve been verbally abused. The first two were testing the waters for him. I failed miserably in the test. I actually had opinions about things. I found out quickly that wasn’t allowed.

When I married him, he was an alcoholic. I’d never been around men who drank, so I didn’t know anything about it. It’s not that he drank every day, which is probably what threw me off, but when he did, he couldn’t stop. I thought joining the LDS church, where alcohol—or any addictive substance—is unacceptable, would be the end of our problems. I didn’t know anything about the pathology of an addictive personality.

Jerry was a mean drunk. He would yell at me and tell me to leave the house and go live on the streets for all he cared. He called me names that, because of my naïveté, I had to look up in the dictionary to see what they meant. Those words were sordid, dirty; words you’d never say to your wife whom you’re supposed to love and cherish—and respect. But the next day he wouldn’t remember and I’d forgive him. Hurt, forgive, repeat. The cycle of my married life.

Being young and stupid, and having been raised in an abusive household, I took it as that’s how men treat their wives. My dad was mean to my mom. It’s how I grew up. I even tried to talk to my mother about it. I told her one time when Jerry was angry and had yelled at me. I was so miserable. She just said, “He’ll get happy again. You just have to wait.”

That’s what she did with my dad. She wore blinders and rose-colored glasses. I told her, “I don’t want to wait. It’s too hard. I get depressed and don’t want to live.”

I know now she lacks the ability to help me in this. Denial was her coping mechanism. She didn’t know how to help herself when dad was alive. I’m glad she’s married to a nice man now.

Leah is here to keep me company and I look forward to seeing her every day after she gets home from work. How can one person be so jubilant? I love to hear her singing in her bedroom and appreciate the chitchat when we’re together.

Jerry and I hardly interact, especially now, since he’s told me about her. I come home and am depressed to know my husband is carrying on with another woman.

“I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s innocent,” he said. “Why would I have told you about it if it wasn’t?”

He doesn’t know I’m lurking on Facebook. I see his comments to her. I read hers back to him.

Can you believe, he never friended me on Facebook? He has never commented on my Facebook page. Yet he’s been corresponding with her in this way for three months. He’s oblivious. I wonder if her husband knows about it.

November 30, 2009

Today I attended the funeral of a dear friend. He died in a motorcycle accident. It’s so sad. He’s about my age, maybe a little younger.

I love his wife, Tessa. Her children all came in for the funeral. It was poignant to see them all. I can’t imagine how Tessa felt. She and her husband were truly in love. I never heard an unkind word escape from their lips about each other—only loving and supportive words.

Tessa withstood the tender eulogies and, Lord help me, I wished . . . I wished I was her. Lord, help me.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Chapter One: Discovery: November 2009

Please start reading my divorce memoir from the beginning.

(All names are changed)

November 19, 2009

Something crazy—stupid, maddening—happened to me today. I’m so confused and hurt—angry. I feel like I’m hovering outside of myself and I don’t like what I see. It’s surreal. I’m writing about it so I can make some sense of it. Sense?

Let me start at the beginning of this newest anomaly in my marriage.

As I stood in the kitchen this evening, I heard the garage door go up. Jerry came home early from his business trip. I was just about to leave to meet my friends at the theater to see the second Twilight movie. We’d all bought tickets online and I was running late.

Jerry came in the door, spotted me, put down his briefcase, and trod directly over to me as I stood at the counter. He put his arms around me and hugged me in his socially-awkward way, hardly touching. The tentative, uncomfortable embrace didn’t inspire me to hug him back but I mustered a pat.

I calculated. It had been more than three years since I’d felt that man’s arms around me. I can’t remember the last time he touched me at all. It felt so awkward and immediately put me on my guard.

There was that time, about two years ago, at the shore after his charity bicycle ride. I had just fêted him with noisemakers and picture-snapping as he crossed the finish line. Afterward, we walked on the boardwalk and I put my hand in his. He didn’t look at me, he just kept walking. His discomfort transferred, like an electrical current, from his limp hand to my hopeful one. Before fifteen seconds passed—I counted—he dropped my grasp to scratch his nose. He walked ahead of me, like he didn’t want anybody to know he was with me.

