Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi you`re my only hope!

So often on this site I joke that only Obi-Wan Kenobi can help me. This time, I don’t think even his special brand of the force will be able to see me through this unexpected throw of the dice. But, for safeties sake in case it actually does work when I ask him…Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi…my life is in deep shit.

So sorry I haven’t been on in a little while, my life took a most unexpected turn, one of those curve balls that comes out of nowhere and makes you wonder why you can’t just have a normal simple life. As you may know from some of the dark side posts I have made, I have recently gone through some rather bad years of my marriage that ended when my husband walked out and disappeared. He had many problems, most of which stemmed from drug use and a dysfunctional childhood and depression over whom he was and where he had ended up in life. Needless to say, it has been an entire year since we have seen or heard from him, and by we I mean me, my daughter and my son, ages 20 and 14 respectively.

So I was quite taken by surprise and that is the understatement of the year by the way, when my co-worker turned to me at the beginning of this week and said, “Kevin is on the phone.” After I got over my initial shock, and amusement as my boss who heard what my co-worker had said flung herself out of her chair so fast to run into the center of the office with her mouth gaping open that the chair fell over and into the desk behind her, I walked into the conference room and picked up the phone. I have to say I was even shocked at myself when I picked it up and instead of hurling a fuck you and the horse you finally ran in on and slamming the receiver down, said instead, “hello”, to which he replied, “Hi it’s me”, as if I wouldn’t recognize his voice after 17 years and two children together.

Later on as I told my co-workers, best friends, parents, children and taken an ad out in the NY Times (or at least that is how it felt) most questioned me on my quiet put together attitude and questioned why I was so calm and nice to him. First off, no one, no matter how close they are to me knows everything that was between us, and knows everything that I feel about my husband and the situation surrounding him.

Second of all what was yelling and getting angry going to get me? I tried that route throughout the drug and lying, con-man years, begging him to get help, find himself and try to fix what he was destroying before it was too late so we could salvage our family. Now he had been gone for a year, my kids and I had moved on without him whether we had wanted to or not, he didn’t exactly leave us a choice, so why start yelling now. For better or for worse, we are better off than we had been the last five years he had lived with us and made us live through a hell I can’t even describe to you. We watched as the man we slowly knew as husband and daddy turned into a monster we didn’t know and didn’t want to know, and were powerless to stop it.

Whether I begged or pleaded or whether I screamed and yelled or talked calmly and logically nothing got through, and as much as he was killing us and hurting the family I did not have the strength to kick him out, always holding out hope that the good man I married, the one I loved was still buried in there somewhere and if I just waited it out and took his shit, he would find his way back to himself and to us. That isn’t the way it went down, and maybe it is better this way I don’t know. Although if given the choice, I would have liked to decide for myself where my life and marriage were going, instead of having it all decided for me.

Anyway, so I picked up the phone and for the first time in a year spoke to the husband I had honestly never thought I would hear from again. I told many people later I think it would have been easier if the prick, the monster he had become had been on the other end of that phone, but it wasn’t, instead I heard for the first time in almost five years the man I once loved, maybe still love, the man I thought had been dead and buried years ago.

We spoke for nearly three hours the totality of which I couldn’t even begin to tell you, it all felt surreal, as many times inside my head I stopped and asked myself if I was actually talking to who I thought I was talking to. For the first hour, I felt like I was in a bad rehab movie, where the wronged family member gets the phone call from the 12 stepper who is now contrite and humble and apologizes and tries to explain their actions, and admits their wrongs. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to hear it, but these were things I would have rather heard before he destroyed everything we had and taken away every memory of my life from the last 17 years as if they had been his alone to take away.

As he mentioned that he is trying to fix himself and do the right thing, sign divorce papers, giving me anything I asked for including full custody (of which I obviously already have), of our son, no visitation (because my son refuses to have anything to do with him) and no claim on marital assets which he knows he has no claim to anyway because everything was mine and paid for by me or my family, I listened quietly, wondering what planet I had woken up on, how I got there and when could I get off.

