I've been pretty quiet, mostly out of choice, partially out of lack of time and ability. But in reality, this is what 11 years in an abusive relationship has done to me . . . when I'm unsure, unsteady, scared, or sad I close off into myself. It's probably one of the things I dislike the most about myself, the part that i let him change about me. By this point, at 32, I pretty much know myself and I see myself doing it. The saddest part is that I've had an amazing person come into my life who I care about and think I have hurt in the midst of this because I have completely withdrawn and left with no answers because this is what i do. Without the benefit of the doubt to know who I am, or who i was all these years. I once again have pushed away a person who has been so amazing and loving because of my own fears, because of my own sadness, because I hurt and just need to get through this alone to heal and be better than who I was all these years with the ex, otherwise i'll just continue being who I was with him, I have to heal and be better. I have to refind me.
And so I've been silent. This is how I survived the last 11 years. I wasn't silent within my home, i would cry, i would fight, i would grasp for straws. Only to have anger, accusations and distrust thrown back at me. I learned early on, to not involve my friends, my family or those I trusted. And so now, as I have been living on my own for almost 6 months I realize the last 2 months, I've slowly shut myself off from the world again. It's a coping mechanism, one I am trying to break because really it doesn't help me survive, it helps him maintain control over me.
The last 2 months have been exceptionally hard on me. I am grieving. That soul sucking sadness that I thought had passed, has come back. On it's tail is acceptance, and every time I take a tentative step towards accepting this new life, something comes out of left field and usually it is the ex realizing that i'm moving on, moving forward and i'm done and so he pulls something to control the situation and I'm stuck right back in the cycle of abuse. This weekend was him yet again refusing to sign the stipulation we had agreed upon. I have to go into a bit of a back story for any of this to make sense, as I've been so quiet and many will not understand the decision I've come to.
I have an amazing network of support people in real life, on the web and through out my church family. They have prayed, supported me emotionally and donated money for this fight that I have been faced with to protect my children. I was able to hire a legal consultant for a low cost who went over my court case, my documentation and the cold hard facts and get some input on where I should go. I also was able to have my therapist who has been with me for 3 years and has met with the ex a handful of times during 'marriage counseling' so she also knows her professional opinion of him. Between the 2 I was faced with the awful reality that, our state does NOT protect children from mental illnesses in custody battles. Nor does our particular county and judge rule in favor of children regarding 'sexual addictions'. This is a sad reminder of how behind the times our courts are in regards to mental well being and addictions, especially since my children could be the potential victims of them. But i was given facts, past court rulings and a huge reality check. I was urged to come to a custody agreement I could live with.
This has been the hardest part of this entire journey to date. Surrender, yet again. Especially in the face of such huge adversity and potential life long impact on my three innocent children who are unable to protect themselves from the issues my ex battles. But I was given what I asked for, advise and facts on how to proceed with a court trial that had already been set in motion and that I asked for. So I spent a few days crying and praying, and crying some more. I felt completely powerless and terrified, and yet I had to figure out what was best for my children. And so I made a peace offering. Long story short I offered 2 over night visits a month and 8 hours of unsupervised visitation a week. This is about half the time he gets now, but the time he gets now is supervised and one of the biggest issues I have with our current custody agreement is that it is abusive, controlling and scaring to both myself and the children. The ex comes into my home 3 times a week every week and bullies me, fights me, calls me names and doesn't have any ability to control himself in front of our children. All of us cannot survive much more of it. I knew for my mental well being and the hope of the children having 'calm' time with their dad, I had to get him out of my home and away from me.
And so originally he accepted it in email. He had them overnight for the first time a few weeks ago and I was a mental wreck, but pushed through thanks to the company of a great person. The second time was over memorial day and my son came home a completely different person. The male bonding, that he so clearly craves by walking up and latching on to complete stranger males where ever we goes is evident that he needs a father figure (this is the little boy who is possibly on the asperger spectrum and does NOT go to any stranger for his entire 23 months of life). And so I tried to remind myself, this is about the children and if this is the only way that the ex can be a halfway decent father figure to these children in a some what relatively healthy way, then i had to just give him as little time as possible to negatively influence them but not shut him out completely in hopes he would find the help he needs or eventually walk away without hurting the children further.
