You Think You Know A Person

It was much worse than I ever thought

My ex and I have been divorced for almost 20 years.

We had dated in our early twenties for about 4 years when he popped the question. The wedding was lovely, and I thought we would be happy. However, I met someone else on the other side of the altar.

Ex can be charming when he wants to. But Ex, also, was an actor. No, literally. I met him at an audition. He has a BA in theatre.

Shortly after our wedding, the problems started showing up. Like, within the first 6 months. He had had a bachelor’s party with his guy friends, and he could not shut up about the stripper who entertained them that evening. I cried in our room for a week while he slept on the sofa and ignored me. He didn’t care that he hurt me and I was so distressed. I thought about moving back in with my parents (looking back, I should have). That’s when he started pressing me to become a stripper. And that talk from him never went away.

Over the years, things were alright but challenging while the kids were very young. We fought a lot about money, as we were always hurting in that area. We lived in a rental house-converted-from-a-garage; it was small. I found him a job at a boatyard fixing boat hulls, where he still works today. He adopted my oldest daughter. He was basically the father figure in her life since she was a year old. Then the weird stuff began that ended our marriage.

I was very depressed. I, myself, had some trauma that I had not healed from and was struggling with. I was lost and didn’t know what to do about it. He was upset about this and said he couldn’t deal with my depression anymore. Meanwhile, he would talk endlessly about his messed-up childhood, which I was always emphatically listening to.

Money continued to always be tight, though I did my best to help out: I worked 2 jobs. I did 3 paper routes during the day, because I could take my kids, and worked retail in the evening, when he was home to watch the kids. I learned to garden to save money on our food bill. I shopped at thrift stores for the kids’ clothes. I never bought anything for myself. I paid the utilities and other bills while he paid the rent and car payment. We stayed in that garage house the whole time we were married, where the floor would get flooded next to the sliding glass door when it rained, and we only used a woodstove in the winter as we didn’t have heat. And that little house was strangely haunted. We met the ghost when we were moving in.

My sad 2 little jobs took a turn for the better. I replaced the paper routes with a full-time recruiting job and worked catering on the weekends. The plus with the catering job is that most of the time, I got to bring home leftover food, which helped the food bill, as well. I could do this because my kids were in school now. However, now Ex wanted an open marriage.

We fought over this for a year. He was very insistent on this and was demanding this, saying it would be good for me. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t enough for him. Didn’t he love me? At the same time, my oldest daughter started running with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble. Ex didn’t do anything to curb her or discipline her. She wasn’t ‘his daughter’ (though he adopted her!).

So, I struggled with this. I struggled with my wayward daughter, who was always running off, and an open-marriage-wanting-spouse and trying to do 2 jobs, and keeping up a household and garden, and bringing up my younger daughter, who looked depressed in all her school pictures, my depression, and that stupid ghost! And trying to deal with our dumb landlord who lived in a McMansion by himself who never wanted to repair our dingy-4-people-living-in a house-converted-from-a-garage with no heat and a wet living room floor every time it rained! And a yard that flooded to knee-deep every time a hurricane blew through. And on top of everything, Ex told me I wasn’t doing enough.

He finally moved out (well, I kicked him out, but he agreed to go), and my daughters and I moved to a rental rancher house. I got another job working in an office setting, which paid scraps, but my father was helping me with my rent. Ex lived 5 minutes away now, on a boat, and would tell me about his new girlfriends he was seeing. Pff!

My youngest daughter went back and forth between us, but he showed no real interest in our oldest daughter. I still struggled with her defiant behavior and we were on a first-name basis with a juvie parole officer, and I had to contend with her wayward friends and the animals she was bringing home on a regular basis.

No longer able to afford the rancher, I moved to an apartment with my oldest daughter, who wasn’t there half the time because she was off running with her questionable friends. I filed more ‘missing person’ reports than anyone! I would call them, and they would be like, “another one, Ms. Cole?” Ex did nothing. It “wasn’t his daughter".

