N is for New

This is the first time I have put in pictures before I write the post. I normally finish writing and then find pictures to complement the story. Not this time! This story is written in a new fashion in which the story must complement the pictures. Why? Because the pictures are of my new house!
   
                          
Yay! I live really close to a state line and am moving to the other side of that line. The house is in a pretty decent neighborhood. It has four (!) bedrooms, three bathrooms, two kitchens (?), and a huge attic that I plan to make into a great studio space. I may post before and after pictures once I get to take possession of the house. (Ha, my house will be possessed as soon as I move in.)
            
It isn't really a duplex, but there are two kitchens, so I plan to get a roommate who can have his or her own living space. They would still have access to the entire downstairs, so it will have to be someone I can live with. With whom I can live. I'm taking English classes in school again, so I guess I should always use proper English, yes?

I have big plans for this old house. I can't wait. New classes, tutoring at a new location (in addition to the old one), newly off of my medication, and buying a new house. New to me, that is. Isn't that the best kind?
            

M is for Medication

5mg Abilify
40mg Prozac
350mg Wellbutrin
50mcg Levothyroxine
                                          
I just stopped taking everything except for the thyroid medication. Cold turkey; didn't even taper. And I feel better than I have felt in a long time. I feel more awake than I have in years. I cry more often. I laugh more often. I get irritated at things that are irritating rather than just not caring. I was numb for so long, but I thought it was just the way things were because of depression. I didn't realize that it was a strong possibility that the medication was making me a zombie.

This is not the first time I have tried to quit. But I still had a lot of stress and was in school (or between attempts, that is) and just couldn't make it. I think I'm good this time. I've been "clean" for almost three weeks now. I have asked friends to watch for weird behavior and let me know if they think I'm not okay. I'm starting back to school Tuesday. Just taking some upper-level undergraduate English classes so I can apply for the Master's in English with a publishing emphasis. I would like to be an editor, I think. I don't know for sure, but it seems like a good path to go down at the moment. I'm a girl who needs a path.
                                   
So wish me luck - school, work, no medication. Here's hoping.

L is for Lost

I was a huge "Lost" fan and got Ex into the show, too. He got on Netflix and watched the previous seasons so he would understand what was going on, and then we watched the show together. Even when he was working out of town, he would call me when "Lost" was on and we would talk about it during the commercials.
         
 Life with Ex wasn't all bad.

K is for Knock

P.S. Writing this paragraph after I wrote the entire post, but think it belongs at the beginning - this one took a lot out of me. I enjoy writing and think it is therapeutic, but this post has raised my anxiety to a level at which it has not been for a long time. I'm borderline panic attack. After you read this, you will understand why my heart is still pounding and my stupid eyes won't stop watering. I haven't really dealt with any of this stuff. Just pushed it under the couch with the knife.
                       
That last winter we were together, Ex was working out of state. His visits home grew farther and farther apart as he became more enthralled with his life away from home. See "F is for Faithful" and you can guess why. Enough said. Ex had just moved his mother to our city and stuck her in a nursing home. I wanted her to come and live with us, but Ex was adamant that such a horrific thing would only occur over his dead body. So. Nursing home.

Ex's mom moved to town one weekend and Ex came home for the occasion. He was also back the very next weekend and then said he would have to stay out of town for a long time. He said maybe a month or so. I remember the mixed feelings of sadness because I wanted to be with my husband and relief, because I was scared of him. Oh, my.

We lived in a fairly decent neighborhood at the time, but, tragically, there was a serial rapist running rampant. A few weeks before all of this, he had started his reign of terror on my back deck, trying to break in through a window and running off when I turned on the deck light. I saw him jogging down the street, called the police, watched as they wandered around for a bit and then said they would keep an eye on things. The very next night, news vans were everywhere. He had come back and attacked the woman who lived on my corner.

I didn't think this would make me cry. Shows what I know.

Anyway, ugh. Haven't gotten it together yet. Wait.

