The Box is Turned Upside Down

In keeping with my blog title, I felt that an upturned box very accurately describes this latest phase of my life. A number of you have been following my recent, few, sporadic posts (bless you!), and a blogger I know in real life has commented to me that it seems as if I have dropped off of the face of the planet. I very nearly feel that way myself...

Life has not been promised sunshine without rain...though I must say if it rains any more on my life then Noah's flood will seem like a trickle! With the outpouring of support and my own ambiguity with not using my real name, I feel able to finally open the dam and let out what has been stirring in my life these past couple of months. The poems tell my emotions better than anything else I could use to write, but the details are sketchy. If you have wondered, then soon you shall wonder no longer.

My husband of nearly six years has an addiction problem to pornography. This is not your regular, "it's a guy thing" kind of problem. No, this reaches much deeper and has slowly destroyed our relationship and our lives. In that I will not quite go into detail as it is ugly and sordid (and this post will be depressing enough). Add to his "issue" the fact that he has a rather nasty temper. Yes, my own temper can be extremely disquieting, but his anger comes with unexpectedness in its ferocity and leaves behind bruises of the physical type.

Sad to say, I am a counselor. I am very used to accessing someone else in peril and directing them to the exit in a sinking ship. Once on my own Titanic, I blindly turned away from the life jackets and the open door, thinking that out of all people, I was the single one who could actually repair the broken ship and sail off to safer waters. The more I struggled against it, the more I became the stereotypical abused wife: making excuses, claiming he didn't really hurt me, and that I could "handle" it.

The reasons why I did this are not important, for I would hate for you to become distracted with disagreeing with me religiously and miss the import of the events.

Back to the issue at hand...

My husband--whom I will not name truly, though let us call him Jay--has indulged his desire for masturbation in the same room with our sleeping daughter twice before. I told him if he did so again I would leave, divorce him, and take our daughter away from him. Pleasuring himself aside, this (to me) was a no-brainer for a parent; it is simply not done. Ignoring my needs and myself is one thing, but to expose our innocent child to something that should not be done at all, or at the very least done in private and alone? This I would not have!

At the time, he cried and agreed, even adding that he would "help me pack" and not "contest the divorce" as long as I let him visit with her when he wished (always supervised, of course). Like a fool, I believed one more of his lies.

A month ago I caught him, for the third time, repeating his unforgivable act in the room where our slumbering two year old lay. If she had woken at any time, she would have seen more than any child should ever see.

I made plans immediately and left, taking my daughter with me. Living with my parents again, but this time my father has been more supportive than he ever has before, more open with me, more...like my father used to be. I have friends here that have surrounded me during my inward struggles. For struggle it is. I love Jay, as stupid as that is, but now I am beginning to hate him. I warned him this might happen if he continued in his behavior, and like everything else he did not believe me. His actions might have been more bearable for me if he did not lie to me constantly on top of it. I do not know anymore if anything he says is the truth, for everything he has done up to this point has simply been another lie.

Where is the man who courted me and won my heart? I do not know. That man is gone, replaced by some monster who is now telling me if I move beyond seperation to divorce that he will fight me. He said he would use my health against me to try to win our daughter because "I'm an excellent father".

Excellent father? I about ran my car off the road in disbelief. What man could claim to be a good father who would expose his child in such a way? Who could say that he kept her best interests at heart while he took no thought to the consequences for doing such an act in the room where she lay sleeping?

My sadness as this pitiful situation unfolds has turned to anger and bitterness--and resolve. I would not willingly expose his deeds to strangers, but if he attempts to smear my name to win our child from me, I will fight back with all the behaviors, all the marks he left on me, the times I have had to take her from him when his anger began to spiral out of control, the nights he has tossed her on her bed in a temper when she (just a newborn) was not quieting down fast enough for him. I will paint the picture with every color. If he wants a fight, then I will fight until my last breath to keep her safe and away from him.

And then I truly will hate him until the day that I die.

Now, at this time, he has a chance still to reconcile, to win me back, to restore our family. But if he chooses to do this, to make this already difficult decision to divorce him into a nasty and horrible ordeal, then I will never walk into his arms again.

And I will cry. Oh, yes, I will cry. For I will always, somewhere in my heart, love him and yearn for him. Yearn for the days we snuggled on the couch while watching movies. Yearn for the times we spent sharing and expressing our love as only a husband and wife can do. Yearn for the insane little songs he makes up to brighten my day. Yearn for the feel of his arms around me when I am upset or frightened. And yearn for the fact that my daughter does not have her father in her life as she should...

So you see, my life has gone from upsetting to crazy to simply insane, and there are no clear answers to be given, no definite solutions to be found. All I can do is try to love and keep my daughter safe.

And if it should come to it, to fight for her with every fiber of my being.

So if I seem a little distant, or angry, or sad, or bitter...it is merely due to my life being tipped backwards onto its head, for now my life is truly "upside down"...