It's Over and I Am Alone, Broken and Alone

And today we were having dinner and he just told me he would never be happy here. He loves me but he is not in love with me and he has decided he is moving home in June. He couldn’t handle the burdens of me and this disease.
He loves me but he is not in love with me and hasn’t been for a very long time. We are two different people and we want different things in life and this is for the best for both of us. I deserve more than he can give me. I deserve a man who will love me like he is supposed to. I have been his best friend and his only friend for 4 years, I have been a mother to his child and he hopes I can continue to do so. I am the best girlfriend a man could ever ask for but he needs to be at home.
Yes, this is two days after he held me and kissed me and vowed to work this out. Promised to try to work this out. Made love to me afterwards. Apparently none of that meant anything to him.
I am an emotional wreck and all I can think about are our kids. This isn’t fair to them, this isn’t fair to me. I am the only mom his child has ever known and he has been a father to my child for over half of her life. And he is going to walk away. And who will be there to pick up the pieces of the shattered hearts?
I deserve a lot of things but I don’t deserve this. I have been faithful, open, loving, caring, dedicated to him. I have been there for him, his daughter, my daughter, our family. I cleaned the house, did the dishes, took care of the animals, and did his laundry, ran his errands, and there was a hot meal waiting for him each night after work. I was there sexually any time he wanted me, I worked my ass off to please him.
I spent 4 years of my life falling deeper in love with each day that passed for a man who doesn’t love me back. His daughter thinks she is coming here in june and she is going to come to live with us and she will finally have the family she has missed out on for the last 13 years. And he is going to take that away from her. Snatch the heart out of her chest and she is going to hurt the most of all of us.
He said we reached a point where neither of us gave a damn enough to fight for this. He was wrong. I would have fought to the death for that man, I would have gladly given my life for him and our family. And he didn’t love me enough to be honest with me when he began having doubts. He kept it inside until it consumed him. This has cut me to the deepest depths of my soul and I don’t know if I will survive this.
He doesn’t love me enough to fight. He doesn’t love me enough to even try to work this out. He doesn’t love me enough to stay. Our family and our life doesn’t mean anything to him because his mind is made up and I have no say in the matter.

