Independence Day! Part 14

So here we are, 4 months down the line and I’m as angry as ever. Anger is not a great emotion, and neither is the urge to throat punch everyone! But that’s how I feel…

The update is my husband has text to say he’s made a huge mistake. Seriously, I’m gobsmacked, whaaaaaaattttt the f………laming hell is wrong with him.  Therein lies my first throat punch victim.  No explanation, no lead up, no phone call, no conversation, just a text!

Lets just skip the next few angry days and weeks to when I said ok lets try again….seems as I never wanted to give up as easily as he did.  So why do I really not care whether my marriage now works or not.  There’s 2 explanations and the first one is I genuinely don’t care, all I wanted was for him to tell me he’d made a mistake, after all, this is the third time he’d done this and there’s only so much one person can take, even me. The other explanation is that he hasn’t managed to prove to me he really wants this to work. The reason I say this is that he whined like a wallflower about the state of our marriage prior to the break up, yet has ‘slotted’ right back in, as it was, and appears to think all is fine!!!

I wouldn’t say my husband was stupid, but I genuinely think he may be quite thick. I don’t mean to offend him, but listen to my reasoning…..you whine about arguing, about doing so little together, about not putting each other first etc etc, yet, I allow you back, and we go right back to where we were. When I remind you of this fact you then make excuses, like we’re always going to argue or we don’t like the same things, it’s not such a bad thing is it… “Are you actually f…………laming serious. Had you the knowledge, intellect or basic common sense and not been so wrapped in yourself, this is something that could have been considered on the morning of the 14th July 2016, instead you walked out in the afternoon, feeling hard done by, not listened to and unloved. Yet you had the answers already…

So what happens next, who knows.  We are back together, though not actually living together and I have a gut feeling there’s more to this story than I’ve been told. But that means I’m making things more difficult through my lack of mistrust.  And my anger remains. My answer…..DEAL WITH IT OR DO WHAT YOU DO BEST, LEAVE. Damn that anger bud!

Keep smiling!

Independence Day! Day 13

So what next? My poor husband doesn’t know whether he wants to be married anymore. 5 weeks and 3 days down the line I’m still none the wiser as to why. The delicate little flower must be in turmoil, he has a roof over his head that he didn’t have to fight for, he has 3 meals as well as brunch and afternoon tea, sounds horrific I know, there’s no bills, no kids, no dogs, his room is cleaned for him, and I guess his backside is wiped. He simply walked out because life got tough! As I’ve mentioned, this is the 3rd time, defining the man he really is.

I’m honestly really trying to understand, and empathise, why he behaves as cold as he does, I don’t think he is being malicious, probably more thoughtless. But why? Is it because he doesn’t actually love me or even want to be married, did he want a wife who simply said ‘yes sir, no sir‘, I just don’t know.  Without him telling me anything, and he didn’t, how would I know.

Looking back, and believe me I’ve had many hours to reflect, he’s always been aloof and withdrawn, and as a result, life has required me to be strong and deal with it as if I were a single parent or lived alone. Not just because he spent a lot of time away, but because even when he was at home, work, golf, or football came first over family, every single time. And one example I can give you is the 7/11 bombings. My mother was in London on that fateful day and we were at work. A friend had told me ‘something had kicked off in London, bombings or something’. My heart stopped, I had just dropped my mother at the central station to catch a  train heading into London, straight into the carnage. I had tried getting hold of her for several minutes, though it felt like hours, before finally getting through. She was in a state, she didn’t know which way to head and how to get away, I could hear the panic in the background from the other commuters, but I just couldn’t do anything, it was one of the most helpless moments I’ve ever been through. It was such a difficult call to have, but I begged her to walk away from the centre of London and head towards the M4, don’t get on any bus, train or tube, just walk and follow the M4 signs, I’ll find you.

