Thanks for the Memories

Dear Troy:

 I read your explanation of why YOU decided to divorce ME.  And while I can acknowledge your point of view and your feelings, and I sat here feeling sad and bad for a while thinking of how I was the reason for the whole thing ending…I then started thinking about all of it.  And it is AMAZING that we were married as long as we were.

My view point:  You never listened to me either.  I told you how I felt so many times and you did nothing about it.

Conneaut:  You hold it against me that I did not like hanging out with your drunk, high friends.  It didn’t seem to bother you to go off to one of their houses on a Friday night or a Saturday and I wouldn’t see you until the next day.  And TJ….I told you about him waiting for you to come home and spend some time with him.  He would ask me over and over again “When’s daddy coming home?”  And you never changed anything about it. 

In Arkansas…yes, I was depressed and I quit having sex with you.  I was depressed because I was there at home with the kids and when you did have time to spend with me, you spent it over at Isla’s or someone else’s home.  You would go to parties at Isla’s with people I didn’t know…drinking lots of alcohol, there were females there that I didn’t know…you were in the hottub with some of them (you told me about some of that) and I don’t know what all went on there.  You didn’t seem to mind doing that.  If it had been the other way around would you have been so happy to stay at home with the kids while I went off to someone else’s house all the time…to parties…without you?  It hurt.  It hurt me all the time.  Then you got mad at me for leaving you in Arkansas.  Why shouldn’t I?  It didn’t feel like you even cared if we were there.  You had your friends and parties. 

Then the drug business in Austinburg.  Nope.  I am going to quit shouldering the burden for that.  I had no idea what was going on.  Then when I finally got someone to tell me…talk about shocked!  It broke TJ’s heart.  I was awake all night every night…on vigil with a knife, stun gun, and baseball bat never knowing if some drugged up person was going to come to our home and try and break in to steal something.  I am not referring to you. 

TJ lost all respect for you right at that junction.  It was a hard pill for him to swallow when you came back and were trying to be the father figure again.  And you got mad at him for that.

There are things that we should respect you for…working all these years to support us.  We did have some good times but most of them that I can think of were all after we moved to our present city.

As I said, it is amazing we were married as long as we were.  You broke my heart so many times.  And I let you.  I never had the strength to stand up on my own two feet.  I kept taking you back.

So…for you to tell me that YOU were unhappy…and for the reasons you told me for YOUR unhappiness…

And looking back at all of this…I now am understanding why I pulled back from you.  I lost all trust that you even loved me.  You wanted to be the one to tell everyone what to do and you got so angry when I made my own decisions.  I am NOT stupid.  I can figure a lot of things out for myself.  I just can’t figure out why I thought I loved you all of this time.  I guess I didn’t have much respect for myself.  I didn’t have any faith in myself that I could support my kids on my own…that I could make it.

I still don’t have much faith in myself but I will do something. 

And to think I made sure you got to go to school.  And you, with everything you have done, is sitting there with a job that will give you a lot of money to support YOURSELF.  I at least thought I would have a life that I could breathe easier at the end of it because you had made it.  But your making it has done me no good.  When you get to the best part, I get dumped.  Typical.  And I get to start all over with the struggle. 

While I can acknowledge how I put up walls with you, and how I cut you off so much, you have never acknowledged your part in why I did that.  You have never ONCE acknowledged that you didn’t treat me right either by going off for weekends to Rodney’s or Bill’s, etc.  You tried to blame that on me…cuz I didn’t pay attention to you.  Maybe if you had paid attention to ME we could have liked spending time together.  But it was easier for you to go out the door.

Then you say that YOU felt shut out.  I felt shut out of YOUR life for so very long.  It seemed like your good time with your friends always came before me.  I never felt like I mattered to you.  Yes, you worked hard and supported your family but there was so much more to it than that.  I felt like I was just someone there for you to get mad at and feel like I was just a thorn in your side.  THAT is how YOU made ME feel.  For too long. 

As for the hugs always turning into something…yes, just a hug where you held me and told me, REALLY told me, you loved me and how much you loved me.  I needed that because of all the years of you being mad at me…because I didn’t do things exactly the way YOU thought I should.

And disrespect?  REALLY?  All it comes down to is you have this idea of what ‘a man’ should be.  You TELL everyone what to do and we have to do it just your way on your time.  No…’a man’ actually takes the feelings and thoughts of others into consideration.  We would have been way more loving with you if you ever acted like you even gave any of our thoughts or feelings some consideration.  You wanted it all your way all the time. 

So, now that I got your point of view…you wanted to just step in and out of our days and have it your way.  Then complain if we left you out and didn’t respect what you said…when you didn’t do any of that for us.  You didn’t know HOW to love a wife.

And now, I can only be mad at myself for not leaving you so much sooner.  And hanging on to some fantasy that we could ever actually be the loving married couple I had envisioned from the beginning. 

I made excuses for you and your behavior.  I made the excuses because of your upbringing.  What you went through. I never should have made excuses for my behavior…for accepting less…for being treated like I didn’t matter.

And now what it comes down to is me trying to forgive myself for staying with someone that didn’t treat ME like I should have been treated.  This is going to be a big thing for me to do.  So, you sit there and lick your wounds like I treated you so very badly.  I treated you badly by being there for you all of these years when you didn’t deserve a woman that would hang in there with you.  You didn’t deserve someone that was faithful and loving.  Someone who stuck by your side no matter what you did.

I deserved to love MYSELF better than that.   I deserved someone that wanted only to be with ME and friends came second.  Someone who made me feel like I was worth everything to them.

As for you telling me you don’t know when you became unhappy…you never really acted like you ever were.  Still trying to figure out why you kept coming back.  I know I kept trying to believe in that happy family…I worked SO HARD to try and make everyone happy.  The kids are good.  I was fighting a losing battle with you.  But, you are 50 years old and what I never realized was there was no way I could make you happy.  Nothing I could do. 

So, I have to get my brain and heart to accept that my happily ever after was never going to happen.  I don’t know WHY I EVER expected you to own up to all that you did to me…all the things you did to hurt me.

“I think only of the good times.”  That is what someone does when they don’t want to acknowledge their own guilt. 

I own what I might have done to make you unhappy.  I admit it.  You never will.  Because you never saw anything wrong with anything you did.  You just want to shrug it off and keep going.  As for you trying to change…good luck with that.