This contrite, calm man was one I honestly never thought I would hear from again, the one I loved and married, the one I had children with and raised a family with and had a life with. The one I buried, knowing full well once he disappeared that he had been lost forever. Now here he was on the phone with me, and for the first time in a year, I was given the chance to say a few things that were robbed of me when he walked away and disappeared. I admit it was a release and a draining one at that, even though it wasn’t one third of what I needed to say, and needed to hear, but it was something, finally, so I guess I should be grateful for that. But, as he tried to explain he wanted to sign the papers and get it over with asap so me and the kids could move on and get on with our lives with some closure, I told him we had already done that.

We had moved on, we are happy, peaceful, and more financially stable than we had been in years. We had gotten beyond the hole he created, patched up what ruins he left behind for me to take care of on my own and had moved on to a nice life that all three of us are happy in. A piece of paper matters not to me, and certainly won’t give me closure. Closure would be an all out mentally and physically draining conversation about everything, answers to it all, maybe even some thank you`s for picking up the pieces he so cruelly left behind and I fixed for the kids, taking care of them and making sure they didn’t follow in his dysfunctional footsteps. Maybe some acceptance of what he did to all of us, what he left me alone to take care of without a look back, and what he left me with ahead of me that is changed and scarred forever.

I am not asking for him to get on his hands and knees and beg for my forgiveness or take all the blame for everything in the world on his own shoulders. But a little sample, maybe a little more than he gave me on the phone the other day, of the things he knows he did and always denied, the things he caused between us, the fact that all he ever had to do for one second during that time was realize I loved him and would have done anything for him if he had just reached out and asked for it. I obviously would have done anything for him I stayed while he treated me like shit, made every day at the end a living hell you could not wake up from. Perhaps maybe as I just read that sentence, perhaps what I need to hear is that he knows what his behavior did to me, to us and that if he could take it back he would, that this isn’t what he wanted either, that it hurts him to know what we had was destroyed that where we now have ended up pains him as much as it pains me.

I wonder if he knows what that feels like. He may tell me he is hurting too, but I wonder if for one second he ever tried to put himself in our shoes and realize the absolute pain and helplessness you feel when you watch someone you love destroy themselves before your eyes. It is a pain I cannot even begin to describe to you, and one you do not get over…ever.

That maybe just maybe he wishes he could have been different, things could have gone a different way that he weeps for what was as much as I do. Even if he said these things how could I believe him, after all even he admitted on the phone he was a con-man, conned me and everyone around him on a moments whim. That he rebelled against me like I was his mother not his wife and that he doesn’t know why. How am I now supposed to know what is sincere and what is self-pity and thinly veiled lies once again? And do I even want to know what is the truth and a lie, maybe at this point just hearing it and not asking the big is it true questions is enough, humor myself.

Maybe that would give me closure, who knows, maybe in situations like this there is no closure. I think that is why in the beginning I said it would have been easier if I heard from the monster and not the man I still love but thought was dead. What was, was and now we are stuck in a place no one ever wanted to be in, doesn’t feel good, and truly has no chance of ever giving either of us what we truly wanted from our lives. There is no closure, closure is just acceptance of what you have to live with in life in order to get up each day and live.

The first thing my father said to me was don’t you dare think about getting back together with him. As if I was. I wasn’t, and I am not, and even if I wanted to how could I? Who would let me? He handled things so poorly, did so many things many think are unforgivable, that I would be hunted down and shot by my friends, co-workers, parents and children if I even gave the smallest notion that I wanted to be with him again. So once again, my decisions are being made for me, and I have no control or choice. Just as he left me no choice when he left, he has once again left me no choice in how I feel now that he is back, thanks to him once again I am powerless in my own life, and that I think is the one thing out of everything I could never forgive him for.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an actress, now that I am older, lately I see I probably would have been pretty damn good at it. I spend my life acting now, although not in front of the cameras, but in real life. Outside I put on a pretty good impression of me, I laugh with friends, chat and joke with my fellow employees at work, smile at family functions and join in the fun, but inside its another picture entirely. I was always what you would call a private person. Not shy, private. I have never been one to pour my heart and soul out to those around me, they were given little pieces here and there, but I have always played it very close to the vest, and ever since the recent turmoil in my life, I have done so even more.

