I’m sitting here staring at the screen and thinking about everything. I stopped crying but the pain is still there at the surface waiting to spill over and I’m desperately trying to keep it at bay.
Instead of running away from the wave of anxiety that started 30 minutes ago like I usually do by going for a drive. I decided to ride the wave out this time and I’m struggling to keep the anger in but the frustration is building the more I think about everything that happened.
I was tasked with writing an addendum to the already 15 pages of documentation I had to turn over for the job position I am seeking.
I was already feeling stressed over an earlier email I wrote when I got the phone call from my potential new boss about the memo.
I understand the reasoning behind this long process. The job that I want has a fiduciary responsibility to our client. We are holding their financial futures in our hands and they need to be protected. They need to be assured that the person sitting across the table from them is sound and secure themselves. The company that I want the position with was built on having a sound reputation and expects nothing but the highest standards from their advisors. Why would you want someone who can’t manage their own finances to manage the clients? Anyone with common sense would know that’s not a good idea.
The documentation is to detail what happened during my separation and divorce from 2014 to 2016 as it pertained to the finances.
What happened? That sentence alone just opened up so many old wounds that were still in the healing process.
What happened was that I made a mistake a long time ago in believing that the person I married loved me and was going to take care of me like he promised. He promised to make me feel secure, safe and loved. That only lasted the first two years then it stopped.
Then the cheating started which I only found out about after he passed away when I went through his emails. He had become a member of an online cheating website. He was meeting women two and three times a month per the conversations and messages he saved. All those years and I never knew. All I knew was the way he treated me with so much disrespect it made me hate myself. It made me hate myself enough to believe my life was not worth living anymore.
So having trust in people is still on shaky ground but I continue to hope that it will get better the other email I wrote was about that topic but I’m not sure if was taken well by the person I sent it to, I’ll just have to wait and see.
He, my ex-husband, was a bully when it came to money and we didn’t “share” anything, I was expected to earn it and when he was happy with me then I was treated better. When he wasn’t happy the verbal, emotional and mental abuse ensued all the while with a smile on his face.
He blamed me for everything he failed at because if I had been smarter and prettier of course things would have been better for him. I became desperate to make him love me again. I tried losing weight, gaining weight, wearing different clothes, changing my hair, doing well in school becoming successful at jobs but it didn’t matter, nothing was ever good enough.
I had no self-esteem and doubted everything I did or thought. The waves of anxiety and depression that I go through now are only ripples compared to the tidal waves they were once before. Like I said before, I’m amazed that I am still here knowing what I went through.
We separated once before from 2005 to 2006. I had to go to a military training school for 6 weeks because the job I had required it. It had already been pushed back a year when he threatened to divorce me and tell the courts that I abandoned my children. My commander, a very understanding man, let it go for another year but then I had to go.
My ex begrudgingly let me go but made sure my life was hell before I left and it continued after I came back. While I was there I had an affair with another married person in my class. He was a very sweet guy and going through his own difficulties so we hung on to each other for a while. It made things bearable but I was so wracked with guilt I came forward with the truth upon my return and paid for it. Little did I know that he had been cheating the whole time we had been married. He now had more ammunition to use against me when he needed. The abuse got worse so I left.
I went off and started over. I had nothing but the clothes in my bag and the uniform on my back. I didn’t know where I was going or what was going to happen all I knew was that I had to save myself. I slept on a co-workers couch for a couple of days and was lucky enough to find a house that was supposed to be affordable it was also within my children’s school district. He was not happy that I was able to pick up and move on without him. He never thought I would do it. He thought wrong.
So to retaliate he purposefully quit paying the daycare expenses and buying the children the things they needed like clothes and shoes. These two actions alone caused so much financial strain the only thing I could do was cut out food. According to the local Department of Human Services I made too much money for food stamps. I lived on frozen lasagna and ramen noodles for almost a year. When you are desperate, eating the same thing over and over again doesn’t faze you. I found a frozen lasagna once cooked could be portioned out into 10 small slices and that would be lunch and dinner for 5 days. Ramen noodles when cooked could be portioned into to 3 plastic bowls so that was a meal for 3 days. Water became my best friend and the local food pantries began to know my face. I lost almost 60 pounds that year.
Then one morning he showed up on my doorstep. He said he wanted me back and that he wanted us to start over. He told me he didn’t care about the person I had been with which in hindsight was the biggest bunch of crap he ever uttered to me in all the years I knew him. Little did I realize that he didn’t care whether I was there or not or if we got back together, his then business partner saw me as a threat that could potentially take half of their business away. This was especially true since I wrote the business plan they were using, my name was all over everything and a good lawyer would see that.
So I believed him, I thought things were finally going to change between us and we would get better. That only lasted for 6 months then it went back to the way it was before. I was now stuck and had to wait 7 more years before I broke free again and this time for good.
In the time period from 2014 to 2016, I struggled financially, emotionally and physically. He did not make it easy and would say some of the cruelest things possible to me because he knew that my mental state was weak and I was struggling. He was like a predator going after prey yet outwardly to others he was the “poor husband whose wife left him”. He played victim very well and the women at his work hated me then I found out he had actually slept with some of those misguided foolish women. I could write about the hateful things I thought about them but then that would make me no better than him. I am better than that and he knew it that’s why he hated me.
Instead he started turning my children against me the one thing he knew would emotionally kill me. I love my children with everything I have and will do anything for them. They are the reason I get up every day and face the things I go through. I don’t want them to ever doubt how much I love them. It has taken the last 10 months after he died to get them back to believing in me again despite my own emotional turmoil.
So that is what I have gone through the last 20 years not just the last 3.
This memorandum that I have to write would be extremely long if I was to write about all of that but I won’t. Instead I will be succinct, tactful and direct with no emotion attached to it. Just the facts to support the documentation I already turned in.
The wave has finally subsided and tears are finally drying up.
Life is full of bullshit that you have to wade through sometimes but once you get to the end and wash everything off, you will be clean again.
There is nothing that you cannot handle if you keep hanging onto to your dreams, visualize them in your future and remember that nothing lasts forever.
The pain will stop, the darkness will be light, the sorrow will turn into joy and all will be good again.
The wounds will heal but there will be scars left behind to remind you what you did to get here.
Thank you for stopping by and letting me vent.
Have a good week!
Suzanne
love to bake 