October

After a tumultuous month, my husband came back but told me he could no longer love me the way I needed to be loved, and left again amidst much fighting, name calling, and ugliness, it was apparent that he was in love with someone else. He would never admit it, he swore to me over and over that there was no one else, that he was doing this only for himself because "we don't work". Imagine the hurt and confusion that I felt, because I was told over and over what a horrible wife I had been. True, I was not a perfect wife, and there were tons of things I could have improved on. A marriage is nothing more than two imperfect people coming together as one and accepting those imperfections.

One of the last fights we had was because for the entire year we had been here, my husband would tell me he was getting money from here or there. This money would be here on Monday, and Monday would never come. In the end he would always end up borrowing money from my mother in law, so I literally now lived in Florida while my mother in law paid our bills moth after month. But instead of being truthful, he would just deposit the money into my account and then I would find out later. It was infuriating. At one point we had a conversation and I said "What kind of man continues to borrow money from his parents at 40 years old?" I did not mean it to be that harsh, but I wanted him to understand the severity that we can't keep borrowing money from your parents, your parents aren't going to be here forever, you have to find a job. I said that after a year of being nothing but supportive and loving. he even had told me in May that he was going to make a facebook status about how supportive and loving I had been, but you know it was now almost August and we just couldn't keep living that way, especially with borrowing from his mother. It wasn't fair to me, or our family. He states that he walked on eggshells all the time because my temper was so bad, but its really plain and simple. I needed stability, I needed honesty, I needed trust, and none of those things were being provided to me by my husband.

From the week of Sept 27th, until the week of October 12th, my husband didn't see my children. He was renting a room off of a lady's house. His parents came to town the week of the 12th, and he actually took the children for the weekend, but he stayed on the phone the entire time texting according to both of our girls. When he left, he literally left me with nothing. So money was a sore subject. On October 15th, I had a conversation with him and told him I couldn't make it on the money he was planning on giving me, we didn't have groceries, the lights had already been shut off once, I had started a go fund me, but only ended up with $400 so that barely made a dent. I asked him to please take 6 months and lets just see where we were. He told me that was fine. The next day, he called me at work and told me he had filed for divorce. I was devastated. First off, we had no food, it took $440 to file for that divorce, and we needed things to survive! Second, he had just told me the night before he would take 6 months. I later found out from his mom that he had told her he filed for divorce so that I wouldn't take the kids to Tennessee, even though he had told our counselor two weeks before he didn't care if I took the kids to Tennessee or if I didn't as long as we moved on. In my opinion, the divorce was filed because he wanted to take that first trip to "Tallahassee" without feeling guilt.

On October 21st, he took his first "business" trip to "Tallahassee" I do believe he was in Tallahassee from Wednesday-Friday, but I also believe she was there with him. I asked on Thursday for him to send me a picture of the "guys" he was having dinner with. Instead, he began screaming and cursing at me telling me that it was none of my business anymore. I kept texting and asking him if he was with her until the point that he eventually blocked me. But he also blocked communication with my children too, and true enough at that point I was out of my mind, and used their phones to call him, but my daughters also had tried to call just to say hey, and he jumped down their throat as well. This lasted until Sunday. On Sunday, he unblocked us and drove over 6 hours to my house. He claimed that he had been out with the guys and watched some football. He claimed that he had been to a speakeasy bar, and that on Sunday, he got carried away because they all went to a range and were shooting guns. It took him 6 hours (the time it takes to get back from Tampa) to get back from the 3 hours that is generally takes to get back from "Tallahassee" and explained that the traffic was bad. I believed it all hook, line, and sinker. Although my trust had been severed, by now I had uncovered the 5-6 hours a day that he had been spending on the phone with her, I had also uncovered all of the text messages that he had previously deleted. Where he was telling her that she was worthy to be chased, that she was a bad~~~ white girl,  and when he looked up reservations for her upcoming New York trip. I read where she wouldn't delete the meme she had made unless he thought it was dumb <------------ which screams needy, all of the flirting, him sending her the Allman brothers song Sweet Melissa, him sending her our song, Tell Lorrie I love her, which subsequently in one of my darker hours before I received all of the deleted texts, I had sent to him, I still took the bait. And for the first time in my life, I let myself be used. He came over for the next four days and was intimate with me, telling me he loved me and wanted it to work, but by Thursday or Friday of the following week, he was right back to "we don't work" and would become so irate with me that all he could do was cuss me and tell me it was all my fault.

