April

Exactly one month ago today, on April 24th, my marriage ended. Some could say it ended the day he left in September, But I never gave up fighting for him, for me, for our family, until April 24th. And really even then, I talked with him on the phone until April 27th begging him to reconsider.

After Easter weekend began the month of pure hell on earth. He finally calmed down around the 1st or 2nd of April and came around that the fight we had was pretty stupid on both of our parts, and he came back for about 5-7 days. While he was here, he was in tune, and was great with the kids. On Monday, April 11th, I saw a guy that had met me back in February, and told me he had seen me at the gym. I thought it was a pickup line and blew it off. Until that day I never gave it another thought, instead he walked up to me at the gym, and asked if I remembered him. I tweeted to my girlfriends that he was real, and that it was awkward. I came home and he was packing his things again, and leaving me. He screamed that I was bragging on social media, and that it was disrespectful to him, so of course I immediately removed my tweet. I was just tweeting to them that it made me feel awkward, but seeing it from his point of view helped. This time, I didn't run after him, I didn't call and yell and I gave him space. Instead he called me, called me horrible names (it begins with a c) and talked horribly to me. The next day was our counseling appointment.

The prior two weeks of counseling had been completely worthless. I tried to hold in my stuff until we could get there with a mediator, and that just made things worse. The counselor herself even said that I was sending a message and for some reason, he was no longer receiving it. In fact the entire past two sessions, he had spent telling his side, and then I would interject, and try to tell my side, which was interrupting, always, and then he would end up talking over me until the point that I felt like between the counselor and him, I couldn't get a word in edge wise. I would then either continue to get upset. or shut down completely. The day of the 12th, he launched into the tweet thing and how furious it had made him, (and even she agreed that it really was not something that should have been so dramatic that he felt the need to pick up and leave) but he just kept on until finally, I began crying and then shut down. At that time, Our counselor just focused the entire rest of the session on him and told him that after working with my children, and with me, that she felt like he could be bipolar. She explained that her daughter was bipolar, and what would it hurt for him to go have a mental evaluation, and just tell the doctor that he wants to make sure that  his brain is firing on all cylinders. He agreed to do that to her, but of course when we left, this was all my fault and I had convinced the counselor that something was wrong with him.

Lets pause here for a second. Over the past several months of this bizarre and peculiar behavior, I have tried, as a medical professional, to figure out how a man, (and not just any man) could go from being head over heels in love with his wife to being head over heels in love with someone else, how the same man could begin drinking and using marijuana on a daily basis, how a man that loved me so much could talk to me with so much disgust and hate in his voice that it was like talking to a complete stranger, how the man was now lining up his fork and knife symmetrically and perfectly aligned at the dinner table, (and spending ample time to do this, always looking to see if I'm going to acknowledge him doing it) but most of all, how a man that was a loving and swiftly devoted father, could go for days, and weeks without seeing his kids. At first, I blamed it on the medications. They added Metformin and Lipitor to his already in place dose of Wellbutrin. We know that Metformin is known to accumulate in the liver, and sometimes decrease the effectiveness of certain medications. So at first, especially since it was exactly 10 days from taking it, it had to be that, right? In the back of my mind too, when I have wives bring their husbands in to the ER with odd and peculiar behavior that came out of nowhere, there has also been the possibility of a stroke or maybe a brain tumor. Maybe that was it! I was reaching because this wasn't just about the lies, and the lies to her, the children and me, it wasn't just about an affair, it was about his entire being changing in a matter of days right before my eyes. All the while screaming nothing was wrong, and that he was "Just sick of my shit" I had also ran across the interesting article that talked about a midlife crisis.

http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-a-Male-Midlife-Crisis-%28For-Women%29

That was it! It had to be it!!
First: The emotional changes, he had just come off from a year of not having a job, and had decided to reinvent himself as a man.
Second, His temper. His temper was absolutely positively out of control and he would rage at me one minute and leave town and block our numbers, but then he would come back into town, smooth things over, have sex with me again, and then rage again.
Third: Detachment, oh he had detached all right, from everything and everyone that he had once worked so hard for and everything he was proud of.
Fourth: He never thought about his mortality, in fact he was seemingly acting invincible
Fifth: His religious beliefs. His father is a Baptist preacher, He himself has had a calling on his life, his entire life, yet now, he considered himself to be a part of the New Thought movement and had told me once while meditating that "we were all just mini gods" which is so far fetched from the man that would sit and quote things right out of the bible. I learned more from him at times than I did from the bible itself!
Sixth: Changes in his appearance, once he was diagnosed with diabetes, he began running and only eating protein bars and water dropping 110 lbs in 10 weeks. It has taken me a year to lose 102 lbs, so that was not exactly safe!
Seventh: He obsessed over his appearance and then began buying new clothes.
Eighth: He began exhibiting reckless behavior, including but not limited to walking up to anyone anywhere and asking them if he knew where to get some weed. He also began drinking bourbon heavily, and smoking weed daily.
Ninth: He changed jobs.
Tenth: He began seeking extra sexual attention from me, and quite obviously from her
I could continue going, but as you can see everything that the article above talked about described his behavior perfectly to a T. It had to be a midlife crisis.

Bipolar Disorder was something else.

Over the course of April, he would come back, and leave, come back and leave much like he did through the 9 months before. He left me over the tweet, he left me because our 14 year old was having a bad night and blurted out "I hate this family" And then, on April 24th, just one day after coming clean with every detail about the affair, he left me because I had too much wine and shared something about my sex life with my cousins. My cousins who know everything there is to know about me, and me about them. In fact, he waited until we got home, kept me up until 3 am telling me how disrespectful and rude it was. Came to bed, had sex with me, got up the next morning and without saying a word, he left. I tried to give him his space, tried not to call him that weekend. Continued hanging out with my family and friends, and then on Monday, when he had let it go on for another three days, I finally lost my stuff. Still even as angry as I was, I tried to talk to him talk some sense into him, tried to make him see what we were worth, and he would not. I explained that moving back in together would have been the best thing for us, but that it requires digging your heels in working through the problems as they arise. He wasn't hearing it. I even had my Christian mentor from work call and talk with us over the phone at which time he made some sense, and when we got off the phone he asked me to stay and watch some TV and I thought maybe we were headed in the right direction. However, the next day he was back to raging again, and it was no use. I tried to talk to him over the phone and in person clear through the first week of May, but he was adamant.

And still my anger with God grew and festered. I couldn't take all of this behavior, my life felt so out of control. And my kids? Well how do you think any of this was benefiting them? If he was here, obviously because I hold him to a certain standard, he was  a great dad, but let him get away from here, and the #1 thing on his mind was him. I continued praying, and reading my bible although not as frequent as I had been before he came back. I also began working a TON on self-forgiveness, but I was still a volcano waiting to erupt with anger. Not towards him, not towards her, but towards God. How was He watching this unfold? How was He letting me go through this persecution and not stopping it? It would be at least another month before I would get that answer to my question. Thankfully, God already knew it was coming.