I didn’t know where I would pick her up and had absolutely no idea how to find her, that was my problem but it gave her a focus. I then called my husband who said he’d just started a new job and couldn’t get away, after all she was fine, things were fine, there would be no more bombings. ‘How the hell do you know, really, how?’ That’s how that ended, I went into London, can’t remember what junction, but as I came off and down the slip road onto a roundabout, the roads were blocked by police, stopping all vehicles from heading into London, there were people everywhere, on phones, crying, shouting, pleading, it was horrendous, and as I called my mum there she was with her suitcase, upset, but I couldn’t believe I’d actually found her.

As the reader, do you know how poor that sounds, have you any idea how awful hearing those words from your own husbands mouth make you feel? Even if you do have empathetic capacity, let me tell you anyway, it was painful, made all the more painful when my boss insisted on driving me! This was my mother, my boss could hear, see and identify the turmoil I was going through and faced with. Yet the man I loved, shared my life with and more than anything in the world trusted, treated me with absolute abandonment, let alone treating my mother with no regard.

A further example that stands out was when my dog was put to sleep. The whole family were there, later that evening he had a function to go to, and my husband actually went! Myself and the kids were together, upset, but helping each other through it, and find it unbelievable that he went out, and then even stayed over. I have broached him about this, only to be told that it’s my fault, I didn’t ask him not to go out! That is the theme throughout our marriage. In fact I do recall him being annoyed with me for not calling him when he was away. When I responded, you didn’t give me a phone number, because (1) you can only get internet in your room, (2) there is a time difference and (3) it would be easier for him to call me as a result of the first 2 (end quote), he responded by telling me “well you could’ve what’s-app’d me to call you” He will always have an answer and I will always be wrong and at fault.

However, the day I realised there was no going back from this 3rd split was the day I went into hospital. I know we’ve separated, but if the tables were reversed, not in a million years would I have left my children to organise the logistics of getting him to and from the hospital, I would have been there no matter what. But that’s exactly what he did. He left the kids to organise the logistics of getting me to and from hospital, of being my next of kin and of ringing the ward to see how the operation went. Quite honestly, how he has behaved has made me so embarrassed, humiliated and ashamed of him. I know my kids are adults, but it’s bad enough relying on anyone for help in this situation, let alone relying on your own children to see you in such a needy, pathetic state. I’ll never forgive him for that.

His behaviour has been the catalyst in examining my marriage, it has allowed me to use it as tool in deciding the path to take that best suits my children and I, and has been the deciding strand in determining my well being.

Keep smiling.

 

Independence Day! Day 12

I’m aware that I’m not the most tactile person, that my heart may contain traces of stone and that the harder someone falls the more I laugh, but even in my stratospheric regions of cognitive awareness, what I’m about to blog is at the very least, odd. On Day 11, I told you about my husband not wanting to visit his own son in hospital until I sent him a rather angry text, please note, I do regret the content, tone and language used, but felt it necessary to get my point over! But when my sons reversing light failed to work, he popped right over with the part. Where’s the sense? Unless I have taken some stupid pills, and am missing something?

I feel, at times, my blog is a by product of that book titled ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’. I just keep describing how a woman thinks compared to the oddball thoughts of a man! My reactions are that of an emotional, middle aged, menopausal woman, whilst my husband is practical, rational and sensible, not at all patronising!

Maybe my reaction to being dumped and my operation, entwined with that of our son being rushed into hospital were factors beyond the control of my husband, as such, he failed to acknowledge the situation. This made/make him cold, heartless and mean-spirited. Whereas fixing a reversing light is something he can fix, he can go and physically get a part and conclude the matter with a positive outcome. Alternatively, he could genuinely not give a toss. I really don’t know.

