Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Sitting here in an all but quiet house. The rythmatic ticking of my wall clock the only audible sound, other than the clicking of my keys as I type this out, I begin to understand the magnitude of the decision I have made.
I am seperating from my husband. I am not strong enough to go through his journey to health. He is bi polar, and has been for our intire relationship. 10 years. My eyes are open more now than ever, and I am faced with the fact that I have been living with a mental illness, not a person.
When you can look back on every bad time, every fight that you could not wrap your brain around, every hurtful word. And finally know that it wasn’t you, wasn’t your fault, nothing you could have done or said could have fixed anything, and nothing you did or said caused any of it. It is mind shattering.
After my husband hit a manic swing last night and called me in a fit of rage while I was out. It was the last straw. The things he said hurt beyond repair. And I am not strong enough to step back and say “No, that’s not you talking it’s the illness so it doesn’t really hurt.” Because it does. He has always had the ability to rip me apart. Where other people have tried and failed.
Driving home while continuing to listen to him rage and lash out at me verbally, I let go. Thad and Shawna had made the offer of letting me and my two boys stay with them, and I knew beyond a shadown of a doubt it was the right thing to do. If it were just me having to deal with this, sure. But, I have two children under the age of 5. And I can’t and will not allow them to be made to feel the way I have been made to feel.
Alot of different resources tell me that me staying may push him over the edge with his suicidal thoughts. Because I cant just let him rant and vent on me with out reacting, and my reactions (defending myself) just inrage him further.So I am going to break the chain reaction now.
It is bitter sweet that I am having to say good bye to my house, on Christmas. It’s for the best though. If I asked my husband to leave, he has no where to stay really. Other than with his sister, that just had a baby this month.
So now Thad and Shawna are busy childproofing their house. And I can’t seem to figure out where to begin. Thad brought over boxes and sat and talked with me. The whole time I am thinking what I need to pack, should I start in the bathroom, the closet, the bedroom? We will have to move the crib and the bed, toys clothes and daily things. I am going to have to keep track of the finances through online checking that I set up today and I am going to have to deal with my husband via phone for an undertermined ammount of time.
I will also be having to move my dog. Hellga. She is a Lab pit mix. Sweet as can be, but she is a brick house that moves like a freight train. Thad and Shawna have two beagles that were not brought up around kids, and are fairly small dogs in comparison to Hellga. This is going to be a week of experimenting to see if we can get the recipe just right.
“I’m worried. You are handeling this too well.” Thad tells me this, and it is not something that I haven’t heard before. But just as the first time I heard that, after I miscarried, I have known this was coming for a long time. I accepted the possibility of my husband and I not being together a long time ago. I had always played it out in my head that it would have been because of something he did directly though, not something that has built up little by little over the years. Emotionally I have shut down. I can’t care, I can’t grieve this loss, because if I do it hurts me too much. I am on damage control now. I do not look forward to hearing my son ask “Where’s Daddy?” or for him to tell me “I want to go home.” When I think of that it makes it so hard to know I am about to take my kids away from the home they are comfortable in. But I have to keep telling myself to see the forest through the trees, and see the good that could come of this.
If an when my husband does get help, and truly begins to work on himself. And can maintain that want and desire to always work on himself in knowing he lives with an illness that will not ever go away. That is when I can consider returning and giving my marriage another try. But I will be very cautious this time. Yes, I have left once before. Before we had children. And I can see now that I came back too soon. He had began medications and had started to want things again, and I begame a crutch.
The three main points for him to hold onto are that I do NOT want a divorce, I do NOT want to lose my house, and I do NOT want to lose him as a father to my kids. Now, are all three of those possibilities? Yes. But I do not WANT to see it happen. I want to have a happy marriage with 2.5 kids(yes, my dog counts as .5) and a white picket fence just like every other wife out there.
Cheers to change for the better in the New Year. . .
. . .and to all, a good night.