Roller Coaster Ride From Hell

Roller Coaster ride from hell.
Today was going to be a good day. I was determined. I pushed and I pushed and boom, it all blew up and fell into a million pieces around me. I woke up alone. I woke up in pain. Not your regular kind of I am getting old and aches kind of pain, but the kind of pain that reminded me that my back is still broken in 4 places, and I had become such a wretchedly horrible person that the one time in almost a year my boyfriend took more than a day off and he chose to leave me behind and go off with his friends to get the hell away from me.
But, I thought of my 5 things:
1. Pain pills
2. Coffee
3. A 2 hour head start with school being delayed.
4. My Family
5. He was coming home today
So I got up, made my coffee, took my pills, and started my day. I fed the dogs, I watched an episode of stupid pointless TV to get my mind elsewhere and I waited for my kid to wake up. She got up, we hung out, she watched TV, enjoying her 2 hour delay. I got her breakfast ready, I did my makeup, did my hair, and I got ready for my day. I got her off to school, washed a load of laundry, and headed out to my doctor’s appointment. Got a text on the way there from the man, he is an hour away.
I got there, checked in, and saw I had an email. From the man. In it, he told me he loved me, but he was torn between me and his life at home in KY and he misses his daughter and he wants to move back home. He doesn’t want to leave me but he is miserable and he wants to go home in June when the semester is over and school is out for Madi and the lease is up. BOOM! Did my world just crumble down around me? Did everything I have worked so hard to keep together just fall shattering to the earth like the shards of glass that used to be my heart? Yes, yes it did. I got through my doctors appointment. I sat in the parking lot on the phone with my mom for a good half an hour. I pulled myself together. I refused to fall apart. I refused to let the hurt and the anger in. I just refused to feel anything for a moment.
It was like my daughter’s dad all over again. I was emotionally dying, but I would not let it show. I would not lose my composure, not for him. I would not let him see the tears. I came home, a volatile cocktail of emotions. I stopped and checked the mail. SSDI… oh thank God, the answer to my prayers. The letter I have been waiting on for over a year and a half. A decision about my disability claim/appeal. My 7 specialists including my psychologist all say I cannot go back to work. All say I am disabled. In fact, SSDI tells the state of Virginia I am disabled enough to receive Medicaid for the medical costs. I open it…. YUP, Bastards denied me again! No specific reasons other than they agree with their last decision and feel it is lawful. Are you fucking kidding me?? 37 holes in my brain and spine, 4 chronic broken bones in my back, organ failure, bipolar disorder, graves disease, hyperthyroid… a monthly infusion, 15 doctors appointments a month, over a quarter of a million dollars billed to Medicaid last year… and I am denied?? You ever feel like waking up and screaming WHAT THE FUCK at the top of your lungs?
I just sat in my car for a minute, trying desperately to search for the last crumb of my sanity. Is this really happening? Please wake up from this nightmare.
I came inside, and I could not face him. I could not look him in the eye. I couldn’t look at him. I walked passed him and pretended he didn’t exist. I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to clear my head. He came in here and waited, then he left. He went back into the living room. I grabbed a cigarette, walked back passed him and out to the garage. On my way out he asked if we could talk, I ignored him. I came back in and he was in the bedroom, I made a cup of coffee and decided it was time to face this elephant before my daughter got home from school.
So I went into the bedroom. I sat on the bed, and I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to feel. So I told him that. I asked what he wanted from me. Did he want me to scream? Did he want me to cry? Did he want me to throw things? What the hell did he want from me? He said “I don’t know”. So I decided to tell him about my day. How my day started off sucky, got better, the bomb of him wanting to leave me exploded and how I had tried so hard to reinvent myself. I told him about the call from my shrink this morning; calling to check on me because my Primary Care Doc was afraid I was about to kill myself. I told her that I already had. I had killed the miserable person I became and replaced her with a woman who could no longer carry the baggage. Then I asked him again what he wanted from me. And again, I got no answer.
His whole email was about the promises he made to his family, to come home after the Army, to be there for his daughter. And I reminded him of the promises he made to me. Promises he made to my daughter, to his daughter to us as a family. For better or worse, that was the promise. Forever and always, it used to mean more than four years. And what about our children? How would this affect them? I am the only mother his daughter has ever known. He is the full time dad figure in my daughter’s life while her father is the fun guy who buys her stuff.
He finally broke down. Told me he was caught in the middle, torn between the two and he asked me what to do. He begged me to tell him what to do. I cannot make him stay. I cannot tell him what to do. I can only offer my honesty. So I did. Honestly, I think his daughter being so far away is his choice. He has promised her and I for years that she is coming here. Our whole life since we moved in together always included an extra room for when she came to live with us.
Life with me is not perfect. This is not the life we planned. No one ever plans on having MS. No one ever plans on their body shutting down and making them incapable of working. No one ever plans on facing their own mortality at the age of 30. No one ever plans to have to be the breadwinner, or to have to depend solely on the other person. If we planned for this, we would spend out entire adult lives depressed and afraid and this is why these thoughts don’t come to the average 30 yr old.
He wanted my opinion of what to do. If it were up to me, I would bring his daughter here, she would live here, we would get married, and he would finish school and we would have a life. We would have a family. We would have each other. Then again, if it were up to me, neither of us would have this disease, we would both be working, we would both be paying the bills and we would be equals. But I cannot make that happen any more than I cane make him stay so it is not up to me. It is up to him. I hate not being in control of things, I hate that I cannot control my own life, my own destiny. I hate it but I have to deal with it. I don’t have the option to walk away. I cannot pack up and leave and not look back. I am the one that is fighting to live.
He finally opened up. The walls of responsibility are closing around him and he is suffocating. He cannot pay the bills as it is so he doesn’t want to bring his daughter here. He cannot keep on top of things no matter how much he works. He works so much to pay the bills because I cannot. He doesn’t blame me, he cannot blame me. He loves me, but he feels so overwhelmed by pressure that he is drowning. He works 12 hour days, goes to school on his days off and he cannot keep the bills paid. It’s killing him. He doesn’t think I am happy or that I ever will be happy because he cannot give me attention when he is home. He doesn’t have anything left to give at the end of the day.
I feel horrible for that. I feel horrible for this whole rotten situation and I don’t blame him for wanting to leave. He works so hard and he never gets a break, never gets a day off where he can just be. Stuff piles up at work or stuff piles up at home and he is constantly running this rat race with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. At the same time, it’s just money. We will always have bills, it is a fact of life. I don’t know what to do anymore. We decided to try to work things out. All we can do is try. But now I live with the fact that I don’t know if he is going to be here tomorrow. I don’t know how to accept that. He has always been here for me through it all, and the idea of him not being here is killing me, but the idea of him continuing this race alone and trying to get the bills paid is killing him, so no one is happy.
I am so lost right now. I am trying to find this happiness in my life that doesn’t seem to exist and each time I think I am getting close I hit a landmine and it all blows up in my face. I don’t know which way to turn. But I know that going straight on the path I have been on will end in disaster.