That all transpired in my head in a split second as he held me in the kitchen.

Not sure of the situation, my first reaction was to protect myself, possibly from some type of drama.

When Jerry pulled away, he gripped my arms, looked down at me and said, “I choose you,” then gave me a strange smile, as if feigning good will.

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “I decided I love you and want to be married to you.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Well, you are, so . . . ?”

He said, “I have a lot to tell you,” and took my hand and led me out of the kitchen into the family room.

I told him, “I’m on my way out,” and pointed to the door with my free hand.

“No, we have to talk,” he said in his commanding, uninviting, way.

He plopped me down on our new love seat and sat cattycorner from me on the couch. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I resolved to listen. It seemed important. I wondered if he got a raise. Was he going to finally take me on that trip he promised me three years ago? I inwardly warned myself not to be optimistic.

Good thing.

He said, while on his business trip to Texas, he met with his old high school girlfriend who lived in the Dallas area.

What? Her again? It’s been almost twenty years since I heard him mention that name—that woman. I can’t even utter or write her name.

He said she got in touch with him through Facebook back in August and he told her he was going to Dallas on a business trip.

August? In a split second I remembered one day he asked me how to “friend” someone on Facebook. He said she got in touch with him? I bet he got in touch with her. And I told him how to do it.

He said she invited him to come meet her family. They made plans to meet for dinner: Jerry, herand her husband. But, lo and behold, she came by herself. Why am I not surprised?

Jerry said, “I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

Yeah, right. That just proves how stupid he thinks I am—knowsI am.

He gave me the whole story I had heard the last time he met up with her at their twentieth high school reunion. She was abused by her step father; he almost killed her; she came to school with a black eye. Blah, blah, blah.

He actually started to cry as he told me the story. His chin quivered as he spit out the words, trying to hold back the tears. I wasn’t moved. I mean, if he thought I was going to be stirred by his emotion toward another woman . . . I sat in dazed stupor, not believing what I saw or heard. This, from a man who prided himself on never crying? Infuriating.

Inside, my emotions were agitated, out of control, thoughts racing. I felt out-of-body, screaming, crying and pacing the floor. My head pounded.

Yet, I sat there on the love seat, not moving, as my inside voices and emotions raced around me. I only, calmly, said to him, “I’ve heard this story all before, several times.”

Bewildered, he didn’t believe I could possibly know it. He just stared at me, scrunched his nose and said, “What do you mean?” His memory’s like a sieve.

To prove it, I started adding to the story he just told me about her abuse. His eyebrows lifted as his eyes widened, like he had never heard it before and I was a liar. Such a farce.

I stopped my account and stayed silent as he continued.

“She has lupus and is on disability.” He felt so sorry for her. He could barely talk for his emotions and his hand came up to his heart as he caught his breath.

I suffer from lupus—caused by living with him, the loose cannon. Does he feel sorry for me?

“She’s in pain all the time.” He looked at me for commiseration.

I’m in pain all the time, too. He doesn’t acknowledge it. I was seething inside; holding in my ire.

He paused, choked up, looked at me, and said, “And she’s an artist. You should see her work. It’s beautiful. Her husband is a photographer and he takes pictures and she paints them.”

I couldn’t hold it in. I barely caught his gaze while he sang her praises. I pointed to myself and tapped my chest, as if to remind him who he was talking to. I blurted out, “Jerry, I’m an artist.”

My words caught him off guard, as if breaking his reverie. Shooing me away with his hands, he said, “I know, I know, but you should see her work. It’s just so. . . beautiful.”His voice caught and he put his hand up to his mouth.

He always said he didn’t see any point to my artwork. Told me I was just showing off. My heart hurt as I listened to him. I wanted to cry myself, but I was too angry.

The talk continued about her.“She said something that surprised me. She asked me if I was ever sorry I didn’t marry her.” He looked at me immediately. “I told her no.”

I didn’t feel assured. Did he think that would pacify me? I was already way too deep into exasperation and anger.

