My 6-year-old cousin is in the hospital, riddled with cancer. The doctors have decided she isn't going to make it but they don't have any kind of time frame set for her. If you pray, please do so for her and her immediate family. It's such an unfortunate situation.
I have a severe sinus infection, ear infection, and laryngitis. It makes for rough days of using my voice but squeaking every other word out.
My sister is in town, but I haven't seen her as much as I would like and she hasn't returned my calls for the last 2 days. That probably has to do with the fact that she has been visiting our father, but still...it's difficult when I want to see her so much and I have to share her,
We did get to visit together last weekend. I went up to Mom's to spend the night so that Mom wouldn't gripe about not getting to see my sister. We shopped, we had dinner with our huge extended family, we got matching tattoos...it was wonderful overall. :)
Saturday afternoon we went to visit our grandparents' gravesite in Seymour. Sis bought flowers and we spent some time cleaning off the tombstones. We've both been up there several times, but we always went alone. This was the first time we had gone together, and I thought it was really nice. If our grandparents were looking down on us they'd have been proud of the young women that sat there holding on to each other to lessen the pain of life. We reminisced, talking about the things we did with Mamaw and Papaw and how we used to squeeze in bed beside them. Sis made sure it wasn't disrespectful then she laid down in the grass between their headstones, laying between them once again. We sat and talked until it grew too chilly to stay any longer. It was very peaceful, very calming. This may be completely pointless to most people but it was a beautiful moment for my sister and myself...I wanted to make sure I addressed it so I could always come back and read about it/remind myself later.
I went back through and realized that I haven't written about my past in a while. I know where I left off but I'm giving a mini-recap to help my brain sort through where I want to go with it.
- Kicked out, moved to AZ
- Married Nathan, moved to nowhere, TN
- Left Nathan for no good reason, moved to AZ
- Met Jake and got pregnant
- Tired of infidelity/lies, moved to TN to have my child
I remember coming home. I remember being so scared of giving birth as a single mom, trying to figure out logistics of where I would live, where I would work, how I was going to pay for a child and all of the expenses that come along with him/her. I just drove...I got really sick between Memphis and Nashville-the curvy roads did not agree with my pregnant sensibilities. I cried most of the way. I really didn't know what I was going to do.
Nathan was the one that sent me the money to move back to Tennessee. I still owe him that money plus about 5 billion dollars in interest. I stashed my belongings at Minnie's house upon arriving, but I stayed at my mother's for the most part. She got me a job with her as a janitor on the UT campus. Talk about humiliating-having old school friends walk up to you when you're six months pregnant and scrubbing toilets for a living while they tell you about all of their classes and how wonderful their life is really sucks. It happened quite frequently, actually....and I was always ashamed. I was not at all proud of my job nor my condition.
I had a brief fling with Nathan at this time. If I had half a brain, it would have been far more than a fling. Here I was, pregnant with another man's child, and he still wanted to be with me. My dumb ass didn't stay though.
I then became aware that Minnie and Jake had been talking on the phone and finally agreed to speak with him. His forked tongue spun golden tales, and of course I believed every single one of them. I mean, if a guy is willing to move 2000 miles just to be with the woman he loves it's proof he's willing to change, right?
Oh how very wrong I was.
It started small. Late nights at work, snapping at me constantly, not holding me anymore, girls' phone numbers stashed in random places, phone calls that resulted in immediate hangups.....then I found out about the girls he was seeing and the drugs he was doing. Every time it was the same, I would yell and cry and try to get him to explain, he would clam up and walk away. He spent several nights sleeping in his car in parking lots. It got progressively worse over the years...I could go into all of the ridiculous situations and the many times we said we would separate but I just don't want to. This pattern continued for a very long time. We bought a house, we had two children, life progressed-but he remained exactly the same. And by the time I realized he was being emotionally abusive and the kind of trap I had myself in it was extremely difficult to extract myself from the situation because of the kids.
As it turned out, he left me, so I didn't have to worry about extracting myself. Christmas 2009 was a very rough one for me...the day after Christmas we officially split. we lived in the same home but we didn't speak. He moved out in February, to live with the one he called his "younger, prettier, skinnier" model. Turns out he had been seeing her since the prior November. When he left, I thought we'd be able to divorce amicably and figure out custody and things would finally be okay.
Again, my assumptions were waaaaay off base. He went a little crazy himself. He called me every single name under the sun-seriously, I don't think there's an insult he did not hurl at me. (I don't like any of the words I'm about to use, but in order to accurately describe the situation it's necessary to repeat them). I became a slut, a whore, a cunt, I had a cow's vagina, I was just like my mother, I was trash, I was fat, I was ugly, I had thousands of dimples in my ass, I slept with my entire family, my family was nothing but child-molesting trash....it just went on and on and on.
[For the record, none of them affected me as much as something he threw at me very early in our relationship, before I ever got pregnant-"I'm sorry I can't fuck you like your daddy." That's the worst thing ANYONE has EVER said to me.]
His behavior became erratic. I had to file an order of protection against him because he was constantly threatening me and leaving messages at my house and texting and calling and breaking things when he came to get the kids. Then he started threatening to kill himself. He took my kids walking on the railroad tracks.....and I flipped. I actually left work that day and went and found him-he had already dropped my kids off at home. I got him in the car, and I tried to take him to the hospital to get some help. I was genuinely concerned about him. He decided he didn't want to go, and jumped out of my moving vehicle in traffic just off the interstate ramp on Western Avenue. I flipped. I followed him for several minutes as he caused a complete scene, trying to coax him back into the car. A friend from work saw him walking and even offered to stop and drive him home but he refused. I eventually got him to get in, but I had to promise to take him to his house. Two days later, Miss Younger-Skinnier-Prettier checked him in to Peninsula, and Mommy got to take the kids to visit Daddy at the hospital. We were the only visitors he was allowed to have....that was actually nice because that meant Miss YSP couldn't be there to ruin things. I'd already had to share Easter with my family with her.
Upon his exit from Peninsula, Jake was doing quite well. He was on meds-he was diagnosed as manic depressive by one doctor and bi-polar by another. He was seeing a therapist, and his behavior/mood was improving.
During this time I had reconnected with an old friend. He had a little girl and was also going through a very painful divorce. We hit it off right away and we dated-seriously-for several months. Yup, there's that frying-pan-to-fire thing again. He was very, very sweet to me. My emotional (and sexual) needs were completely filled, and for the first time in years I was seen walking around with a smile on my face. It was all well and good, but then once the first impressions wore off he became a mooch-and a pushy one at that. I told him I didn't want him to live with me and he flipped, then we split. That was in September last year.
Next thing you know, here comes Jake. Same promises, same things as always. I said no at LEAST 200 times, and I truly don't believe that to be an exaggeration. Eventually he wore me down. He promised marriage counseling. He promised to be different. This was in October. Soon enough, he came home, and we started the cycle again.
And now? Now I don't know where we stand. I don't love him anymore-I don't even like him. And honestly, I'm not even sure I ever DID love him. He removed and blocked me from his Facebook, we don't speak about anything other than "the kids are going to the doctor on Friday" or "did you make the deposit yet?"
I can't stand this. I don't know what to do. I honestly cannot afford the alternative at this point in time. How long do I remain in my loveless marriage???
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