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The Pain Continues
I've done a lot of things in my life I regret. I've made a lot of mistakes and hurt a lot of people. But, the person I've hurt the most is myself. I've let myself be used, walked on and abused. I've refused to stand up for my beliefs and myself, just so people would like me. But the worst mistake I ever made was the day Tom and I were standing by the dryer in the kitchen and I looked at him and said, “You're going to dump me, aren't you?” and he said, “I'm thinking about it” and I chose to stay knowing then that he didn't love me enough for marriage.
Within months after our marriage, I watched helplessly as our marriage fell apart time and time again. The shame I felt each time I got VD kept me from saying a word to anyone, so I just told myself it was something in my system that wouldn't go away. I never talked to anyone about it, not even my doctor. I let everyone think our marriage was great and put on a front hoping no one would ever know how bad things were between us.
The arrival of his son just intensified a marriage that was already bad and made things even worse. I'm not sure why I stayed even then. I think it was out of sheer determination, not to let his son drive me out of my house. I was always alone with his son and had no clue how to deal with him, but worse than that was the lack of support I had from Tom. He left me to deal with a problem that was never mine to deal with. He left me alone.
I knew a long time before his son came to live with us about his affairs, but could not face the fact that once again no one really cared for me. I just could not admit that I was not worthy of love and that I was so horrible that even my own husband couldn't stand to be with me. I just sat back and watched as he shoved affair after affair down my throat. I let him lie to me and treat me like trash, because where would I be without him. He even told me that if he divorced me, no one else would want me. That was so easy to believe, because that was what I grew up believing anyway.
Then we had our beautiful little girl and I knew why I had to walk through so much in this marriage. It was all for her. But, still I kept up the charade, but now for a different reason. The hate and repulsion I felt for Tom after she was born, caught me completely by surprise. The ugly, ugly years of our early marriage came flooding back to me like some bad dream that would not go away. All I could think was how could I get out of this, now. How could I let my little girl grow up in this horrible, horrible marriage built on lies?
After she was born I wanted him to go out, I wanted to have a good reason to end it all. But, slowly he started to change and take responsibility for our family. That's when the pain of it all hit me. That's when I knew I had to confront the past and deal with the issues in our marriage or leave. I think if I had known how painful it would be to expose and deal with our past, maybe I would have left it alone. I didn't know it would feel like I was reliving it all over again. I didn't' know the depression would be so intense I would actually think about taking my own life. I had no clue know how much I had suppressed, until I told Tom how I felt. I also don't think he knew how much he had hurt me or that I knew so much. I didn't know either that my pain would also hurt him so deeply when I told him how much he had hurt me.
But the hurt continues, because the lies continue. His refusal to tell me the truth about his affairs continues to haunt this marriage. His fear that I will leave him if I find out the details is a valid fear. I can't say how I'd react. I've imagined everything, so I'm not sure how much worse the details could be. But he knows. What really bothers me is I don't know how to fix what was broken to begin with, so what happened could happen again. I still think about leaving daily and am sometimes overwhelmed with the thoughts of him being with someone else, when I was at home waiting for him. I'm not sure everything will ever be right between us, but for now I stay for my daughter's sake. For now, I guess, this just has to be good enough.
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