Contradictions

When I thought I was happily married, it seemed I could do no wrong. Everyone told me what a good mother I was and how well I managed my home and job and family. Now people often tell me, you're doing the best you can.

When I realized my husband was a no-good-drunk who had been lying to me for well over a year and that even my own life was a complete lie, I decided I had to change. But change was harder than I thought it would be.

When you make a commitment to someone, you build a life – even if that life just consists of stories you tell yourself in your head. I became I teary-eyed crazy person that I even hated to be around. I felt like less of a person without my wedding ring on. Without a husband. I tried to read every self-help book I could find for 5-6 months, and that worked for a while. But I soon realized that nothing was changing. My life was still a mess, and no matter how I tried to hypnotize myself otherwise, it would probably be a mess for a while.

The worst part about starting over is that you are vulnerable, and everyone still feels the need to give you advice. It feels like criticism. Everything feels like criticism and you are already so raw from everything else that it is just too much.

I realized that trying to date would never work for me. My children were 2 and 5, and they still slept with me most nights. They were also anxious and upset much of the time, as I was. I quickly realized that it was going to be a long time before I was ever going to be ready to let someone else in.

In reality, I didn’t really want to start over. I knew that my husband had lied, and probably cheated, among other things. And, while this sounds terrible, I just wanted to be a wife and mother and not have to worry about money, where to live, how to live, what to do, or any of the major choices that I thought I had already made years prior. Even looking back and knowing how miserable I had been, I just somehow couldn’t get the mojo to file for divorce. I left it hanging over my head like a noose.

I was depressed and I didn’t know how not to be depressed anymore. My friend told me to let myself feel it, and I did. But I wondered how long I would feel this way and if it would ever lift. I wondered what kind of mother I was to my children and if they were suffering because I was. It was easier to be angry, but I couldn’t seem to muster anger anymore. I had decided to forgive my husband, and the only person I seemed to be angry at anymore was me.

I wanted to have a good life. I thought I had one. What happened? How did I go from one thing to another so quickly?

I had been lying to myself. I was still lying to myself. But what would shake me out of the funk I was in? Did I need to just file for divorce? Where would I get the money to live on? What on earth would I do?


Sula's Note: I wrote this over a year ago and everything is still the same.