An Apparent End to the Chaos

Well, it’s official. I’m moving out as well. I’ve rented an apartment in an older and part of Charlotte where I’ll be much, much closer to work. I’ll be making the transition by Thanksgiving so I can take vacation the three days before and still have a whole week. My parents will be coming to help me make the move as well as get settled in. The Husband still doesn’t know I’ll be moving out yet. I told him four weeks wouldn’t be enough time to work through all of our problems but somehow, as always, he didn’t actually hear me.

I’m taking a step toward getting my life back. I’m taking a step toward regaining control of what has been nothing but progressively worse chaos for the last three years. I am tired of being second place in his life and he finally acknowledged he needs to make some major changes in his life. He finally contacted the IRS after being notified of two certified letters which he failed to pick up. He intends to pay about $100 a month; at that rate it will only take him 12 years to pay his back taxes. On the one hand, I love him. On the other, I WILL not continue to live with someone who has so little regard for how his actions are directly related to me and our life together.

Thought # 9038542

The Husband is making a transitional move tonight. He intends to pack the air mattress, his guitars, and some clothes. I know this is for the best but I’ve never experienced anything that hurt like this

Will There Really be a Morning

The husband and I discussed our separation last night. It was raw, painful, and very difficult. The hardest part of everything is that I still love him. I don’t love him in the way a wife should love a husband anymore but I still love, care, and want him to be happy.

I also need him to grow up. I need a responsible, adult partner in this roller-coaster life. I am tired, so very tired, of having to double check everything he does to make sure has covered all the bases and not dropped the ball. Last night we had one of the most honest discussions as we’ve ever had in our marriage. I think asking for a separation has finally been the wake-up call that I thought asking for counseling would have been.

I decided to just put what I am feeling out there and see what he his reaction would be. To be honest it was better than I had hoped for. Central issues in our marriage have been: his cigarette smoking, his pot smoking, his major, major mishandling of money, his family (Mom & Step-Dad, and Dad & Step-Mom), and his lack of responsibility manifesting itself by simply not living up his word. To put it simply, he has no follow through. He simply does not do what he says he will do whether it’s clean up the mess he made in the garage or not remembering to change the clothes in the washer to the dryer, thus mold and mildew smelling clothes that have to be re-washed.

What is so very hard about this relationship is he is not a “bad person.” He is wonderfully caring, and fun-loving. He is compassionate, with a heart the size of Alaska. He has an amazing work ethic and is always doing something at work to get ahead. Somehow, those wonderful qualities don’t translate to home and in so many ways he’s too much of a child.

I’m more his “mother” than wife and I cannot do this anymore. I need a life-partner in whom I have faith and trust. During the last 5 years I’ve long-since lost me and the definition of who I am. The values and ideals I once held so strongly to I’ve begun to question and the things I once thought were wrong don’t seem so wrong anymore. Due to the stress my health has deteriorated and I’m taking several medications for conditions I know I can get under control if I just get my life back. I cannot go on living under the amount of stress I am currently carrying. I’m also severely depressed. All the things which made me, well for lack of a better way of saying it, “me” have been disappearing little by little until I’m just a shell of my former self. I don’t like that.

I’ve been too-long living in the shadows of night and I’ve got to take my life back and find myself, and the light of day, again.

Belief

I still believe in love. When the lights are out, when it’s dark and quiet, when all the artifice and façade has fallen away at the deepest part of me a small kernel of hope still exists. Secretly, I long to know and to be known—completely, to be truly intimate with another human being flawed though we may be. I wonder at the idea of such a connection.

Had we but world enough and time...

I cannot listen to him talk about his life, his love, his family, and his wife. It’s not just him though. Really, it’s anyone to whom fortune has blessed. I’ll be 34 years old in less than a month. I don’t really feel my biological clock ticking it’s more of an understanding of life just passing me by. I never wanted to be where I am today. I never wanted to be in this situation. Yet here I am, commingling with depression feeling the air of sadness and loss of hope. I’ve lost a part of me and I don’t know if it is too far gone to ever get back.

I know my life is not at an end, the rational side of my brain tells me that. What I feel is something altogether different however. Who could ever love me now? Who would want all the baggage I’ve acquired these past few years. Will I ever be able to divest myself of these trappings?

He stands there, so happy. I see the love he has for his family. They have four children you know. He has brightly-colored childhood drawings displayed in his cube.

I wonder what I have done to have been denied these simple pleasures.