November

The night before Halloween was a real struggle. He was busy moving into his new two bedroom apartment that would now afford him to spend more time with the children, and I took my youngest to the marine science center Halloween fair. I felt like I was missing my right arm. I called him crying and asked how did this not bother him? How did he not feel like he had lost his best friend? He just replied that he was busy. I told him I hoped he felt the loneliness that I felt the next night when he took our daughter trick or treating. He wouldn't however because he called my cousin and sent me a picture at work of the kids trick or treating together. I would later found out it was maybe to 6 houses and then he dropped her off at home. My 10 year old was devastated so my oldest took her to the dollar store and bought her some candy so she wouldn't be so upset.

November was here and we were slowly approaching the holiday season. I had dropped another almost 20 lbs merely from stress and walked around every day like a zombie. On Nov. 11th, he was gone again. This time supposedly on another "Business" trip to "Tallahassee" This time we were blocked for the entire weekend, and the only way he would communicate with me was with his mother on the phone. I had taken the girls to my friends house in Louisiana to try and escape the reality of what was happening, instead, my daughter made some comments that very much worried me. That night, his mother, a preachers wife I might add, called with him on the phone and was very much right in the middle of our drama. Her enabling her son was one of the biggest problems that our marriage has ever faced. That, and she is not a lovable woman. Lets put it this way, she was the nursing supervisor for a hospital I worked at for 26 years, when I came to work there, no one had anything nice to say about her. When I left that hospital, they gave me a party, and gift cards. When she left, they gave her nothing. I still have friends that call me to say from that job, she has no one calling to check in on her. She has been mean to me since day one of our marriage, I have stood up for myself once in 18 years by writing her a letter and much like her son, she continues to hold that over my head. She has spoken horribly of me to my children, and every single holiday there has been at least one time when she has cried. It really is a tragedy, but the further I have stepped away from the situation, I have come to realize that my husband, and his brother are products of that, and that is why their relationships have failed and why they continue to fail at life.

After the alleged business trip to "Tallahassee" he comes back and within the week he is smoothing things over with me and we are back to having sex. He wants to work it out with me. This time it lasted for about a week and a half, and then I got the dreaded phone call that "we don't work" and I see where he would get back to that point, because its hard to believe that you would want to work things out, but wouldn't want to stay at your home to do so. Something was definitely keeping him away, and I know now it was her. He wanted to be able to come here, and have me and then go out of town and have her too. But all of this time, what he failed to realize is the damage he was doing to his kids. At first, he would try to call them, but when the kids found out he was out of town, they would be beside themselves. He went from being a almost stay at home dad, to maybe 3-4 5 minute phone calls a week. He was so busy trying to keep her happy, which was his number one complaint about me, that he had almost completely began neglecting his kids. He states that his kids did not care about him anyway, they disrespected him etc. But he was the father of this home, not their brother and he needed to discipline them if that was the case. The kids anger was growing, and I was too caught up in trying to figure out whether I should believe him, (which obviously I was allowing myself to do so) and trying to figure out if he was lying. It made me crazy. I was smoking 2 packs of Marlboro lights a day, not eating, pacing around my garage. Praying in the morning, noon, and night. I was wanting to give up on God, my life, I wanted to move back to Tennessee. I could barely go to work and get through the day without tears. I mean I was a complete mess and so were my kids. It was truly quite a awful time. I still could not, for the life of me, hand it over to God. I was busy trying to find out what he was doing, find out what was going on. If it were truly her, then I needed to know!

All of this was driving me mad. My first instinct was to run, but I had made a life for my children here and they were all against that. I was smoking so much I could barely breathe, and week after week I was believing lie after lie that he actually wanted to be with me. At one point my 17 year old even stood in the garage and screamed "HE DOESN'T WANT US ANYMORE, HE WANTS HER NOW" and I still couldn't see the light. The next week, he took our youngest for the weekend. But then, Thanksgiving week he left town and went to Tennessee. We assume he went to Tennessee, that's what we were told. I actually have a friend that saw him there at Chili's. I actually began to move forward that week, but on Thanksgiving day, my oldest called him and gave him a ear full. I wasn't expecting it, but all that he had done since this all began was run and that was precisely the reason that I refused to. My kids had a ton of feelings swirling around, and instead of being a father to them and being here to help them sort through them, he just kept, and has continued, to keep running. Thanksgiving Day was actually a turning point for me and I felt a little better, but then I had a ton of teenage girl emotions from a girl who was heartbroken that her daddy wasn't there to watch the parade with, or to be at Thanksgiving with, and that seemed to be my new life. Even if I had a great day and came home from work in a amazing mood, one of my girls was struggling. And here was this "man", constantly running. And when I say running, I mean running from everything. He began to meditate and take Buddhism classes, and also attending a church that was part of the New Thought Movement. He was drinking bourbon and smoking weed, all of it was a huge change from the person he was before. I tried to accept all of it out of desperation to keep my family together, but how much was I really willing to sacrifice to keep my family together? This man was running from what he new was right and running from anything to do with my children's or my emotions, and running from God.

When he returned from Tennessee, it was more of the same. Another month had passed and I was still trying to take control and not turn it over to God. He will give me beauty for ashes, but I couldn't keep hanging onto the ashes. When would I get that??