Whilst visiting our sons, I could see in my husbands face he was sad, that something was upsetting him, but he was here to see his sons, so I made myself scarce and left them to get on with it. Later, after he left, I received a text from him, “you seem to have everyone around you and lots of support, I have not heard from no-one…“, “seems like you have it all worked out, I’m not feeling the same. Guess I’ll have to try harder then. Guess me talking to people has been a waste” And “…don’t worry about me, you are right I created this mess so have to deal with it“. Apart from it not reading grammatically correct, annoying in itself, the content infuriated me! For crying out loud, from day 1, oh great one, I told you this is not what I wanted, let’s talk. From day 1, oh great one, this is of your own doing, let’s talk. From day 1, oh great one, you so desperately wanted this, let’s talk. From day 1, oh great one, I tried telling you how deep and hurtful this would be to not only us, but to the kids and wider family, let’s talk. From day one, oh great one, I told you don’t do this again, please. But you did, you didn’t talk, explain or give me a reason for not wanting to be married, you needed to escape, run away, bolt. And that’s exactly what you did, leaving me with the aftermath.

Now it appears you want me to deal with your emotions as well, again, odd. I really don’t understand, as I’ve said, you wanted this, so you would have known long before letting me in on this what was going to happen, affording you time to prepare and manage yourself. All I can say is, what’s happened? What’s changed in the weeks since you’ve left? Surely you aren’t regretting your decision, you were so sure, so callous, so methodical and so very disciplined at dumping me?

Well, what I can say is that you go through emotional stages and you have no choice but to let it happen, your mental state will not allow you to skip a stage. I know this because I tried bartering with my mental state, promised I wouldn’t cry if I could just go back to being my hard old self, therefore not putting my mind through the stress of being soft, weak  and feeble. Result for my mind, I thought! However, it didn’t happen, my stupid mind made me see the stupid process out! Anyway, you’re at the self-absorption, self-indulgence stage, and I can guarantee you can’t rush this stage. I spent a whole weekend on an air bed in the sitting room in front of the TV. When I got up my legs couldn’t support my body weight! As much as it pains me to quote a cliche, time is a great healer, and as much as it pains me to give you helpful advice, you will get through it, you will become stronger and you will move on.

Keep smiling.

 

Independence Day! Day 11

As I have already noted, myself and my husband have struggled for years. I’m not sure what it was that drew us together, but we weren’t quite matched and the longer we were married the more these things became an issue. The fact he went away as part of his job was more of a relief, probably for both of us. That paints a particularly bleak picture, we did have great times, many of them.

The arguing became part of us, we both became defensive, him with never being at fault and me with the constant guilt that we we’re tearing each other apart in front of the children. As a result, he has walked out twice.  (Three times now).

I think I understand why we are where we are.  I was always prepared to talk about our issues, discuss them and try to work out where and what to do about our future.  But he wasn’t, he would never discuss anything and refused to go back and re-visit any issues. How can I compete with that, how can I make things better faced with that? As a result, deep down I knew at some stage we would reach the end.

Again, I’m not blaming him entirely, though how can you force someone to talk. He is a good man, a good father and a good friend. But he made me feel not quite as clever as he was, not quite as important as he felt he was and never, in my mind, treated with me the respect I felt I deserved.  He has told me he loves me, but my gut feeling finished that sentence with’…but I’m not in love with you‘. In my opinion that is a spineless attempt at ending a relationship/marriage. That’s one sentence liable to spiral me into a spat of insanity, it’s the cruelest, most feeble, and gutless statement anyone could ever say to another person.

Why is there a need to pinpoint blame on anyone, who wants to argue anyway? I can’t always control life, so it’s not my fault that you’re dealt a rough hand, or that the kids refuse to listen, or even that your work day goes wrong. I don’t deserve your disdain, I deserve your respect.

This blog isn’t about ‘dissing’ my husband, I’m not doing this to score points (though I’m not going to lie, it’s damn difficult!), I’m doing this to make sense of my situation, so I to understand my future I need to make sense of my past.

Keep smiling.

Independence Day! Day 10

As pointed out in my last post, this blog is more like ‘part 10’ as opposed to ‘day 10’, because due to circumstances, it’s been impossible for me to blog every single day since my husband ran off like a poor little victim.