I try to forget the sleepless nights on the couch, clutching a knife under the cushions and jumping at every sound. I installed one of those motion-detector lights that is on dimly all of the time and then brightens when there is movement, and we had big raccoons who could trigger the light. I jumped all night long until around 4:00AM, when I would fall into an exhausted doze. I didn't sleep for weeks. The guy was raping women all over the neighborhood and always struck around three in the morning. I was a nervous wreck.

(This is not the story of the hours that Ex spent yelling at me on the phone when I told him what was going on and asked him to come home for the weekend. I told him it would be nice to have a man around the house and he got extremely angry and yelled for over three hours. But this is not that story.)

Back to the main story - Ex, working out of town. His mom, recently moved to town. Ex, saying he would not be back for a long time and just departed. Okay.

So, I'm lying on the couch, jumping up every time the light brightens and peering out fearfully through the blinds. At 3:00 in the morning, someone knocks on the door. I almost died of a heart attack right then and there. I wasn't asleep, but I wasn't really awake, either, but I tell you what - I woke up fast. I ran to the door, phone in one hand, kitchen knife in the other, heart racing, eyes wide with terror, not breathing. Looked out....
                                
...only to see Ex standing there, scowling in at me. Wanting to know why the storm door was locked. Mad because the door was locked at three o'clock in the morning with a rapist on the loose. Had come home "to surprise me". Mission accomplished, fool. He really came home to see his mom. I'm not an idiot. (Well, maybe. You'll have to read the latest "I" post and decide for yourself.)

After Ex left that Sunday, I randomly checked doors. He had left the back door, garage door, and door between the house and the garage ALL unlocked. Doors that we never left unlocked. Unlocked. I love you, too.

J is for JPay

J-what? JPay. It's a web site that enables a person to send money, videos, emails, and pictures to a loved one in jail. Why, you may be asking yourself, am I writing about JPay? Are they a new sponsor? Ha. No. Not a bad guess, though. But the other way around. No, I'm writing about JPay because it seemed funnier than to just write about plain old jail.
                       
I know this guy. Met him about a year after my divorce. Never got attached, never wanted him to even be my boyfriend. Liked him, got along great, just kept it light. You know. Nothing serious. Then he gets himself thrown in jail. Starts writing me letters. Asked me if I ever saw us together. Wanted to know if I wanted to have kids. Said we would have really cute kids.

Um, excuse me? Kids? What exactly am I to you? So I ask him this in my return letter. A few letters go by before he responds to the question. He's had some really bad relationships and needs to get his act together before he can have anything serious with anyone. He likes me and wants to live with me once he gets out, but that's it.                 
                       
May I remind you, fool, that YOU are the one who asked ME if I wanted to have kids with you. That I was the one who never wanted a relationship. And now YOU are rejecting ME? I need to write him another letter and tell him he can go - well, there is just no nice way to tell someone to go fuck themselves.

I is for Idiot

I try not to be an idiot but it's hard sometimes. Dude wants to meet at a nearby dive bar and talk. Or come over. Um...let me think about this. Yeah, no. He keeps texting me and I keep telling him no. I'm sorry I'm a good listener and you have no one else in your life to talk to. I'm sorry you were such an ass last time you came over. I'm sorry I was wrong and you aren't the cool guy I thought you were. I'm sorry I ever met you.
                     
What an idiot. Don't come over here and tell me how much you want to sleep with a 26-year-old and then expect me to want to see you again. Idiot. I'm stupid, not desperate. Thanks, but no thanks. Idiot. And yet, all I want to do is let him come over and tell me what an idiot he was and how he really likes me and how he was drunk and stupid. I want him to tell me how great I am and how he can't believe how cool I am.

                           

Do I really need this validation from someone like him? Yes, yes, I do. Idiot. Me or him? Both. Well, since we have so much in common, what could it hurt to see him again and hear what he has to say?

H is for Her

I can't get her out of my head. The sheer joy radiating out of her smile that couldn't physically be any bigger is heart breaking. Her happiness illuminates everything around her. She looks as if every wish she ever had just came true all at once and every wish was a thousand times better than she expected.

