Candid confessional? Outlet for angst? Venue for worries? I'm not sure where this will be going; all I know is I want to get my voice back. And what better way then to write about it?
My husband Joseph and I got married in October of 2009. We'd been together for two years and it seemed like the next logical step. Sure, we had problems. Everyone does these days. But I was not aware of just how deep seeded and insidious the problems were.
We moved into our first 'home' in August of 2010 and all seemed well. Granted, it was a shitty mobile home, but at least we owned it and it was ours. I deluded myself with visions of landscaping and interior design and home improvement. I yearned for the proverbial white picket fence that usually follows "I do".
We had our first Christmas together in our home, the families got together, the mother-in-law thought I was the best thing since sliced bread and it all seemed as good as it could get for a couple of twenty-somethings starting their life together as a married couple.
The fates aligned in January 2011 and we became pregnant with our first child. The occurrence was a welcome one, though entirely unintentional, and everyone seemed so happy with our surprise news. Sure, we were young, newly married and hardly financially stable, but we were married, we had a home of our own and we had supportive families that shared our happiness, so it seemed like a perfect combination.
That's when the problems really started to rear their heads like some sort of ugly sea monster creeping out of the depths of the dark unknown. Joseph was fired from his job in April 2011 and it sent him into an angry, self-indulgent tail spin. Cue the lying and deception and deceit. The sweet, caring, thoughtful man I married 18 months earlier became a lazy, angry, moody adolescent that was quick to temper and injuriously insulting. Pair that with a strenuous, difficult, hormone-ridden pregnancy and you can see how things became very dark very fast. Sex became a thing of the past and that caused even more moody, ranting, self-indulgent behavior to manifest in my husband.
In the end of August 2011, the ties that bind were stretched even more by the loss of our home to Hurricane Irene. We were forced to evacuate our home after the frantic call from my mother in the town down the street at 7 am woke us on that fateful day. And while I, and all 8 1/2 months worth of baby bump, carefully collected all our pets and the useful necessities such as clothing, toiletries, food and pet supplies, my screaming, trembling, ranting husband thought only to salvage his 'precious' computer equipment. I knew something was terribly, awfully wrong with the picture as I waded alone through the thigh-high flood waters, rucksack on my back, cradling my trembling 5 month old puppy atop my protruding belly as the rain water belted down upon us as we fled amid the frantic scrambling of our neighbors and the fire department. I stood beside our car, alone, watching silently as my husband waded back and forth between the house and the car saving technological baubles that seemed wholly unnecessary to our current predicament. In that moment, all I yearned for was my family, suffering their own horrific nightmare just a few miles down the road as the flood waters swept over 15 years of hard work and created an impassable liquid barrier between us.
It was a full 24 hours before we could get to them, amid military check points and flood-damaged roadways crisscrossed by fallen power lines and the detritus of the natural disaster. I fell into the arms of my mother and we cried the tears of the whole ordeal in that poignant homecoming that wrote the new beginning to an inevitable end. Our home was condemned by the flood, and we moved into my parents' home; my childhood home. And together, we began the painstakingly slow process of recovery. Together minus one. My husband was no longer interested in being a part of the big picture. He resented my family and me. He gradually began burning the bridges he'd furnished with my family through his selfish, indulgent and generally caustic demeanor. We were all suffering in our own way; financially, physically, mentally and emotionally. But in his eyes, only his own suffering meant anything.
My son was born a few short months later on October 11, 2011. We still lived at my parents' home, and it was the best thing that could have happened. I had support, love, knowledge and caring. In hindsight, I never should have left, but the instinct to fight for my skewed perception of our marriage encouraged me to follow along as my husband insisted on moving into an apartment in the end of October. Worst. Idea. Ever.
The apartment was a slum; little did we know that the building was not up to code, highly overpriced and infested with rodents, mold and bed bugs. And the stress did not improve our relationship as I had hoped it would. It got progressively worse with more hostility, anger, resentment and depression. I was endlessly depressed and my poor son was suffering for it. Arguing, fighting, crying, screaming and a painfully disinterested father are no way to raise a baby. He wanted almost nothing to do with his child and when he could be compelled to take care of his son, he later resented it to no end. He walked out on us for the first time in March 2012. My father talked him into coming back the following day, but what little trust I did have in him was rapidly dwindling.
Somehow, I persisted on. Unbelievably patient and ridiculously insane, I stayed with him and we bought a replacement for our lost mobile home. It too was a nightmare like the apartment. Mold ridden, crumbling apart, lacking heat, windows and flooring, but I thought perhaps we would work on it together, building it back up as we tried to build our relationship. I had to move in with my parents again in the interim, spending the glorious month of July with them. It was an omen of the future, and again, I should have never left, but I threw caution to the wind and gave it one last shot, moving in to the new place by the end of the month.
It didn't take long for things to get really bad again. In the beginning of August, I found more proof of my husband's deceit, this time in the form of a closet drinking problem and a closet sexual problem. When I found his treasure trove of anal sex toys, I assumed naively that he was using them with a woman. He corrected me almost smugly, telling me that he used them on himself. Alone.
Needless to say, we started sleeping in separate rooms, under the pretense that he'd eventually find an apartment and move out. But he never did. So we lived a mockery of a marriage for far too long as he began going out drinking and partying while I took care of our son and fell into an even deeper depression.
Like a puppeteer pulling strings, I kept up appearances and went on in a fog, celebrating my son's first birthday with our friends and families, though my mother-in-law now despised my very presence in the same room and went out of her way to prove just how much she hated me.
We lived like this for much too long. Long periods of silence and avoidance routinely interrupted by vicious arguing. By December, my mother compelled me to take control of my life again and I went out and got a job. It took my husband three days to realize, and when he did finally find out I had gotten a job, he laughed merrily about how he didn't have to give me any more money and then said he should probably pack his bags. I told him he should, if that's what he wanted to do.
And by the very next afternoon, he walked out on his family again. This time three weeks before Christmas.
As the winter grew colder, I realized I couldn't afford, nor was it safe, to live in the home that still did not have heat. So my parents suggested I move in with them for the winter. That was the plan, until we discovered that the landlord of the community we lived in was so angry and disappointed in Joseph that he was considering eviction. And Joseph said that if I wasn't living in the home, he was going to. Even if he had to break in to do so. So I made the decision to sign the house, and all the problems associated with it, over to my husband and wash my hands of it.
So here I am. 26 years young and feeling terribly old. Married, but soon to be divorced. Twice a homeowner, but living with my parents. And above all, a mother. A single mother. Happily ever after? Perhaps not in the traditional sense. But I think things are starting to look up.