Jerry had told me about her when we began dating. It was uncanny how much I looked like her, he had said. After they broke up, she got pregnant and asked him to marry her, because she didn’t want to marry the father, an older man. Jerry refused. He had to go to college to avoid the draft. She ended up marrying that guy and Jerry was relieved. At least that’s what he told me. He never saw her again—until his twentieth high school reunion. That was almost twenty years ago. He dated her for one year—forty stinking years ago—and he’s never gotten over her.

I didn’t go to that reunion because I had just had a baby, but I urged him to go with his friends. He came home and told me she was there. That’s all I heard about for awhile—how she barely looked older; she still had her figure; she divorced her first husband and married again.

I found out later from his friends’ wives that he danced with her all night. One of the women pulled him aside and told me she said,“Jerry, you need to stop dancing with her.”

“Why? There’s no harm in it.”

“I’m telling Patsy.”

Jerry scoffed at her and went on dancing.

She did tell me.

He told me he composed a letter to her, before computers and email. I talked some sense into him about how inappropriate that was. He agreed. That was the last I heard of it.

I don’t remember how much time Jerry said they spent together at the restaurant in Texas—two hours, three hours—hours—but she persuaded him to come to her house for dinner the next evening to meet her husband. He said he told her he would feel weird doing that.

I thought, I hope he’s not going to tell me he actually went to their house.

He did.

“I almost didn’t go,” he assured me, looking me straight in the eye, squirming. He said he met her husband and was taken by the way her husband was so solicitous toward her, getting her something to drink, making sure she was comfortable in her chair.

I wish Jerry felt that way toward me.

Jerry does do things for me, but in a condescending way. He would put the wet clothes from the washer into the dryer, then tell me, “There. I did your laundry for you,” making me feel inadequate as if I didn’t do it right or fast enough.

He said, “Her husband kept looking at me, with suspicion in his eyes.”

Uh, yeah. I sat there looking at him with suspicion in myeyes, too.

“I left because I didn’t feel comfortable. I didn’t even stay for dinner.”

I bet her husband wanted to kill him. If she came to my doorstep, I’d probably want to kill her, too. What is the purpose? The motive?

Then, as if addressing my thoughts, he said, “I want you to meet her.”

My mouth dropped open. I felt blood rush up to my neck. My ears were hot. It felt like someone just sucked the air right out of me.

Not noticing my obvious discomfort, he continued talking. “I want you to see how much her husband loves her and I want us to be in love like that.”

I balked, shaking my head and getting up from the love seat. He took my hand as I was walking away and pleaded, “I want us to take a vacation and go visit them. I know you’ll like her.”

I pulled my hand away and said, “Do you hear yourself? You want me to go to Texas to meet your high school girlfriend and you want me to like her?”

“That’s what I want us to do.” He crossed his arms and stuck out his chin. I think he really thought I would give in and go.

“I’m not going to use my vacation days to go meet your high school girlfriend. If I’m using my vacation time, I’m going to go visit my kids—our kids—not her.” Livid.

His expression—mouth falling open, hands upturned—showed me he couldn’t believe I wouldn’t want to go meet her—so I could see just how wonderful she is.

Exasperated. Nobody’s home, I thought about his addled brain.

I sneered at him and spit out, “And I’m surprised you would use your vacation to see her and not your kids.” That really hurt me. He wasn’t even thinking of his family. Just her. Totally infatuated.

I sat back down on the edge of the love seat and rubbed my aching temples. I looked at him hard, demanded eye contact. “If you ask any of your guy friends if they think it’s cool for you to take your wife all the way to Texas to meet your high school sweetheart, they’ll tell you it’s not cool. It’s crazy.”

Again, the scrunched up nose. He didn’t believe me. “Really?”he asked.

The look I threw back was his answer to that. More exasperation.

He whined. “I know you’ll like them.”

My shoulders fell. It was useless to go on. I have given up on dreaming about romance with that man. I told him before, being in love with him is a Catch 22. I only get hurt in the end.

Seeing me crestfallen, he said he would prove that he loved me by doing things for me.