Oh, how I hope her happiness lasted. I hope she is still at least a little happy. Thinking of the small possibility of her being happy six weeks after the wedding makes me want to cry. I don't care that Ex has moved on. He was looking for a new woman two days after I moved out of his house. I know he has been trying to find someone else before I even left. I'm not worried about him. I'm worried about her. The new Mrs. Ex.

Her facebook has pictures of him all over it. Google her name and wedding invitations pop up, wedding registries, deeds to land in Florida with his name added in October pop up. He is all over her life. His facebook registers one little sentence: "Married to Mrs. Ex". At least he finally removed the picture of me. That's something, at least, although the bastard has been married for six weeks and only modified the photo album one week ago.

She announced her engagement Sept. 25, 2013. Almost all of her friends who congratulated her also wanted to know who the guy was. Um, none of your friends know Ex and you are already engaged? And got married two months later? The facebook event page shows that she invited over 300 people and, according to facebook, 29 people went. Their Target gift registry is long and only four gifts were purchased from it. One friend asked how they met and she said he wouldn't believe it, but they met on craigslist. I believe it.

If there is one thing I want for her, it is for her to be happy. I want him to love her like he never loved me. At the very least, be a decent human being and not a sociopath. Is that even possible? I don't want her to go through what I went through. I don't wish her any harm or anything but happiness but I don't see that as a possibility with him. Evil can only be contained for so long.

If I could say one thing to her, it would be one word: Run.

G is for Groom

Groom, you say? Really? GROOM? Yep, Ex did it again. I don't know what my motivation was. I was on facebook and randomly, without even thinking about it, typed in Ex's name. And there it was - his profile was back. And there it was - he is married. Nov. 23, 2013.

I want to send her a letter and ask her if she is okay. I want to know if the same thing that happened to me happened to her. I want to know if her loving, caring boyfriend turned into a raging sociopath the day they got married. I hope not. She looks very happy. His body language pulls away from her in every picture. I hope he has spent these last three years becoming a decent human being and treats her nicely. I really want to send her a link to my blog...I won't. That would be too mean and eye-opening.

She looks about Ex's age. I wonder if this is her first marriage? I wonder if Ex tried to drown her yet. I wonder how many days of the forty-seven days they have been married he has not spoked to her. I wonder how soon they will have kids. I feel ill.

F is for Faithful

When Ex first started working out of town, his company put him up in a hotel. However, Ex got fired several times, so by the end of our marriage, he was working for a company that didn't want to invest much in him. They had a main office in Colorado and put Ex in a house with one of their managers and his wife. Ex said the house was small but cozy and had two bedrooms. He sent me a few pictures of it when he first moved in. 
                                   
Ex often told me how much he liked living there. Candy (the name I'm giving the wife) and Ex's boss were good hosts and Ex was comfortable in his room. Ex told me how laid back and open his boss and Candy were, and how they liked to try new things and welcomed him into their home with open arms. The boss did a little DJ work on the side and Ex brought me a CD of house music. Ex said they all spent a lot of time in the studio, making music and smoking weed.
                                   
Then his story got complicated. Ex was a horrible liar. For someone who did it all of the time, you would think he would be better at it, but no. He wasn't. Ex told me that his boss was working at another location, so it was just him, Candy, and another worker living in the house. Another worker? I asked, thinking that they were sharing the spare room. Ex began to stutter and told me that he was sleeping on the couch. Then he said he was sleeping on the floor in the spare room. I thought that was unfair, making poor Ex sleep uncomfortably, and I said as much. No, Ex insisted; he was fine. All was well.

Conversations between us continued to be stilted and weird. Ex told me that Candy showered every other day and used deoderant only on the days she didn't shower. Isn't that a little too personal of a fact to know about someone else's wife? There were other things. Discussions of dirty sheets that didn't matter because Ex wasn't sleeping in the spare room bed, anyway. Candy's undergarments. That sort of thing.
                                
