Posted by whiterabbit on April 2, 2003, at 22:28:14
Was doing so well on my medication, feeling better every day, starting to get interested in life again, drinking under control, here comes the sun.Then WHAM! Husband announces he wants a divorce, our 20-year relationship is now over - don't go away angry, he says, just go away! Goodbye, have a good life.
Since then, every day is a sea of emotion. Sometimes angry, sometimes crying, often sad. Cleaning out drawers, trying to figure out what to take with me into my new life, I find an envelope full of photos. I sort through these photos and realize that my husband has gone through albums and shoeboxes to collect his favorite pictures. There are old photographs - a few from his childhood and teenage years, pictures of his parents and brothers and sisters.
There are pictures of our son and pictures of his daughter from his first marriage. There are pictures from his time in the Army, pictures of drinking and hockey buddies, pictures of his dogs.
There isn't one single picture of me...not one.This hurt me the most. Out of everything he had said and done, all the insults and all the lies
and all the not-caring, this hurt so much it felt like physical pain. He had erased me from his life
without a backward glance - after 20 years.I felt my soul stagger. I thought my God, I can't take this. Just a year ago, I had made a serious suicide attempt and woke up from a coma in ICU just in time to avoid a tracheotomy, as there were signs that I might stop breathing on my own and would require a respirator. I had truely been on the fence.
Now, looking through these photos that my husband had obviously selected so carefully, I just kept thinking, "There are pictures of the fucking DOGS
here, and even one of the CAT that he doesn't like very much. And not a single picture of me, not even in the background, not one glimpse of me during our 20-year relationship.I started to wonder why I hadn't died. WHY did I have to wake up in ICU just to go through THIS??
I had never felt so humiliated, so rejected, so unloved. I felt myself sliding towards the abyss, the black depression that I had managed to claw my way out of just months ago. I recognized all the old demons flying at me: hopelessness, terror,
self-hate. Although I had busted my ass to make my husband happy for 20 years, nothing I ever did
was right, nothing was good enough. He complained constantly and usually did just exactly what he wanted to. Sometimes his neglect bordered on the sadistic - like the year that he made a big fuss over choosing exactly the right present for our neighbor, an attractive blond woman that he "felt sorry for" because she was "alone at Christmas".
(Her husband was in prison for dealing cocaine.)
After finding the right present, he went through great pains, right in front of me, to make sure that the gift was neatly wrapped.Guess what I got for Christmas that year from my loving husband? Nothing. Not even a card.
But I did love him, and spent many years trying to please him. Later, after my husband had happily announced that he couldn't stand me anymore, I was talking to my (adult) son, trying to figure things out, why my life had taken such a bad turn, and I said, "You know, when I met your father I was 23, and we've been together ever since...and when I look at pictures of myself now, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I'm really surprised by how...well, how pretty I was."
My son looked at me, and you could tell that he was genuinely shocked. He said, "Mom, you weren't just pretty. You were beautiful, really beautiful.
Mom, you were a knock-out!" Then he back-pedaled and said, "Not that you aren't pretty now..."I waved him off. "I know that I'm not pretty now,
I haven't taken care of myself like I should have. The thing is, I NEVER felt pretty with your father around. He was always bitching about me, how I couldn't do anything right...if I ironed a shirt for him, I never could "get the collar right." If I spent 4 hours cooking a wonderful dinner, the rice was always sticky or something was over-cooked or under-done. He never appreciated anything, nothing was ever good enough."I looked at these pictures of myself in my 20s and early 30s, marveling at my trim waist, my nice clothes, my beautiful hair. But I was not a "trophy wife" who sat home and looked good - I worked long hours at Shriner's Hospital, spending most days in the OR, and as an accomplished artist, during my "free time" I was allowed to paint wall-size murals all over the hospital that are still enjoyed today by the Shriners and the children. After a major renovation of the hospital, there was a grand ceremony to open the "new" hospital, an important introduction to the community about the Shriners' good works AND
an official tour for the Grand Poo-bahs who had authorized the tremendous expense involved in the hospital's reconstruction. Although I wasn't exactly a guest of honor myself, the murals and artwork I had done were a high-light of the tour. It was extremely important to me, this ceremony, but my husband refused to attend; he had tickets for a hockey game, or a headache or something. He never saw any of the murals I did, and when I would show him pictures of my paintings, he would toss them aside without interest or comment.Now I understand how anorexics feel. I understand how a young girl can pull up her shirt, count her ribs, run a hand over her pelvic bones, count the vertebra in her back, look at her caved-in stomach
and skeletal face, and feel that she IS FAT.During my 20 years with Ken, I never felt good enough. I was ugly, stupid, and lazy. I would never be able to cook or clean as well as his sainted mother. My family was just a bunch of Arkansas hillbillies while HIS family were aristocratic Boston blue-bloods. During our entire marriage, he refused to wear a wedding ring. He considered it unmanly to leave a note or make a phone call when he spent the night out with friends. On weekends, he would stagger in
between 2 am and dawn, sometimes later.Now, he's the center-fold for Midlife Crisis magazine. New car, new girlfriend, ditch the wife,
and maybe he'll start to feel better about his hair, which is drying up and blowing away like parched summer grass in the desert. With this new love, maybe he can forget about his thickening waistline, his spindly arms and legs.Anyway - signed onto AOL, saw letters written to mothers from young American soldiers that were killed in Iraq. I have a 21-year-old son myself that I treasure, cannot imagine enduring this kind of loss, cannot imagine surviving this pain.
I would gladly suffer through 1,000 divorces before losing my son. Suddenly, my pain is not so bad. The loss of an unkind husband is nothing compared to the suffering that these poor women
must be experiencing.My prayers are with our soldiers, and their mothers.
-Gracie
poster:whiterabbit
thread:215638
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030401/msgs/215638.html