So in 2003 I gave up. At the start of that year, I just took a deep breath and told myself, to hell with him it was time to start worrying about ME and taking care of myself. I wasn't really sure where the marriage was going to go. I had no more energy left to get behind the two of us and try to keep pushing us along the uphill road we were on. He had never made the effort at all. I only had enough oomph in my reserve tank to barely drag myself along. I vowed that in 2003, I was going to stop being the one always trying to make it work, always making plans for us, always finding ways to keep us together as a couple. I was going to sit back and see if he even noticed I was pulling away from him and if he did, was he going to do anything about it to try and win me back into the marriage. The answer didn't surprise me. He didn't notice any of the changes in me, or he did and he just didn't care. Everything that happened in 2003, I would say to myself, okay this is it, I'm done, this is the final straw for me. But I would keep plugging along, hopeful.
The crap started out early in the year. I had already booked a vacation for us months before, a cabin in the mountains for a week. He spent the entire time getting high, as he did every normal day, only something as trivial as a job was not interrupting him that week. On the return drive he realized he left his baggie at the cabin, when we were two states away and almost home. He spent the rest of the trip alternating between screaming profanities while beating on the steering wheel, and bawling his eyes out. This was my husband, who could barely grunt words of civility to me at home, but he was now crying real heartbreaking tears over a lost bag of pot. And I was trapped in a car with this overly emotional lunatic. Unbelievable. No wonder when I asked him to choose between me or his drugs, he would not give up his drugs. He obviously was more addicted to the weed than he was his wife. And loved it more than he did me.
2003 is also the year many of my health issues started. I've always had asthma and I keep it in control with medication, but one night around midnight I woke up with an asthma attack so severe, my inhaler wasn't helping. I was gulping for air. When I tried to get W to take me to the hospital, he went berserk because I woke him up, and he bluntly suggested I either call 911 or drive myself to the ER. (He finally got up and took me to the hospital but continued to bitch at me the entire time, and complained because he would be "tired" the next day at work.) Okay, another asshole point for him. My shit list was just starting to grow. Not long after that, I had a kidney stone, but at the time I just knew I had awful pains in my side. My doctor sent me to the hospital for tests and a CT scan. Surprisingly W took me that time, although it was not with love and concern that he sat with me while I waited for results. He just kept watching the clock and griping as it got later and later in the evening and he was still there with me.
That summer, I started to have chest pains and sharp back pains- I will say this was a pain unlike anything I'd ever had in my entire life. The first time it happened was late at night, and remembering the asthma incident, I quietly slipped into the living room and sat on the couch by myself, convinced I was having a heart attack and not knowing what to do. After awhile the pain subsided, but the attacks grew in frequency and pain level. The worst attack happened while I was grocery shopping, and I had to walk away from a full cart and leave the store. Then I started running high fevers, and was throwing up bile one morning. It finally dawned on me what was happening, and I asked W to take me to the hospital. He insisted he had to get to work- this from the man who preferred to sit at home and smoke and collect unemployment checks that he used to buy more pot while I paid all the bills. I drove myself to the walk-in clinic near our house. Sure enough, it was my gallbladder. They told me to get to the ER as soon as possible. Even though I was sitting at the hospital again, W couldn't be bothered to be there with me.
I scheduled my surgery to remove the gallbladder a few days later and that morning, W dropped me off at the hospital. Yes, I said dropped me off. He stayed only the few minutes it took them to get me settled in a room, then he left. I'd never had surgery before, never even had an IV before, but I was just there alone and trying not to be afraid, waiting to be rolled into the operating room. Late that afternoon, when I came out of recovery and was put in my own room, he wasn't there and didn't show up for hours. He said he met a friend for lunch and they were at a sports bar, and he lost track of time. Really? What kind of husband dumps his wife at the hospital to undergo surgery, and simply forgets about her while he's shooting pool and drinking beer? My ex was that kind of husband. Friends came by my house all week long to drop off casseroles and to check on me, because they knew that while I recovered at home, I was not being taken care of. And they were right.
