Taking care of myself
I've begun to realise in these past few days quite how sloppy I've allowed myself to become. Stuck in a rut might be another way of putting it. Too comfortable. So the benefit of what he did a week ago is to take me outside all that comfort and habit and make me take some affirmative action.
Some of the stuff I've done in this past week has been displacement activity, of course: I've hauled so much crap out of the kitchen cupboards, scrubbed them clean and repacked them. I've packed a few boxes of the crap about the house and taken them to the nearest charity shop. Other activity has actually been a complete waste of time. Among the few words we've exchanged have been three conversations.
Conversation number one went something along the lines of:
Me - "You'll use this time to clean out that pigsty of a room. The only people who have any excuse for living like that (surrounded by mounds of clothes and books and music and videos and scraps of paper and food packaging and drink cans and cigarette packets and wrappers and posters and bits of computer and loose change and letters from debt collection agencies and porn) are eighteen year old undergraduates living in digs on the fringes of a university town on the other side of the country from their parents. You'll set it right and then you'll keep it right. It is obscene in a forty-six year old man, and you've absolutely no right to treat any one the way you do in expecting two other people to live under the same roof as it. You'll make the bed, you'll dust and vacuum, you'll not keep food and drink in there. Got it?
Him - "Yes I'll do it Saturday after work"
Saturday, after work he fucked off to his mate's house. His mate has a big garden with a pool, a bigger TV (with 500 channels of porn coming in via cable or satellite) and an even bigger music system and collection. He turned up in the early hours of Sunday as I was getting ready to go to work.
Me - "That room?"
Him - "I'll do it when I get back from mum's tomorrow."
Sunday, he returned from a visit to his mother at 7:45 pm and then guess what he did? Yup he fucked off to his mate's house but not before I'd cornered him and given him a re-run of conversation number one but embellished.
So the latest is that he's going to do it today. But somewhere in there he's also talking about fixing the complete fucking mess he's made of my garden. I've lost my roses, my violets and instead of getting a pool in return I got a hole in the ground filled with a rubber (?) lining containing six inches of stagnating water.
Perhaps things would have been different if I'd realised at the start that Kipling (at least I believe it was Kipling, please tell me if you know otherwise) was wrong. It's marriage and not sport that is war by a different name. I'm going to have to be smarter than I have been. I've gotten into the habit of referring to my husband of almost 13 years as The Fat Bastard and in the process lost sight of why I'd dubbed him that in the first place.
Over the course of those years I've been dragged from one crisis of his making to another and each time I've allowed myself to believe that there could be no fouler more perfidious act he could perpetrate within our marriage and each time he has come up with something not only new but staggeringly, breath-takingly and awesomely new and dreadful.
I'm tried and tried to acquit him of malice, to believe that he does these things unthinkingly, that he hasn't got a strategic plan. I can't afford to believe that anymore.
I'm over the mind-fuck bit. He can't make me believe I've lost my grip on reality. I know that he lies and cheats and steals. I know that because I have the documentary proof of it. Finding those papers was the start of the healing process. Now I have to end it. I guess I'm now too old for more children and I'm far from confident that I'd ever trust anyone again, but I'd be better off on my own and my daughter would be better off too because I'd be stronger and healthier (in mind and body) and that could only be good for her, and because being raised by someone who is a lying, cheating, thieving, feckless, slovenly, manipulative, devious, deviant bastard can't be good for a little girl.
I know this last aspect of the consequences of our parting will raise hackles: ideally parents stay together and when they can't then the children's best interests are most often served and usually that is through shared custody or some arrangement whereby access to both parents is maintained. I've profound sympathy for father's who lose contact with children they love and towards whom they've been adequate to outstanding parents.
When I was pregnant with her he wanted me to have an abortion (because of what a child would mean for his lifestyle - after all how could I have his baby and pay his bills?) and when it was too late for that he wanted her given up for adoption. He's treated me and her (though differently) with contempt. I've no sympathy to waste on him, none at all.
Some of the stuff I've done in this past week has been displacement activity, of course: I've hauled so much crap out of the kitchen cupboards, scrubbed them clean and repacked them. I've packed a few boxes of the crap about the house and taken them to the nearest charity shop. Other activity has actually been a complete waste of time. Among the few words we've exchanged have been three conversations.
Conversation number one went something along the lines of:
Me - "You'll use this time to clean out that pigsty of a room. The only people who have any excuse for living like that (surrounded by mounds of clothes and books and music and videos and scraps of paper and food packaging and drink cans and cigarette packets and wrappers and posters and bits of computer and loose change and letters from debt collection agencies and porn) are eighteen year old undergraduates living in digs on the fringes of a university town on the other side of the country from their parents. You'll set it right and then you'll keep it right. It is obscene in a forty-six year old man, and you've absolutely no right to treat any one the way you do in expecting two other people to live under the same roof as it. You'll make the bed, you'll dust and vacuum, you'll not keep food and drink in there. Got it?
Him - "Yes I'll do it Saturday after work"
Saturday, after work he fucked off to his mate's house. His mate has a big garden with a pool, a bigger TV (with 500 channels of porn coming in via cable or satellite) and an even bigger music system and collection. He turned up in the early hours of Sunday as I was getting ready to go to work.
Me - "That room?"
Him - "I'll do it when I get back from mum's tomorrow."
Sunday, he returned from a visit to his mother at 7:45 pm and then guess what he did? Yup he fucked off to his mate's house but not before I'd cornered him and given him a re-run of conversation number one but embellished.
So the latest is that he's going to do it today. But somewhere in there he's also talking about fixing the complete fucking mess he's made of my garden. I've lost my roses, my violets and instead of getting a pool in return I got a hole in the ground filled with a rubber (?) lining containing six inches of stagnating water.
Perhaps things would have been different if I'd realised at the start that Kipling (at least I believe it was Kipling, please tell me if you know otherwise) was wrong. It's marriage and not sport that is war by a different name. I'm going to have to be smarter than I have been. I've gotten into the habit of referring to my husband of almost 13 years as The Fat Bastard and in the process lost sight of why I'd dubbed him that in the first place.
Over the course of those years I've been dragged from one crisis of his making to another and each time I've allowed myself to believe that there could be no fouler more perfidious act he could perpetrate within our marriage and each time he has come up with something not only new but staggeringly, breath-takingly and awesomely new and dreadful.
I'm tried and tried to acquit him of malice, to believe that he does these things unthinkingly, that he hasn't got a strategic plan. I can't afford to believe that anymore.
I'm over the mind-fuck bit. He can't make me believe I've lost my grip on reality. I know that he lies and cheats and steals. I know that because I have the documentary proof of it. Finding those papers was the start of the healing process. Now I have to end it. I guess I'm now too old for more children and I'm far from confident that I'd ever trust anyone again, but I'd be better off on my own and my daughter would be better off too because I'd be stronger and healthier (in mind and body) and that could only be good for her, and because being raised by someone who is a lying, cheating, thieving, feckless, slovenly, manipulative, devious, deviant bastard can't be good for a little girl.
I know this last aspect of the consequences of our parting will raise hackles: ideally parents stay together and when they can't then the children's best interests are most often served and usually that is through shared custody or some arrangement whereby access to both parents is maintained. I've profound sympathy for father's who lose contact with children they love and towards whom they've been adequate to outstanding parents.
When I was pregnant with her he wanted me to have an abortion (because of what a child would mean for his lifestyle - after all how could I have his baby and pay his bills?) and when it was too late for that he wanted her given up for adoption. He's treated me and her (though differently) with contempt. I've no sympathy to waste on him, none at all.
posted by Enyo @ 10:59 am
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