The past ten years have been a whirlwind of things, some good, some bad, some happy, some sad. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Considering what I have emerged from the past decade with I would do it again in a heartbeat. I have a beautiful and radiant daughter, who is so full of life and love. I have an extended family that are each dear to my heart. I have memories, so many memories with my best friend.

In April of 2006 I met someone that was my perfect match in everyway. We were young still, 25 and 29 and so full of life. That first summer was amazing. The memories we made were incredible. We meshed, so well infact that it wasn’t long before we were both realizing and talking about spending the rest of our lives together. We had fun over the next few years. As beach kids, who have spent our entire lives along the coast, we were always ready to find an outdoor adventure. And we did. Days in the sun, on the water, enjoying the coastal way of life, it was all we had ever known and now we were experiencing it together. On New Years Eve 2008 we were engaged and by June of 2009 we were married. We moved from one beach to another and began our life together as man and wife. By 2011 we had welcomed a daughter and she brought back such a spark to our marriage. We were happy. But we weren’t. We had begun drifting apart and though we both knew it, we held on. Fast forward to 2016 and we are separated. We are living apart. I should offer more backstory, and I will.

When we first started dating we hit a rough patch. I learned that he had been spending a considerable amount of time talking via text to his ex girlfriend. He assured me that it was simply then discussing matters pertaining to ending their relationship. As they had been together many years and had purchased a home together, he promised it was a matter of asset division. Eventually that stopped and things were good. Some years later, around 2008 we had begun to drift apart. We had been together long enough that the new car smell had worn off. We were practically living together and had started to find those little things that annoy each of us that only comes when you are living under one roof. By October of 2008 I found that he had reconnected with an old friend from High School. And that all these years later there was some connection. From October to November he had talked to her via text, a considerable amount. He was thinking of leaving me, moving on and she was telling him exactly what he wanted to hear and he vented his frustrations about our relationship to her. I should have let him go, I didn’t. Instead I fought for him. We made a vow to fix what was wrong in our relationship. We had too much to lose and we just needed to reconnect. And we did. We started working hard on making things work. A few months later on December 31st, he proposed. Things were good. We were happy. By June we exchanged vows and life was amazing….for a few months.

It wasn’t long before we started living separate lives again. But we held on and we tried. He made a bad business deal and launched a business with someone that went belly-up. We nearly lost everything. We sold the house and moved. After the move we found a way to reconnect again for a while, but then the excitement of a new start grew old and once again we were drifting apart. He started working out of state with his father and that worked for us. He was gone just enough that I had the space I needed, making his returns home full of love and affection. During one such “love and affection” visit, I became pregnant with our daughter. He continued working out of town throughout my pregnancy, coming home every 30 days or so. During the end of my pregnancy my father grew very ill. Having been battling Stage 4 lung cancer since just before our 2009 wedding, he was coming to the end of his journey. He went into Hospice on Fathers Day of 2011 and for the next weeks, my family and I stayed by his bedside. Finally on June 28th 2011 he took his last breath. We buried him on July 1st 2011. During this time my husband had been absent. He came home with his father for the funeral but within a few days had left again. This was a very difficult time for me. In so many ways I needed him there, in so many ways I wanted to be alone. He came home around August 15th since my due date was August 21st. But our daughter decided to delay her grand entrance. Around August 25th we were facing the impending arrival of Hurricane Irene. Living on a barrier Island in Coastal NC that meant having to pack up and evacuate the island. On August 27th, we loaded our most valuable belongings into our vehicles and left the island. I was 6 days past my due date at that time. By that evening I had started to feel pains that I knew were labor. But as the hurricane had moved into our area we were unable to safely get to the hospital. With each mb that the barometric pressure dropped, I grew that much closer to going into end-stage labor. Finally the hurricane moved just past our area and we got into our car and went straight to the hospital. We arrived around 11pm on August 28th and by 1:32 am on August 29th our daughter had arrived.

She brought back a spark to our marriage, the love in our life. That lasted a blissful two weeks before he left to return to work. Our daughter suffered a terrible case of GERD and while heartburn may not seem like a serious thing, when you are dealing with an infant that screams and cries all day and all night long, it can be horrifying. She was in pain, constantly and it took weeks until her doctor and I were able to get it under control after many medication and formula changes. During this time, I was alone. Her father was not around to take the 2am shift or give me a break to sleep. I was exhausted and alone. He came home every 30-45 days except for one period of time when he was gone for 60. He was missing so much and one day when she was just over a year old, he came home and she did something pretty amazing and he realized what he had been missing. it wasn’t until he had left his out-of-state job and moved home that I realized I was happier without him here. He was more work, more laundry, more dishes, more expenses, more energy. He was another child in many ways, another demand on me. And I was another on him. Another mouth to feed (as I was staying at home with our daughter), another bill to pay. We became burdens. The romantic spark left our marriage. There was no affection. Money was tight and finances were weighing us down. We became like roomates, he in one bedroom and myself in another and this persisted for years from the time our daughter was just under 2 years old a few months ago.