The aloofness, many over the years have called a family trait from my father’s side; some have even described it as cold. It’s not cold, those who know me would tell you with my children even in the public I am a doting over affectionate mother, who would and does do anything for her children. I sang them lullabies, rocked them to sleep, and played with them constantly. It isn’t cold, it is an exterior of calm, cool  and collected, of steel, of being the one who is in control, can take care of things, handle them, help the others who are panicking and in need.

I always loved that trait, I liked being tough, in control, a rock. But, lately I have seen how it has severe disadvantages; such as no one knows you can feel anything. I mean, the people who know me, know I love my kids more than my life, but other than that, they don’t see much, I don’t let them.

It’s funny, I was always outgoing, loud, and eager to get out there and meet people, talk to them, have fun, flirt. Now, people scare me, I hate crowds, I don’t like being around people I don’t know, not even for a minute, it scares me; they scare me. I have cocooned myself in a bubble, my family, close friends and family, and no one else, everyone else isn’t allowed in, and I don’t want them to be. I put on a good face, I`m always polite and smile offer the usual platitudes, but inside all I want to do is get out of where I am, out of the public, and home in my bubble where it is safe from those around me who are just waiting to fool me, betray me, hurt me, scar me, whatever.

My girlfriends keep trying to get me to come out, go to a bar, set me up on dates, and I cringe at the thought. I have nothing left to give, and all that could be taken from me, has already been taken. I am damaged, broken, a half a person, there is nothing there to share with someone, and even if there was, I don’t think I could ever possibly give it; I can’t go through that again…ever. Friends say it will change over time, I tell them, and things like this, things so fundamental don’t change. I spent 17 years of my life with one man, building a life, for better or for worse, and believe me there was a lot of worse, but that doesn’t matter, you can’t just snap your fingers and make that all go away like it never existed, it doesn’t work that way.

It doesn’t bother me per se. I mean, yes I miss intimacy and I miss sex and being with someone I can share my day and life with, I miss that a lot and fantasize about it often, but fantasies and real life are two different things. In my fantasies it is safe, out there it is not, and I am unable and unwilling to try to build something like that again. I don’t have it in me, what I had he took, and I am never getting it back, I wish the people around me would just realize that. This isn’t the flu, you don’t just “get over it” there is nothing to get over, he was a part of my life, my soul, my mind, and although I know I am better off without him, especially after he became something I did not want or love, that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change the facts.

I laugh it off when my friends say I have no life outside my work and children, but I know they are right, but it’s ok, this is life, you adapt and do what you have to do or give up, and although I may not have what my friends call a life, at least I haven’t given up. Yes, I spend my time going from work to home, being with my kids, cleaning, writing, reading and going online and that is about it. Occasionally I am talked into venturing out into the world without my kids and see some friends, and I have fun, truly I do, but I`m not comfortable, not anymore.

When you’re young with your life ahead of you, dating different people, breaking up, moving on, is normal; it’s easy and part of what you are supposed to do to mature. But I am grown up, almost forty, already matured. Going out to bars, meeting different men, sleeping around doesn’t have an appeal to it anymore. I am not going out there looking for someone to build my life with, like when I was younger, I would be going out there to find someone to adapt my life to, and that just isn’t something I am remotely interested in. I know I`m babbling, but as I said these are diary entries, feelings from my darkest moments, I like getting them out, it feels good, and since I do not like to, or am not capable of telling people I know, or maybe because at this stage in my life, they aren’t comfortable hearing things like this from me that are so out of character, I spill it all to you instead. Maybe after years of being the rock, the one they talk to about things, maybe they aren’t comfortable with listening to me gut out my soul.