Today is a new day

Well, a lot has happened in the last few days. I was able to share my last two entries with my fiancé. And I learned that he is overwhelmed, frustrated, and filled with resentment for me. He doesn’t feel he can fulfill my emotional needs and he is just too stressed out to find himself. It was harsh. I cried for days. I felt every emotion under the sun. I felt like he just didn’t want to be here anymore. I think I finally hit the bottom.
And then, something amazing happened. I realized that I had spent the last year of my life filled with regret and guilt and sadness, and grief. And I realized that my lack of happiness had nothing to do with the people in my life, with my fiancé. My lack of happiness and my insecurities had nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t want to be with me, that he doesn’t give me his attention. And I realized that my lack of happiness is probably the cause of all of this. I have been a miserable person and made him and everyone else in my life miserable to be with me. I need to change me. There is only one person in this world that you have the power to change, and that is yourself.
I have been so focused on getting through the days, on what I have lost and what I have missed out on that I forgot to be grateful for what I have. I forgot to enjoy what is still there. I was presented with a challenge. Now, my mom, though crazy, sometimes has good advice. She challenged me to think of 5 things I was grateful for every morning when I wake up. Instead of waking up and dealing with the pain and the frustration, she challenged me to first think about what it is that I am living for.
This morning I thought about my kids, my mom, my fiancé, the fact that I am still able to walk, and the cup of coffee I was about to make. Yes, I am thankful for coffee. I am thankful for being able to get out of bed and go make the coffee, even if the coffee is used to wash down the pills that make me able to get through the day. I am thankful that I have the doctors and the pills and the insurance to cover them all. I am thankful that even when times get rough, the man is still there for me, still by my side. I am thankful for so many things.
I am thankful that I was able to see just how miserable I had become and how it was effecting others. I know that may sound weird but it is true. I took a step back and realized some of the idiotic things I had been doing. Nagging about dishes not being in the sink, nagging about laundry not being in the hamper, angry that he didn’t want to be around me when the truth is, I didn’t even want to be around myself.
It is time to find my happiness. That part is easier said than done. I don’t know where my happiness is. I am determined to find it. I need my own happiness, and no one else will ever be able to give that to me. I need to find my joy in the little things in life, and I need to learn to let go. There are things in this world that I cannot change. Life is not fair, sometimes it sucks. But life does go on. I need to believe in this. I need to go on and stop getting stuck and caught up in things I cannot change.
The man is leaving me for a few days tomorrow. Finally taking some time for himself, to go hang out with the guys and just get away. I am so glad he is finally taking a moment to himself. I don’t know how things are going to be in the future, I don’t know if he will find his happiness, I don’t know if he will be here for me. But I know that in the same way he cannot give me happiness, I cannot give him happiness. Neither of us are ready to walk away from the life we have together, and I sincerely hope we find a way to work together. But that is not something I can force, it is not something I can predict and it is not something I have control over, so I need to take it one day at a time.
I am not cured. The depression is still there and probably always will be. I have a lot of insecurities and I didn’t grow up in a home with a normal or stable family atmosphere, so this is all new to me. A lot of times, I don’t know which way to turn and I question myself a lot. But these are things I need to work on for myself. I have always had control of every aspect of my life and that has all changed in the last 2 years and it is scary. There are times when I am going to be scared, I am going to be insecure, I am going to be sad, but I need to find a better way to deal with it. I need to stop wishing that I had the option to get away for a few days, because this will never happen. My problems are inside of me and they come with me wherever I go. So my new goal is to figure out how to live with it.
Writing seems to help. I think it is because I am forced to sit down and actually sort through my feelings and focus on them one by one. So I will probably be writing a lot more. And I will probably be doing more girly things. Like wearing makeup and doing my hair and nails. Not because I feel the need to impress anyone but because it makes me feel like a girl. It may seem like a small and stupid thing, but it is something for me. I need to stop bumming around the house in my pjs all day and I need to be more productive.
At the same time, I need to recognize the triggers and I need to deal with them. I need to not overdo things and end up fatigued to the point of exhaustion. I need to let my body heal what it can. Yes, I realize this whole thing is I need, I need, I need. But at least I am starting to figure out what it is I need. Hopefully, from there, I can begin to tackle the needs and in the end find my happiness, which is what I want.

