For 7 months I sat every second I could on my bed swing on my deck. I knew my marriage was over. There was no fixing it. I sat and prayed for strength, for miracles, for guidance, for support. I didn't eat. If I did, it was because my daughter would make me. I would play back every ugly thing he had said to me and his family had said to me. "If I didn't lose my temper for the last few years, he wouldn't have done this." I didn't know then, but my husband cheating on me with a married woman would never be my fault. I will take the blame for a lot, but that evil is on him.
I would question is it the truth. Is it all my fault like they would tell me. I read self help books and the Bible. I found every fault in myself possible and worked to make me better.
I had some old friends reach out to me and we swapped divorce stories. I had an old high school friend reach out and we reconnected. I'm not a judgemental person. I know people have history and things they aren't proud of. This one person was my person all through high school. He was my best friend. He knew the real me better than anyone. I knew him. He had issues, but was trying really hard to overcome them and be a better person. My family knew him and his family. I tried to help him. He would ask me to go to church with him and go to AA meetings with him. I did. I threw myself into helping him to avoid what I was going through.
My ex had reached out by this point and told me he got a tattoo about me. "One Day." Is what it says. Then he told me the meaning (copied and pasted from his text):
“One Day”
I remember sitting saying One Day I will be her #1
One Day I will feel loved
One day I will make her the happiest
One Day I will be able to give her everything
It was too late though. At this point I had put our marriage behind us. I had fought to be strong enough to end it all and I wasn't going back. He texted and said he had a dream and wanted to tell me about it, but he couldn't stop crying long enough to tell me. He said I know I shouldn't reach out to you but i'm just used to you being that person. And my response was that I was sorry he was going through such a hard time but I can't be there for him. He was the reason I was in that place mentally and he was never there for me, so I couldn't be there for him.
I had already let my mind move past him. My mother always told me that there would be a day when the tears will stop and you won't cry over him anymore and she was right.
My neighbor at the time would video me and Miley and would share everything we did with my ex. To me, he cheated and ruined the marriage so I didn't care if he knew what I was doing 7 months later.
My friend that I told you about earlier would come over and I became his "life coach" you could say. He was clean and was a father. If I couldn't help my own problems, maybe I could help someone else so I tried! My ex found out about him and looked up his past. It wasn't the best, but who are we to judge? He let everyone know about what he had done. Lesson in life, don't throw stones if you live in a glass house!
He took me to court saying I was an unfit mother because of this man. He had my neighbor write an affidavit stating the same thing. Saying he was afraid of my friend. Let's not skip over the fact that my neighbor had just been arrested, and my ex had stated multiple times that the man steals everything and didn't even trust staying with him on bike week, but that's a different story.
He bribed my son with a new truck to write an affidavit about me. Stating I only feed my daughter water and alcohol. He said there is no food in the house. Cigarettes everywhere. I had to send in pictures of my pantry and grocery receipts. It actually became a joke between my daughter and myself that when we would go eat places I would make sure to post pictures so anyone who had been told otherwise would see that I did in fact feed her. I may not have ate. But she did.
A little history to help it all make sense before I go on...
My son was completely upset with his father until the day he met my friend. I guess I was never allowed to have guy friends. That night my son had brought teenagers to the house and were sitting in the driveway drinking. I made it known it was not happening at my home and asked him to have them all leave. He was never one to handle authority well. He didn't like to listen to anyone. This was a problem I faced for many years with him.
I had to leave and go pick up Miley, and I remember calling my mother and saying I am going to have to choose between parenting my son and causing WW3 or ignoring it and face losing my job. I chose WW3 and we are currently still fighting that battle.
I had to use my "man voice" and kick the kids off my property. My son was already upset with me because I refused to co-sign with him on a $50,000 truck. How I was going to provide for my kids and myself was more important. After all, my ex had walked out in June and never helped at all with the kids.
I'm sure some of you have seen posts my son has made about me when he's mad and posts he has made about his father when he has been mad, and you can see how he speaks. At this point I was over the disrespect from him and his father and made it known that I would be respected or he could leave. He chose to stay and let me know it wasn't my house, but his father's. I chose to make a stand that night and fight for myself. I ended up being shoved down the stairs, punched and threatened with pool sticks. I had to call the cops and he was made to leave.
So as you can see, when his father bribed him with the truck he jumped at the chance. I was asked by my attorney in the beginning if I wanted to have my kids write an affidavit about what happened at the beach on vacation, but I chose to not let them. I didn't want them to look back and regret saying anything about their father. You can see what being reasonable got me...
My daughter and I had to get accustomed to the new normal of finding apple airtags on bags, cameras in our faces, our home egged and broken into on numerous occasions. Every move we made, it was made known that he knew. I got a phone call while I was at school working from my daughter of her scared and hiding in my bathroom because her father had come into our home and she didn't feel safe or comfortable with him around. Calling the police became a weekly thing. We couldn't walk outside without our neighbor yelling "BITCH!" I would get pictures from them inside my home. I couldn't get the police to do anything. They never wrote the reports correctly. I just needed to be able to get a TPO so we could feel safe in our own home.
I couldn't understand that I was the one cheated on, but I had to live this way. Why wasn't I able to move on and live my life like he was? I deserved that just as much. We couldn't move on and we couldn't heal. We lived for months looking over our shoulders. Mentally I was not okay and neither was my girl. I felt like we were living a lifetime movie, waiting for the next attack. But still posting positive quotes and portraying that I was happy.
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