Part of me wishes it could be different, I could be different, but the other part, the one with the brain reminds me of what he put me through, the lies, the betrayals, the abuse, the distrust, how could I possibly be foolish enough to ever let myself go through that again? Sometimes I feel like crying for the life that was and is now gone, the life no one around me seems to understand is dead and my body just stayed around after the funeral. Sometimes I want to scream, yell, rant, throw something, but I put my head down, or write these entries until it passes and move on, get up another day go to work, pay the bills, take care of my children and do what must be done. That is life after all, or at least the one I am left with.

Is it horrible of me that sometimes when and I look at photos of couples just starting out, or happy and together for awhile that I just wonder when will it happen to them, when will the big fuck you betrayal happen, the smiles never last for long. Never mind it is horrible of me, cynical too, but from my experience true. I have lots of pictures of us as a family together happy, smiling, laughing and then poof one day you wake up and it is all gone, never to be remembered in the same way again. All your moments, memories, everything you ever did, gone and tainted, it never meant what you thought it did, and even if it did at the time, it doesn’t now, and all it does is make you want to scream and cry and forget it all ever happened. I always liked the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, now I wish I could live it, it really would be easier, because even your good times disappear in the end, at least if it ends like mine did.

What really sucks is I wouldn’t want him back for all the tea in china, but I didn’t want it to end, and I would have stuck it out through even more shit than I did, if I had been given the choice. I would have stayed, for better or for worse and found a way to deal with it. At least then I still had some of what we once were and my memories and moments were still mine to have and think back on. Now he`s gone, we`re gone and all of our past is gone, and I am left with nothing, like I woke up from a coma after 17 years and have no memories to cling to. And yes, like friends say you can go out and build new memories, but why, so they can come crumbling down again as well, I am strong, but I am not that strong. I can’t live through that again and even begin to think I could keep my sanity, I barely kept it this time around.

Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t for my kids, without them to grab onto, hold on to and love and fight for, what I would do. Would I even bother anymore? Or would years of being unwilling to give in just keep me going no matter or perhaps in spite of how desperately alone and defeated I feel?

I have erected my armor carefully, having only a meaningful relationship with my children, my writing, a few close friends and star wars, everything else although some things get close, nothing gets through. Except sometimes alone in my thoughts, something from the day, whatever will remind me of what I once was, what I once had and then this mood over takes me.  As long as I am the only one who can chink my own armor at least it is still safe. As long as I don’t allow another that power as well. And I will never allow another that power over me again.

Maybe if I had given that power to another, one who was strong enough to wield it and love it at the same time I wouldn’t be here, maybe if I had been strong enough I wouldn’t be here? Who’s to blame, does their always have to be someone to blame? Does that make it easier? He never knew how to get to me, under the armor for things like love, and passion and real intimacy, in the beginning maybe but he learned quickly instead how to close it, how to use it to create anger and hatred and pain and loneliness, used it against me to hurt me instead of to empower me, love me and comfort me.

The only men I have ever and could ever depend on were family, one created me, one created the mother that created me and one I created. My father and my son would do anything and everything if I asked them to, would stop harm from coming to me, protect me and allow me to be me, to chink the armor for them. My son especially; we may many heart to hearts where he sees what many others are not allowed. Because of my height I used to joke to people that the only way I could get a man who was taller than me was to make one, so I did. Although my second husband was taller than me as well (although he was one of the only men I dated that were), turns out the only way I could get a man who I could trust, depend on and love fully was to create him as well. Ironic.