Why did we stay together you ask? Good question. We are best friends, we are, even now. We have always had that. Our families are close, very close and in that aspect everything worked. We had our daughter. Both of us came from divorced families and we didn’t want to burden our daughter with that. The problem in our marriage was intimacy. Over the years, I had let my emotions get me to a place where I didn’t trust him, I was irritated at the things he did, I very rarely felt any urge to be affectionate. He is a very affectionate person and my lack of interest pushed him away. We fought about it, near constantly. And not as in “fought” but it was a source of contention and after a while it became such a big deal that it was too big and we didn’t know how to handle it. The more we talked about not having sex and being affectionate, the more I didn’t want to. It felt awkward. Knowing when to reach out and put your arms around your spouse should be a natural thing, but it wasn’t. It was tense and awkward and that drove a wedge between us. We became business partners. He went to work, came home, showered, ate and went to his corner of the house to watch TV. I came home, cooked, showered, ate and went to mine. Our daughter being the only one in the middle. Money had gotten tight and despite being a licensed high school history teacher, with the layoffs in NC at the time, jobs in education were scarce. In desperation, I returned to school for Nursing. I started nursing school in August of 2015. Nursing school is hard. Its long 8 hour days of school, early mornings for clinicals, 5 hours well into late night studying, impossible exams, impossible demands. It strips away any and all time you have with your family and friends. That was the final straw. Nursing school put me in a place mentally and emotionally that I was growing depressed. I was put on anti-anxiety medication for Generalized Anxiety Disorder which led to a depression. By June of 2016 I had failed a course and was held back in the program. Suddenly I was spinning wheels and not moving forward. I was told it would be another year before I could reenter the program at the point I left off and continue forward. After everything, all the sleepless nights, long hours and sacrifice of my family, the distance between my husband and I was too much. We were the cliché ships in the night. He moved out. He went to retain an attorney and had paperwork drawn up. We have just finished negotiating our paperwork and will be signing it on Monday. This time next year we will be petitioning for divorce.

Here is the funny thing, we are still best friends. Even after nearly 2 months of separation we still do things together. Last weekend we took our daughter to the movies. Yesterday we spent Thanksgiving together, he at my families and then me at his. We agreed that there would be no fighting, no arguing. We still love each other, but not in that way. But we are friends and we promised to never put our daughter in a position to have to choose or feel as though she is missing something with the other parent. Is it hard? I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. Some days are harder than others. During the week when its school (she started Kindergarten in August) and I have school its go-go-go. I stay busy. Lately I have been busy sorting through stuff at the house trying to get his stuff ready to come pick up. He was been renting an apartment nearby but his stuff it still here. I have finally started to get my house organized, decluttered and make it my space again. So during the week, I am ok. I’m happier. But days like yesterday, a holiday, that’s when its hard. When we were with my family I was ok. They have always been my family and they always will be. We have strong traditions and in 35 years it has been the same, he was an addition to that, and even if he is no longer there, that remains. I still have many thanksgivings with my family.

It was at his families house that the emotions set in. Sitting and the dinner table eating and it suddenly hit me that in a few years, possibly next year, there will be another woman sitting there with him, watching my daughter play with her cousins, talking to his dad that has been my dad for 10 years. And especially having lost my own father, his dad has really meant more to me than he will ever know. It started to wear me down and I could feel myself growing more and more emotional as the night went on. Wondering if he had thought about the fact that one day it won’t be me sitting there, and was he really ok with that. I made it through the night but the 40 minute drive back to his truck was grueling. I started to tear up and then quietly cry and I silently sobbed in the dark the entire way home. After he left in his truck I called him and then proceeded to sob for 30 more minutes. Whats happened is that after years of being complacement and not caring if he was here and not, I have decided I need him here. The problem is that after years of wanting me to want him here, he doesn’t want to be here anymore and has hardened his heart and he wants me to let him go. And I have fought that, and I told him as much, since he left. Hearing him say countless times that he has let go and wants to move on and I have continued to hold on and have hope that maybe someday he would change his mind and come home. Afraid that if I too let go then there would be nobody left fighting for us. But after last night, I realize that he is so far gone that while it is worth fighting for, its not going to change anything and I to have to find a way to move on. To let him go.

And here we are. I have always loved to write. I have always journaled and written poetry and found writing to be a way to let things go, bring them out into the open, capture my desires, fantasies, needs, wants and random thoughts. I also do photography. I love photography, its something I am very passionate about. I considered making a business out of it, but alas, I think for me photography is meant to be an outlet, a way to capture lifes little moments and freeze them in time so that they are never forgotten. It is not meant to be a source of stress or a job. And I am ok with that. I have long thought about displaying my work somewhere, wanting people to see it. I have a Facebook, Pinterest Page and Instagram for my photography. But so many times a picture has a story and 140 character limits make it difficult to share the story in the way it often deserves.

This blog is an outlet for me. A way to share a picture, a thought, an emotion in a place that I can let it all out, say what I need to say, say what I mean. Even having sat down here and written this first blog entry, I feel better. I feel as though I have purged some negative energy.

Please don’t think this is going to be all sadness and sulking, you will find that I am actually quite sarcastic, witty, smart, outgoing, full of life and pretty damn funny. This blog is not meant to be a “death of your marriage” counselor for me, but rather a friend that I can tell anything to. The good, the bad, the funny, the extremely unfunny, the not politically correct, the quote, the photograph, the memory, the story, the plan. It is a place for me, just me. To say what I need to say.

I have a lot of interesting things to say. There is quite a bit more backstory to “my story”. And if you are here reading with me, you are going to laugh with me, cry with me and even hate me at times. But you will understand me, and all my imperfections. You will learn why I do not blame my husband for our failed marriage, nor do I blame myself. You will learn why I feel the way I do about things, or lack feelings entirely. You will learn why I can be the kindest more caring person and then be the biggest most cold hearted bitch. You will learn things about me you wished you’d never known and then learn things that make other things make sense. And hopefully along the way I will learn who I am too. Who I am without my husband, my family, without the past 10 years. I am no longer a wife. For the longest time I have been a friend, daughter, granddaughter, wife, mother, lover. But now, I am no longer a wife. And despite being only 1 role in many, it was a dominant role. After 10 years, I have to find who I am without that. Its going to be a long journey. But I’ve paid for an annual subscription, so………

 

Grab a drink and enjoy the ranting’s of a women on the edge of insanity 🙂