The obligatory year-end post

The early part of this year can be summed up in one word: disastrous. My marriage was an epic failure through no fault of my own and I suffered a lot. Of course, it was partially my fault for not leaving my husband sooner than I did, but I wanted it to work out so much. Ah well. I learned my lesson about expecting a cheater to change. And this year has been disastrous throughout in regards to employment. I spent nearly seven months of this year unemployed, and now the job I do have isn't scheduling me, so I'm basically unemployed again. It feels like I can't catch a break in that aspect of my life. The one bright spot in everything was meeting the bf. If you refer to the beginning of my blog, I was very cynical about love and had lost hope that I'd ever find true love. He renewed my faith in love. I am the most in love I've ever been, and my family has welcomed him with open arms. Not to mention his family really seems to dig me. In that aspect of my life I'm happier than I've been in a very long time. So to sum up, a LOT of bad stuff happened this year, but my love life couldn't have turned out better.

*sigh*

I want a divorce. NOW. Yes, the whole point of me moving out was with the intentions of getting a divorce. But I realize the longer he stays in my life at all, the longer my pain and aggravation is going to be drawn out. I need him completely and totally out of my life and to never have contact with him again. That won't happen of course while he still has insurance on me, but the second I get a job with my own insurance I can divorce him and never have to talk to him again. It's becoming increasingly apparent that I'm going to have to take him to court one way or the other for it to happen in an expeditious manner. I really didn't want to have to, but I'm prepared to show evidence of his infidelity... a tattered old print out of a Craigslist ad of his I keep in my purse, e-mails from an account he gave me the password to between him and two other girls, his AdultFriendFinder ad (which is still up to this day) which clearly lists him as married and... well, that's the one whose content I won't discuss even though no one I know reads this blog, but needless to say it'll be a shock to the judge. I'm not willing to stay married to him freaking indefinitely. I want to move on with my life, and most importantly my bf says he won't propose to me till my divorce is final. It's not fair to keep him waiting forever.

While still sort of on the subject of painful memories...

My husband raped me once. I didn't want to have sex with him without a condom 'cause I wasn't on birth control yet, I said no, and he did it anyway. I had to get emergency birth control the next day. And since leaving him I've been raped twice. Never reported my husband because, well, I was married to him so even though I felt violated, I let it slide. The other two I never reported because I felt like they were my fault. *sigh*

It could be worse

So the recent fighting with my husband has left me really drained. I'm so sick of his fucking lies and all the painful memories he brings up every time I talk to him. It doesn't help that I've been having bad dreams about him too. You know, the same old one where we're still together and I discover him cheating all over again. Had that dream twice this week. I wake up from it and the wounds feel so fresh. Not to mention I've been really, really depressed in general this week... thought I was going to have to go back in the hospital for a while there. I've had a really hard time falling asleep and staying asleep lately too. I finally saw my doctor Thursday, and he prescribed me something for sleep. Before that, let's just say I had to get a little creative with how I finally ended up getting to sleep, and it was not in the healthiest way. *sigh*

However, like it says in the title of this entry, things could be worse. I had all these negative forces swirling around me, and for a while I lost sight of the things in my life that truly make me happy. To some degree I think that's what depression means, at least to me. Very rarely do I ever lose my ability to find joy in life, but I get so sucked into the negative that I lose sight of the positive. In the last day or two my focus has shifted back to the positive aspects of my life, and I feel so much better. I have two wonderful cats who I love like children. I've got a supportive family and a best friend who's always there for me. And most of all, there's the bf.

My current relationship is like all relationships... it has its ups and downs. But it still shocks me sometimes how happy he makes me. It really does. I have never cried tears of joy in a relationship before, not even on my wedding day. All my relationships, from the time I started dating, have been really dysfunctional. The two other major relationships... well, the first one I was desperately in love with the guy, but we fought about everything. Not like bickering either. We bickered a lot too, but at least once a week we had some huge blow up over something trivial and I would be crying my eyes out. And it was long-distance for the whole 4 years we were together, so it was dysfunctional by virtue of that alone.