Ghosts of my past

When I was growing up I was taught that the man my mother married shortly after I was born was my father. He turned out to be a child molesting asshole. Fortunately I do not remember the time I spent with him and I can barely remember what he looked like. What I do remember of him were the countless psychologists with their dolls where they asked me to tell them what my father did to me. I remember he went to jail and that is the last I saw of him until I was 18, and that was by chance that he happened to come into a store I worked at. And by chance, I was able to hide in the back of the store until he left.

My mom had another friend when I was growing up. He was her best friend and the closest thing I had to a father. I won’t use his real name here, in part because saying his name over and over would not allow me to finish this story without breaking down. It is a name that has been banned from my lips and banned form my thoughts. Today, we will call him “Mike”. Mike was an older man, 10 yrs older than my mother. At the time that my mother had me, Mike was going through a divorce from a marriage that resulted in two children and one very psychotically challenged wife. What is strange about this is that I grew up around Mike, and his ex-wife who spent a lot of time at his house.

Mike had his own vices. He drank everyday, he hung out with drug addicts, he snorted coke, and in the end, he decided he liked girls much younger than him, but only if they were his children. Mike wasn’t the great knight in shining armor that he made himself out to be but it took a long time for others to see it. Mike’s daughter ran away and got married right after she turned 18. She got as far away as she could and built a life for herself that didn’t involve Mike. Mike’s son… well, let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He got caught up in drugs and has spent his adult life in and out of jail for one reason or another.

I was 9 yrs old when Mike told me he was my real father. I went to my mom and asked her about it and that was when she told me that there was a possibility that he could be my biological father. She never told me this because she didn’t want to hurt me and she didn’t want to confuse me. To me, this was great news because I always loved Mike like a father and he was always there for me.

Mike was a fun guy. There was laughter and music. He would start tickle fights. Sometimes his tickles would go in places they shouldn’t but it wasn’t so strange as for it to be a big deal. Mike used to play practical jokes. He used to come up to the window that was above the bathtub and yell “boo” while you were in the shower. This began to happen almost every time I would take a bath or shower. And he never yelled “boo” until you looked up and saw him in the window, staring down on you as you were naked and helpless.

