Secrets

 Yesterday I found myself telling someone something about my life that I had not planned on sharing.  We don't really talk too much about our past relationships.  We aren't there yet and i don't know that it's really important.  It's not a race to the finish line.  There is time.  

This was just the natural time to share the information. I have very few regrets in my life, some things i may have done differently, but even so, without regret.  Everything has brought me to who i am today.  This got me thinking of how much I've changed, that i would not even put the energy into defending anything I've done because i don't have to, and because i don't want to, or need to.  This also brought to mind how often judgement used to rule my world, and how I felt about myself.

I married very young, to my high school boyfriend.  For many reasons, all i ever wanted (in my wisdom of 21 years) was to get married, have babies, and live happily ever after.  I wanted to be a priority, the most important person in someone's life.  I wanted family.  So when his family took me in after my mother threw me out.......i settled into his family.  We went through changes throughout our early years, and looking back I see now that he was just as trapped into our ready made relationship as i was.  There were times we would have, should have, broken up but didn't know how to extricate ourselves from the complicated situation we were in.  At 16 we were pretty much married.  

I did things, he did things, all normal for that period of a persons life, of growing up.  I felt i couldn't leave him because the thought of what i would do was overwhelming.  Where would i go?  How would i live? How could i lose his whole family?  He knew this, and believe me, he reminded me that without him I had nothing.

As an adult looking back I wonder to myself....why did no adult step in and tell me I had options that were unimaginable to me?  

The relationship was...not ideal.  For either of us.  But it was what we knew and what we had and what we both needed for all the wrong reasons.  He was the controller, and i was the controlled.  I was what he said i should be, dressed how he said i should, behaved how he said i should, and even only went back to school to get a degree because he told me to.  I bet he regrets that.  Because that was my first taste of what it would be like to be .......me. 

Though the years i had slowly been isolated.  Any friends i had in high school were stripped away except for my bestie who never gave him a reason to be banned from my life.  She never said a word against him, never caused waves until the very end.  When i went back to school I graduated with a 3.9, High Honors (which means shit now) and friends.  I had made adult friends and I had had a taste of  independence.  I wasn't willing to let it go, or give it up.  It caused a lot of problems.

He was intimidated by me having a life outside of him and our children.  The funny thing is, i never wanted one life or the other......i wanted it all.  He couldn't give me the freedom and i had learned how to take it.  I got my first "real" job and I began to develop more goals that had nothing to do with him.  He began (or just ramped up?) his drug use which i had been clueless to while playing wife and mother.  We had many many ugly altercations.  He would tell me i was nothing without him, that i could never survive without him......and i believed him.  It wasn't until therapy years and years later that i could acknowledge that I was emotionally abused. 

The thing about having children is that behavior you might have stood for on your own, won't be accepted if it affects your children.  His drug use and i believe, mental illness, escalated the more independent i became.  I stopped asking for permission to live and just did it.  I took a weekend trip away with 2 girlfriends to Hampton Beach, NH and I had an epiphany while sitting on that beach by myself in the dark looking at the moon....I was done being owned, done being stalked at the library, done being embarrassed by him growling at men who looked at me, done fighting tooth and nail for every independent breath i took.  I felt the switch get thrown.  To date, it hasn't been thrown back.

A couple of weeks after that girls weekend, the three of us met up after work at the Red Dog saloon to swap our pictures of our getaway.  We were sitting at the bar, laughing, having a good time when he came in.  He isn't a big man, but his energy was felt.  His anger permeated the whole bar.  He saw me, walked up to me, ignoring anyone else, and told me it was time to come home.

I think something in my brain literally snapped.  I saw my gf's mouths drop open.  It seemed like the whole bar was watching (5pm on  a weeknight we were the only entertainment)  and I simply and calmly told him i wasn't ready to leave yet.  

Doesn't sound like a earth shattering moment to normal people, but ....to us, I had drawn a line in the sand.  Now what mother fucker? 

I suggested if he was going to wait, he should have a beer and chill out.  He probably had no idea who the hell his wife was at that moment.  I hate public scenes and he had depended on that for all our life together but that day........ if he wanted it he was going to get it.  He drank his beer, staring at me, not talking to anyone and waited until i finished mine - and then we left.  He followed me home like i was going to go AWOL.   When we pulled into the driveway and i got out of my car I told him we were done.  I wanted a divorce, and I was moving out.  It was that anti-climatic.  

Life for the next few weeks was hell.  He "helped" me pack by throwing anything that was mine into my office.  I started to secretly pack sentimental items up and store them in my friends garages and basements.  He started calling the police every night i came home from work because i was "bothering him" with my presence.  The police knew our house.  They would  take me aside and ask if i was safe.  I would say yes.  We had a routine. One night the chief of police showed up and asked me when i was leaving...and told me that under no circumstances was my husband to know my move out date.  He told me to do it while my husband was at work without him knowing because my situation was dangerous. And i did just that.   I left everything behind but our clothing and the kids furniture.  

For years i had felt like i was living in a bad movie.  I had had police in my home with guns drawn taking this man to jail after he totaled my car and ran from police......I had had all the windows in the first floor of my home smashed out in his drunken rage.......so many situations that i never in my wildest dreams thought  i would be living through.  And now.......i was going to take my children out of it.

They saved me.  It's supposed to be the other way around, but I wasn't the heroine in a lifetime tv movie....I was just a woman who didn't know what to do and very little help doing it.  Because i had made friends at school and work i was able to find my guts, my worth, my ability.  And i haven't ever forgotten it.