My last blog was on the eve of my foot operation, where the logistics and care afterwards was orchestrated and fell to my children, who, thankfully, failed to inherit any of their fathers ‘fleeing in times of hardship qualities’. It was a tough few hours, (in hospital) starting as I completed paperwork regarding next of kin details. I had to alter this and amend it with my daughters details. As I handed the form in, I prayed they wouldn’t ask for an explanation either verbally, or with facial expressions. They didn’t and there was no further discussion. Had I been asked, I know I would have broken down and it would have been an ugly mess of tears, snot and emotion.

My operation was at the 4 week point of my husband taking off. (I will refer to him ‘heading for the hills’ ‘scarpering’ etc because I am going through the angry phase of a breakdown!). However, that was 5 days ago. So why for the last 4 days have I actually started thinking him ‘taking flight’ is actually a good thing? I haven’t woken up with that kicked in the stomach feeling, or that hopeless and despairing outlook, or even feeling completely demoralised.

Well, please allow me to enlighten you as to my rather sudden change of mood and wisening up to my husband. The day after my operation my son fell ill and was rushed into hospital. We got him into A&E and he was rushed through. Within half an hour he was hooked up up to to all sorts of monitors, machines, and drips.  My husband was informed and decided he’d wait for various results. Odd, I thought. The upshot is, he only came down the following evening because of a text I sent!!! Whatever the age of your child, wouldn’t you be at that hospital as soon as you could, as a parent, isn’t that the most normal reaction?

The longer I was at the hospital, the angrier I got. I was less than 24 hours post op, reliant on my children for help, and whilst he knew our son was in hospital, he was at work not particularly concerned about anything other than his single life ( remember I am still in the angry phase). I think he was in contact with our son but our son was playing the situation down,  however, the type of tests he was undertaking would indicate the seriousness of the matter, had you any sort of intelligence.

I’m not saying my husband doesn’t care about his child (children), he definitely does, though the way he acts is difficult to understand. What I’m trying to say is that he struggles with the concept of family, not in terms of taking financial care of them, but in terms of their emotional needs.

Regarding our marriage, our biggest argument was his lack of taking responsibility for any argument we had in 26 years of marriage. Nothing [negative] was ever his fault, laying it all at my doorstep. This outlook can be demoralising, sharing a life with someone who has such a perfect and opinionated view of themselves, it can be a crushing and dispiriting place to be. Even after leaving me this continued, apparently it wasn’t his fault he didn’t come to visit his son in hospital!!! And there it is, that’s the exact moment any and all respect I had for him flew right out that window, vamoosed from the room, skedaddled from my body. It was just such a precise, meticulous and crystal clear moment, that I actually saw respect fly away!

I guess at this stage psychologists would seek to me sense of his behaviour by going back to his childhood. I know he told me it was tough and that he couldn’t wait to get away, but that’s all I know, though I’m not intimating anything else went on. Step families/parents come equipped with their own issues for all sides. But my childhood was equally as dysfunctional and I wasn’t given the time, love and care that every child needs and deserves. However, I made a deal with myself to bring up my children in the exact opposite way as to the way my mother and whoever she was married to at the time, brought me up. But that makes sense to me, clearly not to everyone, and for their own reasons.

Keep smiling.

 

Independence Day! Day 9

I know it says Day 9 in part of the title, but it’s been a few days since I wrote the last blog. Well the real reason is that I’ve spent the last few days on a blow up bed in front of the TV watching all and everything, self pity I guess! On the plus side, I feel less crap than I did the previous week, on the minus side, the impact of spending a few days like this is that my legs are very weak and my hips are now unable to support my body weight!

Its the eve of my foot operation and I’m feeling anxious. I dropped one of my dogs off with a friend and have decided to trust the other one with my boys, being shadowed by my daughter, all in their 20’s.  This dog I have entrusted in their care is as lazy as they are, (for the record, this remark is referring to my boys only) preferring to slump in the sofa than run round a field after a ball. I’ve done the shopping, so plenty of food, toilet roll and shampoo. I’ve done the housework, changed the bedding and done the laundry. I’m a day patient!