I am not the girl I used to be, she is long ago dead and buried, I don’t even see her anymore, sometimes can’t even remember her. Wonder what the old boyfriends would think? Where did that out going, ready for anything, fun loving sex fiend, drink and curse with the boys girl go? How and who could have taken her down and out. I miss her sometimes, but then again she is the one who got me in the place I am now, so I am not exactly sad to see her go, a little mad at her if you ask me. She had armor too, but used it in a different way, still had fun, loved the boys but kept the feelings at arms length unless she saw it was truly something they wanted, of course the husband made her think that and look where it got her, so the judgment was a little off I guess, bringing me back to why she is long dead and buried.

 It’s embarrassing to admit I let a man do what he did to me, break me, tear me down to the bone, but I did, big tough in your face never let the man win get the better of you me let the man destroy me, no wonder I don’t talk about this, how could I ever admit that in public and why would I want to?

I think about things like our routines things we set up. Traditions as a family putting like the decorations on the tree, did he never enjoy it, was it all an act, or did he really just wake up one morning as Mr. Hyde, without a warning to everyone including himself? Was it all pretend, a game to make us all think he was who he said he was, and if so why, what was the point? And how could I ever bring someone else into those traditions things that are intrinsically his, entwined with him? How hard it was to open that box this year and throw away the ornaments with his name on them, with our name and wedding date on them, it broke my heart all over again.

Don’t worry I don’t get in these moods often, it is just sometimes the show really wears me out and I just need to wallow in the shit for awhile, actually feel no matter how bad it feels, than I snap out of it and on with life I go. Lucky you, I choose to have my little break downs for you. But like I said don’t worry they don’t last long, soon the stony face of determination and a good actress will appear on my face and the walls will be back up in place and working fine..until the next time.

I have been divorced two times. Well, actually I am not quite divorced yet for the second time around, but for all intents and purposes I am. Needless to say, neither of the men I married showed themselves to be very good fathers after the break-up of the marriage, so father’s day to me has always been a solemn day, where I remember that I didn’t choose well in that department for either of my children.

My first marriage was a teenage marriage, we had my daughter when I was 17 years old, and no it was not on purpose. We split soon after we wed, and he soon made himself scarce, both physically and financially. My daughter grew up watching other kids get picked up by their weekend dads and wondered why hers never came to pick her up. She would see his family; I remained close with them, and forged a somewhat tenuous, but still solid relationship with them. They would pick her up take her to family gatherings, sleep over’s at their house etc. If he happened to come by and see her at those times he would, but it was few and far between.

He was given visitation rights, he just never used them. He was given every opportunity to get involved, but he wasn’t interested. When my second husband came along, he was more than willing to step aside and let her new step-father assist in her day to day care, raising her, paying for her expenses etc. However, as she got older and he realized he was never going to have any other children, he has begun to show he regrets being a sperm donor who would occasionally see the results of said sperm when she was at his parents’ house, instead of the father he could have been.

Believe it or not I do feel bad for him. I`m the one with thousands of good memories of her childhood. I`m the one she is close to, confides in and wants to spend time with. I`m the one who kissed her boo-boos, played Barbie`s with her, put her toys together on Christmas morning, helped her do her homework, met her friends and knows all of her teachers. He has none of that. He is left with a trunk load of regrets that he can do nothing about because none of us can turn back time, and even if he is an exemplary dad for the rest of his life, he will never catch up to what I have with her, and he knows it.

So on father’s day, let me give a little insight to those fathers who as I write this aren’t that involved in their children’s lives, and may still have time to turn it around and be the dad their children want them to be.

As an absentee father you will never get to be the one who can shine with pride over your child’s achievements, because you didn’t help them achieve any of them. You will miss out on all the smiles and laughs, the games and silliness, watching your child slowly turn into the adult they will one day be, and knowing you were a part of that process. You will never experience their trials and tribulations, give advice, have a heart to heart, be the one they turn to when the world turns against them, you will have none of that.