Stop what you are reading and put yourself in my shoes. I thought we were happy, we took family pictures, we shared every dream and every hope. We still were intimate 4-5 times a week 18 years later, I was still crazy about my husband. It was all my children had ever known was us being happy, its all anyone who had ever seen us had ever known. We were the couple they looked up to, the family they looked up to. I did not want a divorce, I desperately wanted my husband and father of my children back. I was now allowing  myself to be treated as a prostitute for the sake of trying to hold onto my family. And what about my kids? for a moment there I was so caught up in my own selfishness, that I forgot what they were seeing. I was letting them see that it was okay to be treated and to treat a woman like this. Where was my mind? I forgot to add that I had been on the floor on my face in my bedroom closet praying day and night over this situation over him, over her, over us and our family. Could he truly not see our beauty? What about the three bad~~~ white chicks he was raising? How about the one bad~~~ that had walked through every fire with him, not just the new fire that he had very much created for himself? These were the darkest times I had ever faced. All of my friends and family in Tennessee, I literally had two people here in this community, so my Tennessee friends were like my lifeline. Day in and day out, I cried, prayed, begged, that some touch, or some conversation, some one thing that I would do would bring him back to me. When I would look in his eyes, it was like looking into a empty vessel. The man I once knew and loved so deeply wasn't even there anymore. My heart was broken, and that's when I decided to jump.

I have dealt with depression my entire life, but after my brain surgery, things got much better. I felt like it was the fact that God had granted me another lease on life, because after hearing the words "mass" you tend to think that your life could end at any second. Luckily, mine did not. I was granted some more time here and subsequently that lead to our move. On Oct 23rd, I decided I wanted it to be over. I have chronic back pain from an old surgery I have had and it makes me pretty crabby, I can't even enjoy the ocean if the waves are too rough because I wont be able to move the next day. Moving to a warmer climate and the exercise changes I had made over the past year had certainly made things better, but still that on top of losing the love of my life, I decided that would be the day that I would end my own. I took off walking up the Navarre bridge, and when I go to the top, I stood and looked out over the water, I had had my fair share of pain and now this. The one person I thought would never leave my side, gone. I had even told my cousin a couple of days before over lunch that I was planning it, Not for attention, not for help, but because I was tired of the hurting and pain that this life had to offer. Her advice was not to leave a mess for the kids and I already had my plan in mind.  My kids would be taken care of no matter what, my biggest hurdle would be for me to get my body over the side of the bridge quickly so that no one could stop me. I had previously been walking up the bridge with Beyoncé on and as I placed my phone into my bra and grabbed a hold of the side to put my foot up on the hole, my music switched to Bethel music. I don't know how or why it happened, I can only say that it had to be Jesus. I wept on the side of the bridge and then took a selfie to remember that day that God was fixing to turn my mess into my message. as I walked down that afternoon, I felt nothing but shame. Shame that I had let satan try and ruin my life. Shame that he almost won. I had been on my face, on my knees, none of my prayers were being answered, and anytime I talked to my husband I felt condemned, judged, or ashamed of my any and everything that I had ever done in my past. It was truly my lowest moment. I have to admit, that I still didn't give it all to Jesus. I still continued to try and take control of the situation myself, and did a ton of things wrong so even though I had God pull me off of that bridge, I still didn't give it all to Him.

What would it take? How much longer would I continue to let the abuse go on? He wanted me to pull closer to Him but I was still very much resistant. Every day I would read my bible, and listen to Joyce Meyer, I would try to study, and every day satan came at me ten times harder than the day before.

It would be a long time before I could finally turn it over to Him, a very long time.