I don’t know what I was expecting in terms of the time lines regarding being dumped.  How long am I going to be sad, angry, frustrated, angry, upset, angry, vexed, angry, resentful, angry, etc., etc.. Because I just feel anger right from the pit of my stomach. When I know something is happening, my mind-set is to get on with it, I’m focused and I just want the matter dealt with. So, I was dumped and the clever psychologists have a prescriptive map of your emotions and the general route you follow, but no time lines. Therefore, in my opinion they aren’t all that clever because that would be the first thing most people would want to know surely, you have a stage, how long will you be in that stage? And if they say each individual is different, well ok, so how do you know how each individual person will react and go through the stages declared?

Anyway, after the hours (days) I spent on the air bed in front of the TV covered in blanket of self pity and lying on a pillow of exasperated anger, I now feel a little less furious, a little less sad, and not quite as worthless. But only a smidgen. So there may be something in that galling cliche ‘time is a great healer’.

Keep smiling.

 

Independence Day! Day 8

Very, very early this morning I made a deal with my inner self, and that was to wake up with a positive attitude, it was a deal I made just so that I could sleep. I can’t sleep, even when I do, I dream about this mess, so it’s never far from my thoughts always lurking in the background or skulking in the foreground, just in case I have the audacity to forget, as flaming if.

So I need to give myself a break, I need to take ‘a week off’ from all thoughts swirling around about the break-up, from the future, from the past, from what-ifs, and what about. I may find this difficult because I’m still in the family home, surrounded by the same sickingly happily married neighbours, I’m still dealing with joint bills, still cleaning the same house, still sleeping in the same bed in the same room, and I’m still blogging. So this task, if I choose to accept, may prove difficult, but I need to try, or quite frankly I may have a massive meltdown, well another one anyway.

My first point of call on the path of positive ponderances is to get an appointment with the GP.  Wow, there’s a task I didn’t realise would be so difficult. It took 25 minutes to get through to an actual queue of callers, really! So 25 minutes of an listening to an engaged tone, which by the way I now saw as a challenge and refused to give up, before jumping into a queue of callers and listen to some classical crap. On a positive note, at least I’d reached the next level, yay! After 10 minutes I got through to the receptionist who insisted that I give her the lowdown. Why on this holy earth do they insist on knowing what’s wrong? My bets are on it being for office gossip, to band about and see who has the saddest, or most gruesomist phone call. Anyway, I refused, which is probably why I was given an appointment 3 days later! Maybe I should have told her, and I may have got an appointment sooner, she could have then used that as banter in the office and quite probably won a trophy for the saddest phone call, I have a suspicion she may interpret that as the rudest phone call…

This is a fairly boring blog about yet another day of coping with being dumped, and another day with no explanation. It’s about another day of keeping my mouth shut and not screaming at how  unfair this whole bloody mess is, it’s about not being heard or understood, it’s about how I need to maintain a level of normality for the kids in order to let them see I’m coping,  so that they can cope.  I believe that type of thinking is very stereotypically female and wouldn’t even enter on the male radar. It’s about how I bartered with my own self to just get some sleep, about the trials of just getting some help and the hoops you need to jump through in order to get that help. World, get lost, just for tonight!

Keep smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Independence Day! Day 7

Today has been a tough day. I know it’s been less than 2 weeks, but is it just too much to ask for all this pain, anger and tears to be over? Has anyone any idea how long this goes on. Surely I’ll run out tears soon…and snot, in fact I cried so hard earlier I even farted, I actually farted because I was so upset! Unbelievable and humiliating at the same time, though I’m not helping myself by blogging about it!

So my next step, besides finding some ‘manning-up’ pills, is finding somewhere to live. Well you’d think that would be easy, but with 2 adult kids and 2 canine members of the family, means I’ve already made it nigh on impossible. However, I have taken a look round several properties, and to be honest, I had to wipe my feet leaving one of them. I needed breathing apparatus for another and wet weather gear a further one. With the price of rentals, the very least I’d expect would be to look around a clean house that didn’t appear to be part a crime scene.