You may be able to take your now teenage child to your Christmas party and pass of this beautiful, articulate, successful young being as yours, but you will never be able to truly take credit for what she has become. You will never know what it feels like, the accomplishment and pride you feel as a parent when you watch your baby try to fly from the nest and stand on their own. You will miss the punishments and arguments, the times when as a parent you want to cry yourself to sleep or scream and throw something over the stress, and although at the time it seems like that is something you are glad you missed, someday you will realize those moments helped make your life as well as your child’s, and you will miss not being a part of that.

Someday, like my first husband is experiencing now you may realize you missed out and missed the boat, and are now left as a second class citizen to everyone else in your child`s life. And maybe on that same day, you will pick up the phone and call that woman you once loved and adored enough to create a child with, and thank her for all the years she devoted to making your child the perfect young woman she is, and maybe just maybe you will find a way to tell that perfect child that you were wrong, you made a mistake, and you will regret it for the rest of your life.

Maybe, just maybe if more men who have gotten to the regretting stage, spoke to the young men who haven’t gotten there yet, maybe we would have less absentee fathers in this world, and more men who want to take every last second they are given with their child, soak it up, live for it, enjoy it and be thankful that they have it. Because one day, that child will be an adult, a day that comes faster than you know, and when it does come, wouldn’t it be nice to know you had something to do with that beautiful child that you are now watching walk out into the world on their own, than know it was all done without you?  

As a mother I am blessed. Yes, I have been through the ringer of broken bones, tears, fights, bad grades, broken curfews, the mine stage, the gimme stage, the me, me, me stage, the I want a car stage, the why can’t I do what I want stage, all of it. I have suffered through watching my child wonder why their other parent doesn’t want to be with them, or pay for the things they need. I have agonized as my child fought to understand why their father could buy himself a new car, but couldn’t give her a graduation present. I have cried over the pain I knew my child was in when they realized what they got from their father was all they were ever going to get, and watched as they struggled to come to terms with that. I have seen it all, and suffered it gladly, because I have two beautiful children who are my heart and soul, my best friends and my reason for living. I have the glow of pride when someone tells me what terrific kids I have, the thrill of victory when I watch one of them achieve something they really studied at or fought to win.

I may harbor ill will towards the men that left me to raise my children without them; I may hate them for what they did to my children. But, overall, what overrides the hatred is the sympathy I have for them that all the things I described above they will never have, and that is the saddest thing I can think of for anyone.

No, the title is not a riddle, it is the question I ask myself at night when I am up trying to scare away the demons that twist through my brain. For 16 years I was my parent’s child. Then almost over night, I was someone’s mother at 17. At 18 I was someone’s wife, and at 19 I was someone’s ex-wife. At 20 I was someone’s fiancé again, and at 21 I was once again someone’s wife. At 22 I was someone else’s mother once again.

Now at 37, I am of course still a mother to my beautiful children whom I love and adore more than my own life. But I am once again someone’s ex-wife, and for the first time in my life since I was 16 I am just me, and I don’t know how to be just me. I am not talking about being alone. First of all I’m not alone really, my kids are always here; we are close and spend a lot of time together. What I mean is to be me, just me, no other label. I don’t know who that is. I have never really had the chance to be just me, thanks in part to my own doing, but never the less who the fuck am I?

I don’t know how to describe myself without the words I used above, mother, wife, ex-wife, and daughter. Now, all of the sudden and without warning I am just me, and I am scared out of my mind by the prospect. I don’t know me, I don’t know who I am, what I want to be, none of it. It’s sad considering I am 37, but again my own doing. I guess that is why I started this blog. I have always loved to write, but haven’t done so in years, and I have never written for people, always just leaving it in a box for myself to read and look at.

So step number one in finding out who I am, was starting this blog and writing my thoughts and crazy notions down for all of you. Perhaps as I do this; therapy some would say, I will find out exactly who I am when I am just me, not mom, wife, ex-wife etc. Who knows? Perhaps you can all read this and comment and tell me who the hell I am as you follow my stories. I feel like I have been dropped off in some country where I don’t speak the language.