The divorce finalized, and I was now sharing joint custody with my youngest daughter. Ex now lived in an apartment on the other side of the county. I was working a full-time clerical job for a construction equipment company, and going to school. And though I couldn’t find my daughter half the time, some of her friends would occasionally camp out on my living room floor hoping she would come home. One of them would eat all the peanut butter in my house, and even stole my toothbrush when I told him to go home, and another one swore that something bad was going to happen because her ‘left eye always twitched when that was about to happen’.

Then, the female of my 3 cats had kittens after a threesome with the our other 2 male cats, and I now also had 2 miniature pinchers, named Haley 1 and Haley 2 (my oldest daughter’s idea. Don’t ask.) and a Yorkie (Tiny, not Haley 3, thank God).

And I had a boyfriend I was crazy about. But that’s another story for another time. Let’s just say Ex wasn’t happy about it though he was doing his own thing (???). Boyfriend’s brother (a good friend of mine)almost beat Ex up when he caught him badmouthing and slandering me. But….another story for another time.

We moved away to another townhouse after that in a nearby town. My oldest daughter’s friends had been invading our home (thanks, front door mail slot), always hanging around and eating all the food in the fridge as soon as it came in from the grocery store, like they didn’t have homes to go to (they did). The neighbors complained they were hanging in the tree out front like monkeys when I was at work, and my cat apparently was going around the neighborhood beating up the neighborhood dogs. The neighbors would show up at my front door wanting me to pay their vet bills. It was turning into an episode off of ‘Shameless’ but without the sex and much needed alcohol. And Ex never visited oldest daughter, not that that bothered us. So, we moved away to the next town to put an end to that. None of them had a car, you see. Fin.

And that was great. This new house needed some TLC, and I found solace in working on it and painting all the walls in the evening after work. Alone there, doing that house stuff, I was able to think about so much and work it out in my head.

Until Ex couldn’t afford his rent anymore and moved into my basement. He paid half my rent and lived in the basement. It worked out pretty well, except for him complaining about my daughter’s rabbits that she decided to start raising in 4-H (they were also in a room in the basement, which didn’t have a door. The sound of them chewing and moving around all night). But, I had my youngest daughter back full-time.

At that time, I had bought a horse in foal (pregnant), because I really needed that in my life to help me heal from all the BS. Horses are miracle workers that way. And Ex was complaining about that, though it had nothing to do with him. Must have been the time she was chasing him around at a canter because he thought he was going to impress me by feeding her — youngest daughter wanted him to see her new foal — and got scared and started running away. “Drop the bucket!” I called, coaching from the fence and trying to suppress my laughter.

He also complained he couldn’t sleep with me in my bedroom. REALLY??!! “We’re divorced, remember? You’re just my basement roommate now.”

We were there for only a year and a half when the recession hit. I lost my job, so my youngest daughter and I moved in with my father the next state over. Ex moved to his boat, and our oldest daughter got married to someone in the army. This new living arrangement worked out very nicely for my youngest daughter and I, and we enjoyed this new town very much.

Until my father moved a female friend of his, and her two kids, from the trailer park up the mountain into the basement. All she did was make crafts all day in the basement, sometimes coming up to talk to me about how life has treated her so sorely and what dumb thing my father did this time (there’s gratitude), making me look up crime scenes on the internet, and sometimes asking me if she could have some of my stuff. She paid no rent, used a van my father bought for her until they got into an argument and he took it away, and my father bought her toilet paper by the bulk. It was…strange. You can’t make this shit up. I took it in stride.

I managed to find work managing a horse farm and working part-time at a winery. My daughter had her rabbitry in the garage, and also had a few chickens….and a pheasant. My thug cat was now an indoor cat as he got shot with bb’s at the townhouse for…tah-dah! beating up the neighbor’s dog!

Ex would visit once a month on the weekend, sleeping on the sofa, and playing video games all day with younger daughter. I just did my own thing. Most of the time, this was fine. However, when daughter asked him to come to a rabbit show, or even her chorus concert at school, he would decline. He said it “wasn’t his thing”.

