I did.
So be it.
It was the best of times it was the worst of times.
Half of that sentence is a lie, it was just the fucking worst. I have seen scenarios where this works, and I adamantly believe to each their own. But I am not that girl anymore.
I am enough and sharing was not my strong suit in kindergarten, still ain’t.
November 2010 to September 2011. She lived in my house.
But it was never my house.
I left him/them in September of that year, but by November we were sneaking around to varying hotel rooms a few times a week.
On February 15th 2011, I woke after a bad sleep, broken by her blowing up his phone, and him snoring after some bad sex and I thought “I’m done, it is never going to get any better than this.”
I said goodbye politely in the morning and drove away. I never went back.
I am only bringing this up now because as the 7 year anniversary approaches, I am planning on driving into a new life again, on February 15th of this year. The anniversary of my actual emancipation and I want the last bit of poison out.
Cells regenerate fully after 7 years, and in 41 days, in my 44th year, I will be a whole new girl that they never touched.
It’s time to talk about the pink elephant in the room.
And how does one eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
I’ll try to begin at the beginning, but…if you have been following me at all, you know my mind wanders.
And my hindsight makes eagles seem blind.
I got a random message years ago from this woman I used to know. I can’t call her a friend, she only uses people, and calling her a woman makes women look bad. She is one of those non-magical assholes that pretends to be magical. A false positive. Not sisterwife, someone integrally linked to her. Seems sisterwife had thrown her donated kidney and was on dialysis. Apparently this was something I just HAD to know.
She wanted a place to curl up and die, I know this now.
Wait, lemme back up.
Approximately 3 months after I met the man I call ex hubby, he was sleeping with the one I call sisterwife.
They were sleeping together before we met, which I didn’t find out til much, much later.
He presented her to me as a friend, and for a while I fell for it, she played the single mom card like a pro and I had no issue with him popping over there to build a bookshelf or help with this or that. I even naively mentioned maybe we should get a bigger place so she and her daughter can stay with us, seemed like it would help everyone.
A month after that he co-signed on a loan for her to get her boobs done and she blew him in the truck to say thank you.
This went on and off for the duration of our relationship. I liken it to a revolving door, one of us pushing and ending up either in or out of favor.
He left her for me and I really wish he hadn’t.
I shouldn’t say that, not exactly.
I have no love for him and never did. Not real love anyways. Codependence, passion, jealousy, competitiveness, and claws yes. Love, no.
I have immense gratitude for all the things I learned when I was in perdition. Fixing cars and flooded basements, keeping a house running, warm and fed on virtually nothing. What battles to fight and what to walk away from. The feeling of discord in my soul that could no longer be ignored. And finding the strength to leave. That was HUGE.
I survived a hell of my own making.
He had left her for the umpteenth time and come back to me after I had run away and found someone new, but as the girl who lived with her hand on the hot stove, I was expecting to get burned again.
Could he have stayed faithful? Unlikely. He had a hole in his soul he stuffed full of women.
But during the time he was “mine” again, I proposed moving her in. Thought she could help with chores and bills, and at least I would know, you know?
It was my best and worse idea.
After being promised an assured they would listen if I couldn’t handle it and break it off, I couldn’t handle it, made that abundantly clear and she stayed.
She was also as useless as tits on a bull. The horses got out on her watch, things died, she couldn’t cook or clean or fix anything. The garden remained unplanted for yet another year in a row.
I made a valiant effort to make it work, but within a year I was done and he was sleeping upstairs in her room 99% of the time while I screamed and cried in mine.
I tried going to bed with them, but she was a self-proclaimed ‘performance sub’, which is as gross as it sounds. Presenting herself to be fucked and degraded while making the worst fake orgasm noises I have ever heard. All the while I was thinking, “He left me for her?” that only happened the once.
I locked myself in my room, and honestly I wanted to die.
It killed what was left of my self-esteem.
She was high most of the time and no one saw it but me. And at some point I got my hands on some hillbilly heroin and figured if I couldn’t beat her I might as well check out too.
I started cheating with an ex. Felt justified in doing so. Felt better actually. Not better enough to actually leave, but enough to keep living.
By the summer I had gotten a job and adopted into a strange little family at the Shallamar Gas Bar and Grill. Without the support of those people who loved me no matter how fucked up I was, I couldn’t have left.
For the majority of my life I have been the girl who has to jump in and try things. The kind that learns just as much from the things I don’t want.
I have said before as well, she saved me from that place. That farm that was perpetually falling apart, never clean. I get those Facebook memories, and that chunk of my life was a perpetual state of busy work and bullshit.
The things we survive teach us and make the good times so much sweeter by comparison.
I am happier than I have ever been and I know it feels this good because of what I have been through.