Today, I am optimistic. I don't feel any different, physically, but I have decided that if I can learn to live with pain, that I am just as likely to succeed as I used to be...the core of who I am has not changed a bit. I might have fallen down a few times, gotten quite a few bumps and bruises along the way, but my faith in myself has to remain.
Someone asked me, "If you hadn't had this car accident, do you think the marriage would've made it?" And the truth is, no. Beyond a doubt, the accident only hastened the inevitable. When I began nursing school, a few months before my accident, I promised myself that as soon as I finished college and got a good job, I would take the kids and leave the man who was so physically and emotionally abusive and unhealthy to the kids and I. I prayed for him, for many years...I hoped and prayed and begged he would go to counseling with me, I begged him to treat the kids with the love and respect he had always wanted from his own father...but after my accident, his drinking got worse, his attitude toward me was hateful and downright menacing at times...he barked orders at the kids, my boys, MY boys...he hit and belittled and treated them like slaves, making them do the housework that my broken body wouldn't do, screaming at them and calling them names or hitting them when they didn't do it to his specs...he became a monster. His true colors came through when our family was enduring the most difficult reality we could have imagined...and he added insult to injury. He buried himself in his Captain and Coke, his internet and his self-loathing, because he could no longer maintain the cheerful facade. I didn't know it until 2 years after we split, but he had dropped his facade around the kids way before that...when I was at work he mistreated them quite often, but they were too afraid to tell me. I have always believed that the greatest stresses in life will show a person's true personality...and after he realized how hard it was to replace me, for him to do all of the housework and child-rearing that I had done without support from him for 6 years before that accident, he came apart. I kept hoping he would recover and realize what he was doing to our marriage, to our sweet children...and he didn't care. He always blamed me. Always resented me. He used to scream at me, "How do you expect me to do all of this on my own?" How did he expect me to do it all on my own before that?? But I did it. I realize now that he is probably Bi-polar...that he has some sort of pathological or sociopathic wrong-thinking that allows him to mistreat everyone around him, and use them up until they're no good anymore, then he shuns them and somehow makes his abhorrent behavior THEIR fault. Anyone who is in his life, is there because they can do something for him. He cares for no one but himself, no matter what or who is involved, it comes down to how it makes HIM look and what benefit HE gains...and I could never be sure if he was a true narcissist, or if the narcissism was a cover for the fact that he truly despises himself. I still don't know for sure...all I know is, I am SO much happier, so much more free, without his overbearing and emotionally scarring shadow darkening everything in our home. I was not allowed the luxury of emotions, I couldn't show fear or sadness, or least of all anger, because then he blew out of control until we were all locked in our rooms, waiting for him to calm down. The kids are happier, they are healthy and loving, open with their emotions and learning to protect themselves from their dad's sickness. But they are all afraid of him. The most disturbing thing is this: His behavior mimics that of his own father at the same age. His oldest son's behavior mimics his own behavior at 20, His 2nd son's behavior mimics his own behavior, and our son's behavior often mimics their dad's behavior as well. This is definitely a hereditary thing, running very strong in the males...I cannot explain it, but I am trying to break through it with my son, in the most loving way possible, but it is so hard. Nearly all of his anger and hatred is focused toward me, and his 2 younger sisters. He refuses to admit when he's wrong, he refuses to take responsibility for his own actions, he is rude and disruptive, insulting and unrelenting when he is upset, and gets upset about the smallest little details, things that most people would just write off as a minor inconvenience...it turns into a 2-hour cool-down peppered by interventions to keep him from kicking holes in the walls or using highly inappropriate language. What do you call that?? Is there a name for that type of ill? Obstinate defiant disorder? Not quite. . Antisocial? Sometimes. So we go to counseling. My son says that dad stopped hitting him when he found out we were going to counseling. Now he's afraid of what the kids will say--and he should be! They've said plenty! He is a very lucky man, that I unfortunately had a very sexist and male-prejudiced lawyer, or there's no way the judge would have allowed this awful man to have as much visitation as he does. It's not even been close to a year yet, and he's already skating on thin ice. He gets complacent and lazy when he thinks he's won...but the truth is, that complacency is causing him to lose his precarious grip on our precious kids...they have long outgrown him, emotionally...and they are no longer victims of his abuse. They are still hopeful that one day he will just love them for who they are and not because they're forced to behave in a way that's acceptable to him. I will not allow him to hurt them, anymore. I was too weak to know how to protect them before; but now I will do everything in my power to prevent these kids from suffering the same crushing emotional and physical pain that their father put upon their older brothers. Those boys still bear the emotional scars that their dad put on them, and I am still working hard to help them shed that old skin. They are better than that, they deserved better then and they KNOW they do now. But if so much as a hair on my children's head is touched, the wrath and justice will be swift, this time. Prayers and love didn't save us then, but our strength and determination will now, and always. Don't mess with this mama bear, she got some TEEF!
