Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Athens, GA
Posts: 416

Alice Behind the Looking Glass
Look for the girl with the broken smile...ask her if she wants to stay a while...

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Registered: Dec 2002
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Posts: 17499

Need to ponder on this a while. I can certainly understand your emotions and your reactions. Clearly, your husband must have as well, at some level, or he would have ended your marriage.

It sounds as if, beneath the anger, the depression, the abusive behavior, there was an abiding love. Celebrate that in your memory, and the pain will become more bearable, sleep will return. I know this to be true.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18998

so is this guy dead now?

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: ........
Posts: 15477

There's video tapes of you having an affair? Are they on the web yet?

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Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Athens, GA
Posts: 416

skalie--

My husband said the guy destroyed them, you have to wonder. I wonder what an old crusty guy does with probably hunderds of videotapes of people having sex.

simon-

Yes. When I found out what drove him to do the things he'd been doing, my feelings completely changed. And, he'd finally been honest about what his behavior was doing to me and to our marriage, so I felt hopeful we could make it.

Unfortunately, my affair was one more thing he needed to drink away. I pulled out all the stops at that point to help him quit drinking. We went to AA together, my attitude changed toward him, I did everything I could think of to help him quit. I was his nurse, rather than his warden. He had a series of brief successes, punctuated by failures.

The house was spiralling down, the kids were now involved (old enough to notice him not coming home; me nervous; and the financial situation was so bad I had to get another job--which gave him more ability to drink... So, I gave him an ultimatum. The next time he drank, we left.

I didn't want to leave. His forgiveness of my affair did get my attention in a significant way. He couldn't hate me like I thought he did--or he would have used that excuse to kick me out. And, I didn't want to give up. I still remembered who he was when I met him, and the children adored him.

It's hard to characterize a relationship in a narrative. I have done a pretty efficient job in showing the overarching bad stuff, but there were great times interspersed in there. The bad stuff was just like Chinese water torture, but instead of water, it was extreme worry and uncertainty, and the utilities going on and off.

mugtoe--

He died in September.

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Registered: Apr 2005
Location: europa
Posts: 11486

i can't help but notice a level of detachment in the way you write, not that it distracts. it's as if it was written by a third person.

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Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Athens, GA
Posts: 416

Yeah, dogcow. You sort of hit the nail on the head. I find it very unsettling.

I mourned him horribly while he was dying. I got really sick myself--and I think it was sympathetic. I developed CFIDS--doctors said it was stress-related--directly linked to what was happening to him. I had panic attacks in his doctor's offices...they told me at one point I shouldn't go back with the doctor and my husband, because I cried uncontrollably, I begged for help, I wrote letter to Senators, the VA, the Dept of Veterans Affairs, ... At one point, I drove to a river about 20 minutes away from the house, and I'd taken a pen and a notebook to write a letter to my daughter, explaining why I'd committed suicide. If I could have thought of a good way to explain it, I'd be dead. I just couldn't leave her.

He was in inhumane pain for six years. He wanted to die for the last two. His body started falling a part during the last three. His parents could have saved him. Social Security denied him Disability-- I had to sell everything we owned. I should have let him kill himself years ago, but I thought there was a chance he'd live to transplant.

This to say, the way I talk now, and write, too, I guess, sounds like I didn't love him. I thought I would die with him for over a year, but I pulled out of it.

I am numb now, or maybe vacant is a better word. I look at his pictures around the house, and I mention him in conversation, like he's sitting there, or on a business trip. I think my subconscious is protecting me.

I watched an episode of a sitcom several years ago--and this one part of it, I've remembered. Parents brought their son ino the ER (Elliot Gould?), and the mother was screaming and out of control in fear her son would die--the father was calm, trying to comfort his wife as the team worked on their son. She was wild with fear.

The son died, and you could see the reality transform them. Her hysteria just went stony. She had feared it, and was unleashing all her energy against it happening. When it happened; it was over for her. Meanwhile, when her husband heard them say he was dead, he lost it. He was crying and yelling, and his wife quietly took him in her arms.

I guess we all react differently, and the memory of that stupid show is the only thing that comes close to helping me understand how I feel.


I have had bad episodes, but I expected not to draw one breath without crying. I want him. I talk to him almost everyday. I mention him in a positive way to the children every so often, but yeah. Most of the time,I feel like a third person, reporting.

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Registered: Apr 2005
Location: europa
Posts: 11486

i didn't mean to imply that you didn't care about him, alice. i think it's probably too much to let it all sink in at once and it's just a way for you to protect yourself and process it. i don't think there is a proper way of reacting to tragedies, people just handle it any way they can. so, i guess, if this is what works for you, then that's what you do.

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