There were only 2 bedrooms at Mike’s house. One belonged to my sister. She and my mother could not get along so my sister moved in with Mike, even though he was not her father. Since there were only 2 rooms and “my brother” (Mike’s son) always slept on the sofa in the living room, I somehow got stuck sharing a bed with Mike when I would come over. There were times that I did not remember taking my clothes off in my sleep but I must have because I know I had one a t shirt and undies when I went to bed and I would wake up naked. It was kind of weird, I never did that at home. I believe I was 11 or so when this started happening. Mike used to comment on my body changes all of the time, pointing out that I was getting taller, my hips were getting fuller and I was developing “buds” for breasts. He always paid particular attention to my body.

Mike had a house on a lake that we would vacation at every summer. There were times when mom could not get off of work to go with us and we would go with Mike. It was a pretty cool place and I actually had my own room there. One summer, when I was 14, Mike invited my best friend to come with us, and somewhere during the course of this trip he tried to convince us to go skinny dipping with him. We refused of course, being shy teenagers and all. He had no problem stripping naked and getting in the water with us. I remember waking up the next day with Mike on top of me, naked. He had pulled my shirt up and had one hand on my breast and was holding himself up with the other. I drew my knee up into his nuts as hard as I could. I then pushed him off of my bed and left the room. I went out to the dock and sat there, unable to feel any kind of emotion about what just happened.
When I went back inside, Mike was making breakfast for everyone and pretending like nothing had ever happened. I spent the rest of the weekend avoiding him like the plague. I barely slept at night for fear he would come back and I was jumpy. I was scared of him, scared of the idea of him. Scared to tell anyone what had happened, and a part of me was scared to lose the only father I had ever really known.
We went home. I was too shocked and embarrassed to tell my mother what had happened that week. My best friend spoke up to her mom and told her about the skinny dipping idea and her mom told my mom… you know how the grapevine works. So she sat me down and asked me about it. I cried. I told her about the skinny dipping idea, and I never let her know about the rest. She was livid. She was angry, hurt, betrayed, and she was so concerned about me. She kept asking if anything else had happened, and I kept telling her no. I didn’t want to hurt her anymore than she had already been hurt and I knew if I told her what really happened she would most likely kill Mike. I mean she does have a gun and would literally have killed him. So I didn’t tell her.
Mom stopped talking to Mike after that. My sister on the other hand, well she still talked to Mike. She still talks to him. She allows him to be alone with her children, she has all faith and trust that he is a wonderful man and not the monster that I know him to be. When I was 18, I was at my sister’s house babysitting when Mike showed up looking for her. I slammed the door in his face and burst into tears. I was terrified. A few weeks later, I wrote my sister a letter, telling her everything that happened and begging her to please stop taking her children, my niece especially, around that man. She responded by telling me she didn’t believe one word I said, told me that my mother had brainwashed me into thinking Mike was a monster and that she was not going to stop talking to him, no matter that it killed me inside.

I still have nightmares about Mike. These have changed over the years. The nightmares that used to haunt me were of what could have happened, what did happen, and a complete feeling of helplessness. My new nightmares involve bumping into Mike and himtalking to my daughter. My new nightmare is that my daughter will find out about Mike and she will know that I have lied to her since she was little. When my daughter asks about my father, I tell her he died when I was little. In a sense it is true. He is dead to me, a part of my life that died a long time ago. It is easier for me to think that he is dead than to know that he is alive and still able to hurt people.

