Confessions Of An Ex-Wife Part IV

I know that some of the things I have pointed out may be common sense to most people. Keep in mind that I had a VERY dysfunctional childhood, which really stunted my emotional growth. When there is not a good role model in your life, sometimes it takes hard lessons to learn things that many people take for granted. Like knowing how to love other people or how to treat others with respect. They sound like pretty simple things, but to a great deal of people, these can be the hardest lessons to learn. While going through all this was VERY difficult, it has shaped me into the person I am today, and given me a beautiful daughter to boot. Thank God for therapy........and healing.



After we got engaged things kind of settled down for a while. We didn't set a wedding date and I really was not in any hurry. I knew we wouldn't get married until after the baby was born, and I had a lot of preparing for the new baby to do. I am proud to say that I worked up until three weeks before my due date. At that point I was big, hot, uncomfortable, and I was falling asleep at my desk. I decided I had had enough and I went on maternity leave. Four weeks later on August 20, 1998 I gave birth to Kering Grace. She weighed in at 8lbs 14oz. To give you some perspective, when I got pregnant with her, I weighed about 113lbs. I am and was a small woman....lugging around a freakin (almost) nine pound kid. The day I came home from the hospital was not fun. K picked me up and dropped me off at home with a newborn baby and Melissa. Then he left. Because he HAD to go help one of his friends hook up a washer and dryer. Not only that, while I was in the hospital, he did not clean up any of the messes he made, which meant that I got to come home to a messy house.

One thing I learned in this relationship was that his mouth did a lot of moving, but he rarely backed up anything he said. His mouth said he loved me, but his actions were not very loving.

As much fun as I am having rehashing all this drama, I am going to try to wind it down. I could post and post and post about all the things that we both screwed up. Looking back on it now, I can say that I don't think he ever loved me. He may have cared about me in his own way, but it was not what I wanted, and somewhere deep inside, I knew it.

In January, once again at my urging, we set a March wedding date. I have publicly displayed some of his finer moments, so I feel it's only fair to recount at least one of mine.

The night before the wedding, we had a knock down drag out fight. We were over at our friend's house where the reception was going to take place. When it was time to go home, he let me know that he was not coming home. It was bad luck for him to see me before the wedding. THAT was bad luck?! We had already been living in sin for a year and a half, and had a baby together, I didn't think him seeing me before the wedding was going to doom us. So, I pitched a big ole' redneck southern girl fit. I ripped him a new one in front of ALL of our friends. I threw a tantrum to rival that of any two year old on the planet. THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR WEDDING!

This is really important so pay attention. Never, never, ever, call your man/woman out in front of ANYONE. There is no greater disrespect than to have your partner call you out in front of everyone you know.

I even went so far as to tell him that I didn't want to marry him. In front of everyone. My humiliation is so great that I can barely stand to even think about it to this very day. This was the controlling me coming out. In my mind, if he REALLY loved me, he would come home with me just as I demanded asked.

Needless to say he did not come home with me and I went home and cried. In all fairness to me, I am sure part of my behavior was the stress of planning the wedding finally caught up with me.

I had a nightmare that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was really having second thoughts about going through with the wedding. I squashed my doubts immediately. After all, the deed was practically done. Everyone would be there, everything was paid for, I couldn't back out now.

Lesson # 10 or 11 Some pre-wedding jitters are normal, however if you have nightmares of epic proportions the night before the wedding, it might not be a bad idea to postpone the wedding. Just think of all the money I could have saved if I would have waited a little longer.

Despite my misgivings, I have to say that I had some pretty romanticized notions of what I thought it would be like to be married. We would vow ourselves to each other and that would be it. We would be together forever through everything. He would never leave me and I would never leave him. ( I really don't where I got that crap from, but I believed it...somewhat)

We did get married on that fateful Saturday in March. There would be no honeymoon for us as we really didn't have much money to speak of. We did have the rest of the weekend together and it was back to regular life on Monday. I really can honestly say that after we got married, I really didn't feel any different. Everything seemed somehow, the same as it had been before.

I think that us living together took some of the fun out of getting married for me. I already knew that he was a slob who left his clothes in the same spot he took them off in. That first Monday after we got married, he didn't come home until ten at night. I was not happy but I didn't say anything. I figured that was his way of feeling like he still had control over his life, and that us getting married in no way made me the boss of him.

The fighting got worse from there and in July he moved out. We married in March and by July he was gone. I was married for a whopping three months. If I thought things were hard before, they were getting ready to get even harder.

At the time we separated I didn't have a good job. Heck, I didn't even have a high school diploma at this point. I did not make enough money to support my kids on what I was making. I lived in a place that I couldn't afford on my own. I was scared. Really, really, scared. I was also devastated. Crushed. Broken hearted. Life would go on, it just wouldn't be quite the way I had imagined my life would be.