I’m not complaining, I mean I like it, it has its perks. But overall if I had been given the choice, this would not have been what I would have chosen. But no one gave me the choice, so no sense bitching about that now. Well, actually I just did, but you know what I mean. This section of the blog will mostly be stories from the dark recesses of my brain. The part that keeps me up at night wondering what the fuck happened to the man I once loved, and why and how the hell my life ended up in a place I never saw coming. Maybe as I begin to tell the twisted shit that is my life story, I will find the answers I am looking for, or maybe there are no answers. You live with what you have to live with and move on. Who knows? Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you truly may be my only hope.  

I have to start this blog by saying that although it’s a bit of a downer and not what I usually intend to write here, I felt like I should write it. It wasn’t an easy decision, and after much debate with myself and many hours of my pointer finger hovering over the publish button, unsure if I wanted to even put something this immensely personal out there in cyber world, I chose to push the button and take the plunge.

My reasons behind it are simple I guess. Last month was National Domestic Violence month and although luckily, I have never experienced physical violence in a relationship, although like all women I suspect, I have come as close as I would like to get. I have experienced and recently went through verbal and emotional abuse that I have not yet found a way to get over. And although, my friends and family will be the first to tell you that I am not one to talk about deep personal things like this, at least not to them face to face, I have decided that for the women out there that need to hear it, I would publish it.

I don’t like admitting that I allowed a man to control me and emotionally abuse me to the point that although I knew things were never going to get any better, I couldn’t bring myself to kick him out, but I did. I didn’t want to be the one who ended things, although I knew I should have. His stories and heartfelt tears in the early years of our life and marriage over his abusive step mother, the sexual abuse he fell to at the hands of a babysitter that his parents ignored, the kidnapping of himself by his father, his emotionally and physically absent mother; all of it stopped me from leaving him. All he ever asked me, cried about, begged me over the years was to love him no matter what and to never leave him, he couldn’t take the rejection from another woman in his life.

Instead, what I didn’t see was his hatred for those women in his life, and his need to take out on me everything he felt they did to him. By the time I saw that for what it was, I was beaten down by it and trapped between loving the man I married and hating the monster he had become. My daily schedule for the last five and a half years consisted of waking up instantly tense and on eggshells wondering what mood he would be in that day, what lie would be told, what fight would he start, would it be a good day or bad day, and it all hinged on him.

I see that now and wonder how I let it get to that point, but I guess as much as I hate to admit this next part, like most women or stereotypes of women, I couldn’t let go without trying to fix it, without trying to fix him. How could I ever look my son in the face if I didn’t do everything I could to bring back the man he once was, the man who above all else at one time in his life couldn’t wait to be a husband and father? Sometimes though, despite my best efforts he would come looking for the fight, needing someone to yell at, let his anger out on. Usually it was me, I made sure of that, but later when my son was older and a teenager and had a mind of his own, he would get some of it too.

Some days his temper and hatred were so bad I would come home from work and lock myself and my children in my bedroom where we would watch TV together and laugh and have fun, keeping ourselves as far away from him as possible. The kids just enjoyed it like a game, a pajama party with mom, and I know from talking with them now that I was successful in not letting them know why I held those impromptu parties in my room.

I will probably never know why my husband started down the self-destructive path he did and why he chose to take those he claimed at one point in life to love above all others with him. At this point I don’t think I want to know, or care anymore, but it might at least help explain some things, give that closure bullshit everyone is always talking about. I’m not sure, considering I just called it bullshit with a good amount of sarcasm intended in the phrase I seem to doubt it.