It was after all of this took place that I realized why his daughter (my sister) ran away and got married when she turned 18. I found out years later that he had been raping her and she could not stop him. For many years I was angry with her for it. Not angry about what happened but angry that she did not tell anyone. She did not try to stop it, and she knew he was alone with me. She knew he would probably come after me next and she did nothing to stop it. Then I realized my anger was my own cowardice because I had not spoken up. I had done nothing to stop it.
My life began taking a nosedive at this point. By the time I was 16, I was getting in trouble at school, smoking weed with my friends, I became interested in body piercings, sex, drinking, all things I attempted to use to cover up my feelings. I tried to take my mind other places because I didn’t want to face the reality of what had really happened. I didn’t want to think about my first period and the fact that it didn’t hurt when I used a tampon. I didn’t want to think about my first gyno visit when the doctor accused me of having sex and calling me a liar when I told her I was a virgin. I didn’t want to think about the things that my mind had managed to block out for so long. I just didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want anything to do with my sister who called me a liar, and didn’t believe what I told her when she was the only one I ever told what really happened. I didn’t want to have that happen with anyone else, so I didn’t tell anyone else and it ate me up inside.
When I was 19, I started having a lot of depression, this is when I was diagnosed as being bipolar. I went into counselling to help me deal with all of this. I spoke of my concerns for my niece, I spoke of my heartbreak with my sister. I had heard through the grapevine that my father was asking for custody of his ex girlfriends little girl because she was going to jail for her cocaine habit. I decided it was time to step up and do what his daughter never did for me. I decided to stand up and try to stop it from happening to anyone else. So I met with a police officer who took a report. A week later her called to inform me that I did not have any evidence to support my claim and without evidence no charges could be filed. My father was granted custody of this child, she had an illness that killed her a few years later. For some reason I was relieved that this child died so young because I felt like it was the only way to save her. Every time I would go to counseling after that she would try to dwell on my feelings about all of this and try to make me face ghosts that I wanted to bury. I stopped going to counseling after that.

Like I said, my sister still talks to this man. Still relies on him for money, still calls him her dad and still thinks I made the whole thing up. This is the same sister who spent 3 month in jail because Mike caught her writing checks out of his bank account. And who take care of her 2 kids while she was in jail?? It wasn’t Mike. It was ME. Her sister. The devoted sister who stood by her side through all of it. The sister she later called a liar.

I know other people who still talk to Mike. They don’t know what happened between us because I never told them. I know that in Mike’s living room is a picture my sister gave him of my daughter and her children. I know that Mike asks about me every time he sees one of those friends and I know that he knows what is going on in my life.

Because of this, I cannot forgive my sister. I cannot be friends with her, and I cannot get over my hurt which has manifested itself to sheer rage over the last 11 years. Every time I see her, I am reminded that she picked him over me. Every time I talk to her I realize that I do not like her. If we were not sisters, I would not be friends with a person like this. And I somehow feel guilty that I want nothing to do with her. I do not send her pictures of my kid anymore. I do not chat with her and the only contact we have is when she comments on my facebook posts. I see her maybe twice a year at my mother’s house. She does not know where I live and I do not know where she lives and I am perfectly OK with that. We were never close growing up as she was almost 10 years older than me. Aside from genetics, we have absolutely nothing in common. I feel bad that our relationship effected my relationship with my niece and nephews. I feel bad that I am not there for them when their mom and dad have spent the last 14 years making each other miserable. They finally got divorced. She left him for a married man with 6 children and she has no shame in telling the world she loves this adulterous man. I have absolutely no respect for this woman but I would feel guilty deleting her from facebook because she is my sister.
I have never been able to tell her how I really feel about the whole situation. Maybe one day I will be able to, but I do not have the will to start that war and I know my mother will be dragged into it. I know my mother would choose me over my sister and my sister knows this. I think that is one reason she still clings to my father because she knows my mom would choose me. She knows my mom is there for me no matter what and she knows if it came down to saving a life and we both needed a kidney, my mom would give me hers and would let my sister die.

I decided to share this story after writing it because I know there are others out there, others like me who have been through this and I want them to know that they are not alone.