Why doesn’t life just stop while crap happens, why doesn’t it just give you a break, a little cuddle or even just some time to gather yourself.  Just so that there’s no pressure to rush through all the emotional states that go hand in hand with a break-up. No rush to get back to work, no rush to leave my bed (let alone my house), no rush to speak to anyone, no rush to have a shower, or even brush my teeth, no rush, just simply no rush. But who wants to be stuck in a state I guess? I get that you need to put the brakes on in life occasionally, but getting on with life, as hard as it is, maybe the best way.

My understanding of life is that it deals you a bad hand from time to time, some worse than others and some more often than others, then it gives you the coping mechanisms to deal with the journey you need to go through to reach the end and be happy. So you need to draw energy from all the good in your life to make it through the bad times. I didn’t even read that anywhere, I just literally thought it and wrote it. It makes me sound intelligent I believe, or at the very least somebody who thinks about the meaning of life! But honestly I don’t, and as much as I think I know, none of it helps. I still have to go through the same emotional states that everyone else goes through, spending round about the same length of time in each state as everyone else and it doesn’t give me a ‘get out of jail free’ card to jump a state.

Keep smiling.

 

 

Independence Day! Day 6

A case of having to, or being made to do things means life will start to get back to ‘normal’; for instance, I have to go back to work instead of crying in my pit and occasionally dragging my carcass down the hall to grab more tissues. I have to start eating again, to live I guess and I have to start moving. I just imagine the kids peeling back my duvet to see their old mum fossilised into the sheets, probably too much thinking! But that’s why I need to find some balance of ‘normality’.

I have very good friends and family, you know who you are. Those are the ones that drag you back from your very own vortex of self pity, anger and sadness, mixed heavily with a virtual need to throat punch anyone who steps in your path. Surely I’m not the only one who thinks violence could be therapeutic, a means to ending the unreasonableness of the situation and a way of getting answers, though torture is illegal, but I guess so is violence!

On Day 6 I still have no real idea of what my husband meant by ‘I don’t know what I want’, which is why my life right now feels inert. I am trying to move on but without answers it just breeds frustration and resentment, hence my consideration to violence.

I’m trying to come to terms with the course each day takes, the highs and lows that each day will bring, and the strong and the weak moments I’ll have to face alone.  However, today I have laughed a lot.  The one thing I do recommend is a friend who is honest, brutally in my case, nonetheless honest. They can instantly take the sting out of being dumped, get you focused and quite frankly make you paranoid about other areas of your life you never even thought about. But it takes you away from dwelling constantly on, as I’ve so elegantly put it in a previous blog, a stagnant pool of piss.

Keep smiling.

 

 

 

Independence Day! Day 5

Today has been a tough day, a roller coaster of highs and lows, all whilst going back to work. Crying into my red bull and flap jack was just about all I did, oh, and cry on the boss’s shoulder, literally! But then I man up, I become strong, resilient and positive, before turning into some sort of quivering, freaky bawlie mess! What the hell is wrong with me.

I can’t believe I’m in this position, at my age, after so many many years of being married.  I’ve heard of it happening of course, but didn’t concern myself as, well, it wasn’t me. Even when I did hear of it, I was incapable of imagining just how painful it was, well ‘that’ll learn me‘.

Peaks and troughs of emotion are exhausting, I have a headache from hell, eyes that resemble a baboons ass and energy levels equal to that of a sloth on its worst day. I want to take time off work but then I change my mind and think I need to go to work, I want to talk about it then I don’t, I want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a couple of months then I don’t even want to close my eyes. This, versus how my husband is feeling, well sorry, I would tell you but getting hold of him on a golf course can prove difficult. Again, as in my last blog, is this a man versus a woman thing, is that why I really just don’t get it?

Keep smiling.