April 13th Shower Thoughts: I Need to Move Out of Here
She says for the umpteenth time while divorcing
This isn’t a fancy article for a publication. This won’t be proofread. There’s loads of typos. It’s just a raw dump of what’s been in my brain for sanity’s sake. Maybe the content will eventually fuel a formal submission, but for now…this isn’t it.
Dear Diary…
Do I talk about divorce a lot? Yes, yes I do. I started the year off with some smaller, fun goals. But as 2021 progressed, it’s become clear to me: divorce is the only goal I need to put my primary focus on. That means paperwork, that means side hustles, that means staying on top of real estate trends, that means telling everyone via text since I don’t see anyone in real life, that means figuring out how to secretly start boxing my stuff now without Joseph knowing that I’m preparing for it.
Which I shouldn’t have to tiptoe around but that’s the catch-22 of it all: I can’t make it obvious that I’m eager to start a new life. I can’t be overly proactive. The moment I act too eager to get all this shit over with, he gets all “oh, thanks for making it so obvious that you hate being married to me” or “wow, my body isn’t even cold yet”. I mean, yes, I do hate being married to you.
It might seem like I’m being sensitive to his needs. But really, all this tiptoeing for months has been my own self-preservation. There’s only so much of his meltdowns I can handle. This weekend out of the blue he went into the bathroom and started wailing. And I’m such a dick…I’ve perfected the art of crying in agony in complete silence so I’ve got no patience for someone who sounds like a wolf howling at the moon every time he cries. Get your shit together, man the fuck up, and get on board.
He’s been interviewing with another company which means he would guaranteed be working remotely; that means for sure 50/50 custody. I’m okay with that, but I just need to know because that impacts a lot.
I had promised him last year that we’d still be friends. Yeah…no. At this point, I want the bare minimum to do with him. I’ll be friendly with him for the sake of the kids and because I don’t like adding discord. But I genuinely hate being in a room with him at this point.
The pandemic probably caused a lot of that. I used to love my house and now I’m even excited to move anywhere, even a dilapidated cardboard box, if it means being alone and a change of scenery.
It’s borderline hatred for him, which is awful. But the culmination of years of his shitty behavior is hitting me like a brick. My boundaries have changed, my tolerance has changed, and now I can look back and realize that he was a fucking asshole. Not that I’m Miss Perfect, but I spent most of the marriage trying to find escapes (affairs, eating disorders) because they were my only coping mechanisms rather than simply leaving.
I finished reading The Midnight Library in one sitting, which isn’t easy to do when you’ve got kids and virtual school going on. It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s about do-overs in a life of regret. And while I can’t choose the outcome, I would absolutely choose to never marry him if I had a do-over.
I hadn’t even lived 6 months on my own as an adult when we started dating.
Not that I’m sitting here dwelling on any of that, but opening my eyes to 2 decades of my self-worth being destroyed is making me revisit a lot of my past. A lot of the things that I blamed myself for, only now to realize “fuck that noise, I didn’t do anything wrong”.
Maybe I’m reflecting a lot also because I’ve gotten into conversations with my first two boyfriends this past week. One thing my first boyfriend said to me was that I was great to him and didn’t deserve the way he treated me. That’s a pretty big deal, given that in my head I imagine I was a horrible battleax who was a nag and a bitch. I think I convince myself of these things because I don’t otherwise understand someone’s behavior towards me.
One of the things that gravitated me towards The Stalker was how he used to call me “sweet girl”. After years of being the bad guy, the bitch, the asshole, whatever, it was an immense change of scene to have someone thing that I was sweet and nice. I was the poster child to end up in a toxic relationship, given that any kind words were bait to someone who so desperately needed to know that someone, anyone, didn’t think she was an awful human.
Maybe that’s why I opened up to him more than I had opened up to anyone in my life. Because (initially) he thought so highly of me, I felt like I had to tell him more and more for him to see the “real” me. Then if he saw the real me, he’d know I wasn’t so sweet after all.
I’m in a weird place as a result. I don’t hate myself anymore and I’m capable of standing up for myself when I recognize my own boundary being crossed. I realize it’s very hippie-therapy-ish to use the word “boundary” but it’s the only way I can describe when someone is treating me with disrespect beyond what is acceptable for a given situation. But on the other hand, I reflect back on the past and see things in a different light. It’s by virtue of being stuck at home for so fucking long; my brain is supplementing the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ streaming subscriptions. And so I replay memories with different glasses and see things differently.
It also helps that almost everyone now knows about the divorce. When you’re forced to keep things secret for years, you have no other perspective. I’m writing another Medium article on the topic, but to have so many people outpour support (for the divorce in general, I don’t go around giving people the full details out of respect for Joseph) with the words “I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this alone for so many years”.
I have a billion friends and social circles and yet, I was alone because I couldn’t tell any of them the reality of what was happening in my life. Their emotional generosity is overwhelming.
Time to shower…this is my only pause in the day where I can get ready to see Sean tonight. Dude better step up his boning game otherwise, he’s out.