And a month later, when a routine mammogram discovered a lump in my breast, he could not even bother to accompany me to my biopsy and more than that, he did not come with me the day I went to get my results (negative thankfully). Friends begged to come with me to my appointments, but I put up a brave front and brushed aside their offers, thinking my husband would finally be worried into caring about me. My mother had survived breast cancer a few years prior to that, but I can still remember the days before I got my results- me sitting in my little bedroom crying uncontrollably and W, just on the other side of the wall, would sit there and watch TV, ignoring me like a callous toad. I say "my" little bedroom because W and I had already stopped sleeping together in the same bed by then. I don't remember when or why it happened, it was just sort of a mutual decision. On the few nights he did come sleep in our bed, we had separate comforters so that we didn't have to touch, even on accident. And in the middle of the night if he rolled over towards me, I can remember kicking him. Hard. Yes, really.
After I got my results, I didn't even call him to let him know it was negative. I had just received some of the most important news of my life, and I was there alone. In the parking lot, sitting in my car with the phone in my hand, I knew he didn't care and I wasn't going to waste the energy giving him the news. That night at home, he didn't even ask how the appointment had gone. At that moment, not only did my lightbulb come on, it exploded. I hated him. I could not be married to him anymore. I could not, and would not, spend the rest of my life with this man. At that time, I was only 36, I had a LONG life ahead of me. The idea of being with W for another 40 or so years, made me want to vomit. He didn't deserve me. I didn't deserve to be treated that way by anyone. I wanted someone who was going to love me and want to be with me. If I didn't get out of the marriage and get on with my life soon, I was afraid I never would.
I felt I was still young enough for a second chance, and in 2003 I had been working all year long on myself and I'd lost 80 pounds. I was starting to reach out to new friends, starting to enjoy normal routines like coffee out with girlfriends. I was finally making a salary I could live on, alone if need be. Instead of always worrying about "our" house, I started spending some of my money on new clothes finally. I felt vibrant and alive, and once I mentally made the commitment to dump my toxic partner, I felt optimistic for the first time in a very long time. I just didn't know what to do as far as correcting the mistake that was my marriage. I would literally pray that W would be the one to leave me, and make it easier on me, but it never happened.
We had been together eleven years at this point, and this was the first time either of us had suffered any major illness. He'd never had to step up to the plate for me before, and he had multiple chances in 2003 to come to my side, be my hero, show me he cared. At the time of my breast lump my parents, who lived 700 miles away, had us drive down to meet them in a town that was almost halfway, so they could gift W with a fairly new pickup truck (they had just bought a newer one and decided to "help" us out- and wouldn't you know it that selfish jerk bitched because we had to drive part of the way to go get it instead of my parents driving the 1400 miles roundtrip to just drop it at our door). At lunch that day my mom repeatedly asked me what was wrong with me, she could see how I was barely tolerating being at the same table as W. I lied and told her I was just still stressed out about the biopsy and the impending results.
And by Christmas in 2003, my parents came to visit and both realized there was something seriously wrong with us. They pretended not to notice the patches in the drywall, where I had hastily tried to cover up the many holes caused by W's fist as he came at me angrily about one perceived slight or another. He would corner me and punch the wall right beside my head, as if to prove he could easily beat me up but was showing his benevolence by tearing up our house instead. Christmas morning, before going out into the living room to open presents with my folks, I calmly but firmly told W I wanted a divorce and I wanted him out of the house. I know, a crappy holiday gift to give him, but with my family's presence I felt stronger and felt sure that I was making the right decision for myself and for my future.
And when W told me he didn't realize there were any problems with our marriage and he was shocked to hear that I was unhappy (why hadn't I ever bothered to say something to him about my misery, he demanded to know, instead of "blindsiding" him with this sudden news), I knew I had made the right choice. If that man thought we had a happy marriage and our relationship was wonderful, then I definitely had no business whatsoever being married to him any longer.
So much more on this story and the year 2003, but I'll save it for another post.
MISS GEE
(The sunny view from my little front porch back in those dark days.)
(The sunny view from my little front porch back in those dark days.)
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