My relationship with my husband was completely different. I met him about six weeks after my ex dumped me. We hit it off pretty much immediately, but I never had the strong, passionate feelings for him that I had for my ex, which I assumed had to do with the fact that I was better medicated and the extremity of those feelings had just been a function of my illness. It was really... I don't know, comfortable I guess is the best word for it. I thought that because he and I didn't have big blow-up fights and we seemed to always be happy around each other, the relationship was really stable, so much so that I felt generally confident marrying him. We had a really crappy sex life (once every month or two, are you fucking kidding me?), but the idea of a life of stability overshadowed that. Come to find out my husband was a fucking sociopath who didn't understand why I was so effing upset that he was either cheating or attempting to cheat on me even before we got married (if it hasn't been said before, I didn't find out till two and a half months after the wedding). Furthermore, he didn't understand why we couldn't stay together and just sleep with other people. I fully admit to cheating on my husband. ONCE, two weeks before I left him. And that was after he said he only loved me like a sister and if I EVER wanted to have sex again, I'd need to get it somewhere else. Oh, and while I'm on a roll talking about all the shit he put me through, how about blaming his cheating behavior on me? Anything he could think of... my weight, my acne (I had it a lot worse at the time), the way I dressed, the fact that I didn't wear make-up... the list goes on. So I lost weight, I worked really hard on getting my skin to clear up (with some success), I let him pick out my clothes, I wore make-up more often, and I quit smoking. Did it make our sex life better? No. I still found his personals ads. I still found his e-mails between him and the first girl I know he cheated on me with. Did I mention he got me into a threesome with her? Yeah, his "good friend" who had been coming over while I was in the hospital (an 18 year old who was married, btw), I admit it, something happened once. And I was so fucking upset about it that I overdosed the next day and wound up in the emergency room. And I was a dumbass to not see what was right in front of my fucking face when they were on the phone all the time and he'd go into the other room to talk to her. And he actually convinced me to let her move in with us for a week when she was trying to get away from an abusive husband. I found him asleep on the futon with her instead of in bed with me one night. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt with her till I found his e-mails telling her how much he missed her and wished he was with her, and hers asking if he was still planning to leave me for her. All less than four months into our marriage. I gave him so many freaking second chances it's not even funny. I'm not even going to get into the one personals ad of his I found that was, well... I won't say it because even though I never mention his name in my blog and no one who knows him reads this, it's something I've only shared with one other person besides my therapist and I'll keep that secret for now. And how could I forget, when he finally agreed to go to therapy with me, he refused to talk to the therapist about our sex life, which is what he said the problem was. And that very night he was out till 5 am having sex with some woman he met on the internet. He never said as much, but he'd said he had a date (once he finally quit bullshitting me) with a woman from Summerville, and when I called him at 3:45 am he was still in fucking Summerville. Again, he never told me he fucked her, but I have my sources, and it was more than confirmed. And that was the day after my birthday. He didn't even switch shifts with someone so he could come to dinner with my family on my birthday, and the next night he went out and fucked some woman he just met. That was the last fucking straw. A week and a half later I moved out, and he asked me to fucking stay! *sigh* I have gotten really off the point of my entry. I'd just never really told that story, so I felt it had to be done. Point is, our relationship was endlessly dysfunctional, and it wasn't at all my fault. Now, it was my fault for giving him second chances in the first place and believing he would change, but I learned my lesson in the end.

My relationship now... I have both that passionate love and the comfort of my past two relationships, without the fighting, without the endless deceit, and it brings me the greatest joy I've ever known. He loves me the way I've always wanted to be loved, and we have the kind of physical spark my husband and I never had (which he totally blamed on me, btw). I have someone who finally understands me, who doesn't pretend to know what's good for me more than I do, who loves me with every fiber of his being. And I finally know the kind of love I'm capable of too. This is the most in love I've ever been, and that makes all the shit I went through with my husband worthwhile, because it led me to meeting someone who could very well be my soulmate. My past hurts... a LOT. But so much good has come of it that 95% of the time I forget about it.

I AM A BITCH

Things have gotten really ugly lately with my husband. Well, on two separate occasions. The first time it was about money and him trying to get out of keeping me covered by health insurance till we divorce in May. I felt really cornered, so I threatened him with every bit of legal action I could possibly bring against him (as I have been advised by a lawyer). Well, that's not really being a bitch, that's just covering my ass. BUT I found out why he has traveled to New York twice in the last couple months and has been looking for a job up there. I discovered he has a girlfriend up there. Well, as of yesterday he HAD a girlfriend up there, I'm not sure if he still does. That's where I come in. I refuse to reveal the source of my information, but let's just say the way I find things out is pretty bitchy by nature. ANYWAY he's been hitting me up for money for the health insurance he has on me and complaining he's broke, but I found out he was flying to New York YET AGAIN this month! So I looked into it more and find this girlfriend. Now, for all I knew he may have been completely honest with her about what happened in our marriage and how it came to an end, but I found her on Facebook and merely told her that she'd be wise to keep an eye on him. When she seemed surprised that I referred to myself as his wife (yes, for those keeping score, we're still legally married so I'm still technically his wife) and inquired why I'd be giving such advise, I told her exactly what happened leading to our separation. YES, I know that's a really bitchy thing to do. But honestly, I WISH someone had been there to warn me about him to save me all the shit I went through. Needless to say he found out about it. He tried to tell me he'd been honest with her about everything, but considering she A) thought he was divorced, B) thought HE left ME, and C) apparently had no clue about the infidelity, I think that's just one of the billion lies he surrounds himself with. His problem (one of MANY) is that he lies about EVERYTHING at this point because he KNOWS no woman will like him for who he is knowing he's shown a pattern of cheating. He may have been telling the truth about not cheating on the new girlfriend, but every woman who's not completely gullible knows if a man will cheat on one woman, he'll cheat on any woman. I admit I have been a complete bitch about the whole matter, but he's lied to me way too much and thought of no one but himself, and I really don't feel too bad seeing him feel even a fraction of the pain he caused me. So there you go. I'm a bitch.