“You already do things for me, Jerry,” I told him, dejected.

“I’ll do more. You’ll see. I’ll prove to you that I love you.”

I figured his doing nice things for me, or proving that he loved me, would last about two weeks, his usual amount of time to do things he resolves to do.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. My mind wanted to run with my body out of the house. I was glad I had somewhere to go.

I bolted up from the loveseat. “I have to leave. I bought a ticket online to see a movie and I have to go now.” I figured telling him I already spent the money would get him off my back. He’s all about money.

In a hurry, I gathered my coat, purse, and keys. I turned back for a moment. “Think about it. What if I asked you to take precious vacation time to go meet one of my high school boyfriends? How would you feel?”

I looked at his face. I could hear his thoughts say, “It’s not the same.”

All he said was, “I can’t believe you’re leaving.” He got up and followed me, then stopped to yell, “I’m trying to have a conversation aboutus and you have to go to a stupid movie.” He threw up his hands.

“I already bought the ticket,” I called over my shoulder before I stumbled out the door, letting it slam.

A conversation about us? A conversation about her. Fuming, I remembered his tears.

I got in my car and drove toward the movie theater. I played back what just transpired in my mind to see if I had acted on impulse or—

I beat my hand on the steering wheel. “That idiot!” I shouted inside the car. “I can’t believe he did that! Of all thestupid . . .”

Shaking the wheel, I screamed at the top of my lungs. I kept replaying the scene and repeating what an idiot he was—as loud as possible—all the way to the theater.

I don’t remember the movie. I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to go home. I said good-bye to my friends, drove around, taking the long way to wherever I was going. I needed to bounce this off somebody, but I could think of nobody I wanted to tell.

Who do you go to and say, “My husband just traveled all the way to Texas to see his high school sweetheart? Yeah, they’ve been corresponding since August.” August!Three months!

Part of me wanted to hide it and not let anybody know my husband was so incredibly stupid and, surprising, the other part of me wanted everyone to know.

Then I doubted my feelings—maybe I was too hard on him.

No! I’m going to own up to my feelings. I’m hurt. I’m embarrassed he did that. I’m humiliated. What does her husband think about this? Oh, who cares about them?

When I got home, Jerry was in bed, asleep.

So, now I’m writing down my thoughts in a journal document—with a password, no less. I always say I have nothing to hide, but this raw writing needs to be protected, guarded. Vitriol dominates my thoughts. I’m hurt and confused.

Writing will be cathartic. Journaling helps me gather my thoughts and I will have massive sorting out to do. That is a fact.

A whole new nightmare has begun. Who am I kidding? My married life has been nightmarish almost from the time we made our vows.

Have I really lived like this for thirty-two years?

. . . to be continued

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Prologue

By Susan Knight


January 9, 2010

I stood in the shower tonight when the thought came to me, “This will be the year of my divorce.” I’m fifty-six years old, my mother was fifty-six when my dad died, my grandmother was fifty-six when she divorced my grandfather. I believe it’s inevitable this time.

The hot water flowed over and around my body like a veil, metaphorically hiding me from the cares of my new world. But, instead of calm, only fear and foreboding found me. Perhaps nothing short of drugs—artificial perception changers—will help me lessen my pain . . . my heartache. I’ll need to up the Prozac.

My hands held up that tiled wall under the shower faucet as I tried to comprehend what was going to happen to me. I don’t know how long I stood there; water pulsing on my body. My mind begged for relief, wanting to wake from the nightmare, have it all go away.

Thoughts of my mother and grandmother—and myself—filled up my baffled brain. The three of us all married abusive husbands. My grandmother probably had the worst of the lot, what with the physical abuse my grandfather dished out, but can abuse really be measured or compared? The results are the same—mistrust, guilt, agony, grief, and bruises, whether inside or out.

When I turned the water off and opened the curtain, I shuddered as the cold air hit me.  Except for the involuntary shivering, I couldn’t move. One hand still held up the wall, and the wall held up my shaking self. My thoughts could not be quelled. I could only see that repulsive, blue, cell phone.