And he complained about the horses, even though he had nothing to do with them. He even admitted he was jealous of the horses. Wtf??? But he did attend daughter’s horse shows.

Oldest daughter was now divorced. Her army husband basically abandoned her in Texas, moved backed to our home state, and got involved with his father’s maid.

So daughters and I moved, eventually, down a couple of states to live near my family. I was promised a job and cheaper way of living. The job was a factory job, and ‘cheaper’ was relative, so we found out. And we were living again in another haunted house! Oh, joy!But that town is another story for another time!

We stayed there, trapped, for a few years. My grandson was born during that time. Ex visited a couple of times a year, and even then, I cut his visit short a couple of times because he just wanted to argue with me. Later, I also learned he was getting a little too close to the wife of his friend. This friend had taught him how to sail for free. How’s that for loyalty and respect! She was old enough to be his mother. His friend put an end to that by moving his wife and him down south to the Sunny State.

We eventually escaped the grips of that ‘Deliveranceville' Appalachian town, and came back up north. Ex had hunted an apartment for us in a less desirable town, but after ‘Deliveranceville’, anything was better. And I was glad for it.

Once again, I was working 2 jobs: a receptionist for a moving company, and back to the catering gig. But the leftover food helped our food budget. Ex lived on the other side of the county on his boat, still. A couple of times a month, he would visit younger daughter, play video games. I also now had my grandson from older daughter.

I bounced around at some jobs, always trying to level up, while enduring Ex calling me a loser when he visited because we were scraping by. Wow, he knows how to be supportive. The arguments would get intense due to his verbal abuse, so that I was a shaking. I kicked him out of my sorry little apartment on several occasions. I remember pleading to God to get me far away from this man!

Eventually I got a state government job, and things got better for me and the kids, financially.

But to be fair, there were a few better times, like visiting BassPro on occasion, wandering around looking at hunting and camping supplies…getting a bite out…arguing all the way back to the apartment while daughter and grandson sat quietly in the backseat, usually about the same ol' stupid and predictable shit (we divorced for a reason; why do I still have to put up with this shit?)…

Eventually the visits became less frequent down to once a month, every 6 weeks, etc. That was fine with me. Less headache and stress. More peace for me on the weekends.

I was very happy to get another job in the western part of the state, and transferred. It was a better job with more pay. I was leveling up some more. And putting distance between me and Ex. Start over, clean slate. He would visit kids every 2 months.

I told him I was planning a move soon. I met someone and he wanted me to move into a house of his. That maybe he should make other arrangements when visiting now-adult younger daughter. That didn’t seem to settle too well with Ex.

When things suddenly fell apart without warning with Mr. Beautiful, Ex, learning I was no longer moving, said Mr. Beautiful sounded ‘not right’ (“there’s obviously something wrong with that guy. Why do you like him?”), and it was probably better I didn’t move there and ‘be stuck in a bad situation’. I was just completely heartbroken. At this point, Ex wanted to visit when younger daughter was working that weekend. I didn’t want that. There’s no reason for him to be there if he’s not visiting youngest daughter. It made me uncomfortable and was inappropriate.

A couple of weeks later, older daughter exposed that Ex was propositioning her and had been doing this for a good portion of the previous year. And that’s why she’s now living with my sister in Deliveranceville. Because Deliveranceville is better than daddy propositioning her all the time. It’s far from him. She had proof of this and showed us. THAT BLEW MY MIND!! It was disgusting! I never saw that one coming! You think you know a person, however messed up he might be. But sometimes, it’s utterly incomprehensible how deep the shit can go! Ex has no moral compass. It was far worse than I knew.

Needless to say, nobody talks to Ex anymore about anything. Not even youngest daughter wants anything to do with him. It’s been a year. I still visit BassPro on a rare occasion because I like BassPro. It’s much more peaceful and pleasurable now without the arguments and bad company.