Last night I attended a birthday party for an old friend from college. As we were standing around engaging in polite chatter, someone told the story of falling off a swingset as a child and it reminded me of a time I had the “wind knocked out of me.”
When I was about 8 years old I climbed the hill behind my parents house and disappeared into the woods to play. There was a tree covered in old, gnarled vines and I decided to grab onto one and go for a swing. I grasped the vine between my hands, took a run-a-go and let myself swing. Higher and higher I went. It was a beautiful fall day, a lot like this one. I remember the sun being bright in my eyes and the feeling of soaring and being above it all replaced my fear of swinging so far.
Suddenly, without warning, the vine snapped and I went crashing to the ground flat on my back. It must have knocked me out, because the next thing I remembered my mother was holding me and shaking me awake. I couldn’t breathe. All the wind had been knocked out of my lungs from the impact. It’s one of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood, and I never cared for swinging on anything after that.
For the second time in my life, I have had the wind knocked out of me.
Three weeks ago, my beautiful husband, the man I adored and cherished and honored, moved out without warning. Within 4 days he had asked for a divorce. There was no explanation, no reasoning for his unspeakable decision to abandon our still-new marriage. “It’s not you, it’s me,” is the shorthand version. What had I done? He claimed he had been considering it for months! How foolish I must be, because I had never once considered the option that I wouldn’t grow old with this man. I lived and breathed for him. I was the Stepford wife–filling my time beyond working full time to cook and clean and maintain the household functions and finances. The man literally only had to worry with work and maintaining his physique for his bodybuilding dreams. While it’s true he had become quite withdrawn and spent a great deal of time after work staring at his phone, I still never dreamed I would be walked out on, without so much as even the option to try and save my marriage.
I asked to see his phone. In 4 1/2 years I’d never even held it in my hand. He keeps it in his pocket on silent, and if it’s not there, it’s within his reach on the coffee table, face down, so the screen isn’t visible. He refused to let me look at it. Said I would just “make something out of nothing because I was ‘looking for things to be mad about.'”
He had re-enrolled in school and was doing amazing. I was so proud of him and the steps he was taking toward a better future. He merely lacked 8 credits of having his associates to begin teaching special education. That’s where the trouble began. I caught him lying to me about going to class. Considering he was doing so well and had only been enrolled 2 weeks, I couldn’t understand why. Furthermore, I had put $825 on MY credit card to get him back in. It was a slap in the face. When I confronted him about it, that was when he moved out. He then dropped out of school and told me he wanted a divorce.
None of it made sense. I begged and pleaded and cried for him not to do this. We went to a marriage counselor. He told me he didn’t actually want divorce and that we would work toward resolution, but he needed “his own space to think” and wouldn’t be returning home. I let him come over and made him steak. We made love. He stayed the night and woke up and enjoyed a bubble bath after I left for work. I was so excited. I tried to get him to add our relationship back on Facebook and he refused. Why wouldn’t he do that??? We are married, and we had a wonderful night together and are working toward reconciliation. Then he said I was being “too pushy” and this would never work and he did in fact want a divorce. So for the second time in a week and a half, my husband crushed me.
I laid in the floor while he got his things. I hyperventilated and threw up. I just still don’t understand and he wont give me answers. “You deserve someone better than me.” But I want you! I didn’t do anything wrong! He dismissed my pleas and left me in a pile on the floor. Much like she did when I was a child, my mother flew over and scooped me up off the floor and tried to console me.
The next night I went to dinner with friends. I had several vodka martinis, much as I would imagine several thousand women who have been in my shoes have done. I should have went home. See, I used to be someone not to be proud of. I filled personal voids and loneliness with liquor and it made me do stupid stuff I don’t like to think about. A lot of the love I have for my husband is that he pulled me out of that. He gave me a reason to change. My life took a 180 after I met him and I was finally the woman I had always wanted to be. In this dark, desperate time in my life, I turned back to my old friend. I continued drinking until I blacked out to numb the pain. I rode in a car with a stranger to the gay bar to go dancing. I realized almost immediately in my haze that this wasn’t the person I wanted to be. I was putting myself in danger-I didn’t even know this man. I called my husband 15 mins after I got there and demanded the man take me back with the rest of my friends. Instead of being grateful I wasn’t raped or killed,or that I had come to my senses and was gone only minutes before reaching out to him, my husband was ENRAGED I had left with another man. And yet, this is the same person who twice in a week and a half told me he was abandoning me and didn’t want me anymore.
I realized I can’t go back to being that person. I can’t become that woman I left behind 4 1/2 years ago. So I accepted all responsibility for my actions that night and tried to move forward. My husband continued to flipflop, give vague answers. One minute being vicious and cold, the next telling me he loved me and hated himself for doing this to me, still without any explanation. More therapy. I allowed him to come back over and have sex under the spoken condition that we were on the same page and were working on rebuilding our marriage and falling back in love. The next day he told me yet again he does not want me.
So here I am, gasping for air. In 3 weeks time my life has been turned upside down. The man I loved and trusted to take care of me til death do us part has deserted me. The pain is more than I can stomach. Every menial task is too daunting to master. Emptying the dishwasher, walking the dogs….it takes everything in me to put one foot in front of the other. The hope I’ve been foolishly clinging to has all but dissipated. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I want to hate him with everything in me, but I can’t. I’ve never experienced pain of this magnitude. Time is the only thing that will heal, and I’ve never been a patient person. Our 2 year anniversary is 16 days away. I wonder how he will celebrate? Tomorrow I have to secure a lawyer to start trying to work on protecting myself from the man I thought was my protector. I have to focus on taking care of me, and keeping my head above water.
I don’t know how I will ever love someone again. After a betrayal of this magnitude, I could never trust another man to let them back in. When you have given so much of yourself to someone and they throw you away like a used tissue, how do you even consider the OPTION of finding someone else?
I know I’m not the first or last woman to be used and discarded and devastated by her husband. And I know I will survive this. Right now I am wallowing in the unknown of it all, the hurt, the betrayal of trust. I want to fast forward to a year from now and be beautiful and fit and successful and run into him while I’m happily moving on.
But more than that, what I really want, is to be sitting down to dinner with him. Laying on OUR couch, watching OUR shows while he strokes my hair. That’s all I ever wanted or needed from him. Just to love me and be honest and he couldn’t even do that. I asked him “Please, just promise you won’t lie to me anymore!” His response–“I can’t promise you that.”
As it turns out, the REAL monsters don’t live under your bed. They lie right beside you and kiss your forehead and wake you up from nightmares and promise they’ll never hurt you.
And I have had to learn the hard way, that just when you’re soaring at your highest, and the feelings of foolish elation replace the fear of hurt, and you place all your trust into something else, THAT is when the vine breaks. You end up on the ground, gasping for air, wondering what happened, with only your mother to try and comfort you.
Appalachian Barbie 