I mean, I know what he told me over the years, what led him to abuse drugs and later on everyone around him, but I don’t really accept that. His excuses of his life not being where he thought it should have been by that point, and the weight of financial woes and not having the job he thought he would love etc, just doesn’t cut it with me. Everyone faces these issues, I faced them with him, and I didn’t become a drug addict hell bent on breaking everything we built together for 17 years, why did he? Why couldn’t he bring himself out of the bog he dragged us all into? It isn’t fair, it isn’t right and it leaves those who were around him with no choices and no control.

On a daily basis I faced such intense anger, depression, outright meanness and deliberate lies that I knew nothing else. Part of me I think was consigned to living with it in silence. Well, not always in silence, I am after all Irish and could fight back with him almost as good as he gave to me, but it got me nowhere. Then again nothing I did seemed to do any good. Stay quite and ignore it, yell and scream and fight and throw things, talk quietly to him, try and use reasoning, nothing worked, nothing got through and everything seemed to make it worse.

It kills me now thinking back on it that I spent so much time trying to save him from himself, when I knew then it was a lost cause. He was far-gone and out of my reach the moment he picked up his first crack pipe and took a hit. It was over before I even knew about it, but I hung on anyway. I took the abuse, I shielded the kids from it, lied to friends and covered it up so our friends and family wouldn’t end up hating and resenting him the way I already did. Of course, that never works either, because his behavior did spill out into other relationships he had. Stealing money from my parents and grandparents, stealing from the kids piggy banks and jewelry boxes to pay for his fix. Everyone knew it, everyone knew what was happening and still I lied for him and tried to cover it up or make it seem it wasn’t as bad as it actually was.

I hate myself for that, probably always will. I see now my behavior was just an extension of his emotional abuse. The worst thing I think was when he would suddenly wake up one morning and be the man he once was, loving and caring, fixing things around the house, actively looking for a job and curbing his temper. Those moments in between would keep me in the fight, hoping that this time it would last more than a day, a week, or a month. However, those moments were fleeting and few and far between and now that I look back on it, seemed to always have been timed to when I was at the end of my rope, and he probably knew it.

Sometimes when I’m alone and its quiet I find myself wondering if when he is alone with himself and his thoughts, sober and straight, if he ever realizes what he has done to those that loved him and would have done anything for him. I wonder, but I think the answer to that is probably no. People like him, they don’t see it, they cant, because if they did, if they truly stopped for even one second and saw their actions from someone else’s point of view they couldn’t live with themselves, and that must be scarier than anything.

My son worries sometimes that he has his father’s genes and he could be like him, but I tell him every day, the fact that you see it, hate it and know it is wrong will stop you from that fate. Despite everything he grew up seeing and experiencing on his own at the hands of his father, my son is a good man, kind, nice, everything I once saw and fell in love with about my husband, but with some glaring differences. My husband always had an attitude that the world owed him for his shitty childhood and life should be easier because he had it tough. He used every thing that ever bothered him or hurt him in his youth as an excuse to hurt others in his adulthood. My son is far from that. He doesn’t expect anything from anybody and enjoys working for the things he has. Somehow despite him, or maybe to spite him, my son is and will be a very different man from his father. Whatever good there was in the man I married survives in my son, and for that I will thank him. Thank him for giving my son, the best parts of him, even if in the end that meant, he had no more left for himself.

I see people all the time talk about their bad childhoods and how they cant get over them and I cringe, knowing full well, that if someone cant get over the dysfunction they grew up with, it will end up destroying their lives, and the lives of everyone around them. I knew it; I saw signs that my husband had issues but I loved him, loved him enough to accept him with those flaws and try to understand and help when he was bogged down in the shit that was his family and childhood.

But once he decided, consciously decided that taking drugs and cutting off the only people who cared enough to hate what he was doing to himself, the beginning of the end was already written, there was no way to stop it. I just wish I had realized it then, I could have saved my children and I some bad memories and the absolute heartbreak that comes from a true betrayal by someone you truly loved and trusted. Nothing compares to it, and nothing ever will. This time even Obi-Wan Kenobi cannot help.