And then this weekend he refused to sign an official stipulation. It completely broke me down, back to square one of that soul sucking sadness and wondering how in the heck i was suppose to put one foot in front of the other. To watch my children cry, no YELL out for him and him to repeatedly ignore it for his own power trip, hurt. It hurt to watch this man that I fell in love with, who i thought was the most amazing father in the entire world, who i THOUGHT would break the cycle of abusive/missing father figures we both had turn into exactly what we both had as biological fathers; ripped my heart to shreds.
But it's not about me anymore, it's about the children. And so I tried to keep at it. I tried to keep offering this custody agreement and then when he came over for visitation on Monday I had already decided i was done. If he wanted to go to court and lose his army job because of the stuff that would come out in court, so be it. If he wanted to peg me as an angry, vindictive ex wife, so be it. He could think that, but i was protecting our babies who i had carried, birthed, raised mostly on my own and never ever put in harms way the way he had. But that thinking only put me on the defensive and as he came over and picked yet another fight with me, i was done in.
You see, I've been at this for 5 years. 5 years ago I filed for divorce. Yet another affair came out, i was done and i was escaping the abuse FINALLY. And yet, i never did. Somehow, some way i ended up back in the cycle of abuse. I took him back, i became silent, i lost my voice and i put up with another 5 years of mental, physical and sexual abuse and 6 more affairs (that i know of). And as he sat there, in my home, yelling at me on Monday night I lost it.
I cried like i have never cried before. He's seen me cry, don't get me wrong. But this was that ugly cry, where you cannot control it. You cannot respond. You cannot BREATH. I listened to him yell at me about how every affair of his was my fault. How he should have left me 11 years ago, how he should have never ever purposely knocked me up with any of our babies because they deserved a better mother and how i was the problem in all of this because he knew he didn't love me and yet stayed. And then he grabbed my phone as it buzzed that i had a message and he angrily tried to turn it on (thank goodness i had it password protected) and then refused to give it back to me for 45 more minutes as he called me every name in the book, told me more how i had cheated on him, how everything wrong in our marriage had always been me. And i sat there, sobbing, as i watched my 6 and 8 year old sneak up to my bedroom doorway and listen and just thought 'this is over. I am DONE. He will NOT come into my home again and ever treat me this way ever again. He will NOT ever again say these things in front of my children or ever teach our children that this is acceptable behavior. God, SHOW me how to end this please' and then I quietly asked him 'So when do I get to stop hurting' and he said 'when you choose to. Just like i chose to stop hurting and got over my dad's death'. And then it hit me, like an arrow between my eyes . . . I am not dealing with a SANE person. No sane person will ever say they got over their parents death. No sane person will ever expect the woman that loved them beyond life to get over affairs or to stop hurting. And so i stopped engaging and just let him continue until finally he stopped, handed me back my phone and told me if i called the cops he would tell them i was abusive and since he was in his ACU's they would never believe me any ways. And then he left.
He came back 45 minutes later with food for the kids and because it was still in his 'mandated' visitation time I had to let him in, he fed the kids, they went to bed and then we went over the stipulation and signed it with minimal changes. I was like a robot, barely answering, not engaging, just making sure the things that were important like me maintaining sole physical and legal custody for 2 years were not scratched out. And i realized, it's about control and abuse. And he is going to try to control and abuse me for as long as i allow it and the sole reason why i have remained in this sadness/grieving stage is because it is what i am use to. It has been 5 years. 5 years of complete and utter sadness. 5 years of just wondering when it would be over. 5 years of fearing the worst that my kids would end up without a mother because he finally went over the edge or them growing up without a father because he hurt himself. 5 years of waiting for him to release me, and i realize he never will . . . that's my job. Now i have the choice . . . i have the choice to either push through this darn phoenix process of bursting into flames and accepting that this is done and over and for the best, or i can continue being silent, hiding, being sad and insisting on this is the best that life has to offer me. I have wanted out for a half of a decade, and now i'm being given that opportunity. I'm stuck, not because i love him or want to be with him, but because it's a huge step. It's one i've been waiting a very long time for. A step I will take, when I'm ready and no one is forcing me to take. I think that's the key, to make decisions without anyone else pushing me to.
As he left that night he turned and looked at me and asked, "What do you want from me?" And I said, "For this to be over. I want to be free from this marriage, from this unhealthy and abusive relationship and I want a divorce. I want the divorce to be finished and finalized as quickly as possible as it's been 9 months since i filed and I want to eventually forgive both of us and move forward to coparent calmly. I want to close this 11 year chapter of my life and move on to the person I have been meant to be all these years. I need you to please respond to the divorce paperwork and let me go, I feel it's the very least you can do for me after all the things that have happened during the last 11 years". He sat for a moment, holding the door in his hands and in that instance I knew i had finally asked for what I had wanted for a very long time but had never been able to say in terms that he could understand. And he said, "Ok, I'll go on Tuesday and file this stipulation and ask for the forms we need to complete to get this done. Hopefully in a month we will have a court date and the divorce will be finalized, and finally i'll be able to give you something you want". I know he meant it as emotional blackmail, trying to place the blame of the divorce on me and i'm ok with that. He can blame it on me to his girlfriend or boyfriend or who ever he is with and his boss and friends and family, i'll take that. I'll take it because I know that I loved someone with everything i had and it didn't work, not because i hadn't tried but because he was not healthy enough to ever accept my love and that I had done my best. And I know now, that my children and I are so much better off with out him. And that's a first. The last 5 years I never could move towards this point because I always thought in the back of my mind that I was failing my marriage and that I would never be better divorced and single raising kids on my own. But all of us are so much better off without him here 24/7 and it took this last visitation to see this. WE deserve better.
I deserve to not shut out people in my life that i care for out of fear that they will be just like the ex. I deserve to engage in relationships with people I care about instead of shutting them out because i'm so darn fearful they will end up just like my marriage. I deserve to connect with others because i am worth it instead of cutting them off and walking away out of fear that I will hurt them the way the ex convinced me I hurt him. I deserve to raise my children in a manner that is healthy and whole, in the very manner I always have sought to raise them, without the fear of abuse and neglect and someone wearing me down 24/7 and sucking me dry, unable to parent my children the way they deserve. I deserve to have JOY in my life. I deserve to follow my 5 year plan knowing it will work and HE can no longer intervene and sabotage my dreams. Life is promising, SO much more promising with out him. BUT first I had to come to this place. I had to stop, breath and grieve. And now, my next step, the hardest step that I have literally been fighting for five damn years, is acceptance. I will get there, but on my own time in my own way. Baby steps. I see acceptance, as if it is a huge open doorway looming right in front of me and all I have to do is take that final step into that doorway and then walk through the doorway. I know that there will still be times of sadness and grief that will color my life from time to time, but it wont be like right now where that's all i can see. Once I walk through that doorway, it's accepting a whole new life for myself and my amazing babies and i will make that step. Not tonight, not tomorrow, maybe not a month from now. But i see it. I see the invitation. It reminds me of being a teen and hearing the invitation at church. I saw the invitation and it was offered so many times to me, but i waited till I was 17 to finally accept it. And that's just my nature. Once i know i'm completely done with the sadness stage, i will move forward to the acceptance stage, but i have to be 100% sure i'm there because i dont want to waste life by rushing through this grieving process and ever hurting myself, my children or someone else ever again. That's just who I am and I actually love that about myself. It's a process and one i've been wanting to rush through, but that's not what's best for me or anyone else. It's day by day and I will get there, i know it. 5 years of a process and what's a bit more of time while I really work through it and work on myself?
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