To put the icing on the cake, it was very shortly after all this that Ex came home with warts on his penis. I've told you that before. So Candy gave him an STD, is what I'm guessing. He knew too many things about her, there were too many weird stutterings and lies, too many incongruities in his stories. And the worst part? Life with Ex was so bad that it didn't even matter that he was most likely unfaithful. Something that matters that much just didn't matter.

E is for Encouraging

I could use some encouraging words right now. I don't feel very sad or lonely, but feel as if I am right at the balancing point of tipping between okay and not okay. This thing with Dude makes me sad and angry and disappointed and, well, sad. That's right - I'm sad twice. Not too sad, but twice. I'm happy to have such good, loyal, true friends, and sad that I can't pick better when it comes to men. I'm sad that all signs point to me dying alone. I'm sad that I still want a relationship after all this. I'm sad that I still want to be someone's Number One and never will be.

For some reason, I've had "Home on the Range" stuck in my head all day, but with "And never is heard an encouraging word..."

I'm sad today.

D is for Dude

I can't seem to get away from the raw, painful posts lately. My life can't possibly be this pathetic. Can it? I saw Dude again tonight. He had asked me to go to First Friday, the local art gallery walk, but then he decided he was too cold. Yes, it is cold. No big deal. He wants to stay home, so instead, I go out with my friends to a happy hour. Dude and I text back and forth a bit and he says he will come out. An hour later, we're about to leave the first bar, so I text him and he replies, "Getting ready". What? You should have been here forty minutes ago, Dude.

My friends and I leave and go out dancing. So much fun. I love my friends and should have ended the night there. Dude, however, keeps texting me and asking when I will be home. Um, booty call, much? I stupidly let him come over and Dude proceeds to sit on my couch and pet my dogs and drink my vodka and tell me how his best friend's little sister wants him to go visit her in California and how badly he wants to...(wait for it)....sleep with her.

                        

Ouch. Pass the vodka.You would think I would learn. Men = pain. Friends = awesomeness. Stick with friends and forget men forever. I really thought there could be something with this Dude. I really did. What was I thinking? Oh, you stupid girl.

C is for Canoe

I don't have a pressing issue about which I feel like writing. I told myself this lie for a few days. Couldn't think of a good "C", but only because, as per usual, I had a juicy one to write about but didn't want to confess my stupidity. These true confessional posts take a long time to get around to writing. So if I haven't posted for awhile, I'm either really busy, or just procrastinating. Kind of like what I'm doing now - writing a long introductory paragraph so I don't have to get down to reality.

So, the first July I knew Ex, he wanted to go on a float trip. We canoed the first day, settled in on a nice river bank that night, and then paddled farther down the river to the campground. Nice story, right? Yeah, no...
                     
Ex was not born to canoe. He mostly sat in the back and looked at the scenery while I sat in the front and paddled. We switched once but it didn't work, because if you do nothing in the front of the canoe, you tend to float right towards trees in the middle of the river. Ex wouldn't paddle, so when he was in the front, we tipped over and all of our stuff got wet. I thought it was mildly funny and Ex didn't seem too upset. We gathered it all back up and went on.
                                         
When we stopped to camp, Ex decided to throw his first (and only) premarital fit. He told me he didn't believe in God and thought Jesus was an historical figure who was a good guy. I told him our beliefs did not match up and, therefore, neither did we. Lesson #1: Do not tell a sociopath that you are not meant to be together, especially not when you are out in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses.

Ex began sobbing and screaming and moaning and rocking and scaring me to death. Moaning about how he thought we would be together forever and that he couldn't stand the thought of losing me. Crying for me not to leave him because of how he was raised. Howling wordless sorrows to the skies.
                           
It was hours before he calmed down. We finally went in the tent and crawled in our wet sleeping bags and froze all night. If we had huddled together, it may not have been so miserable, but he had scared me and I was staying in my own bag that night for sure. Morning came early and we set out in silence. Then Ex started his damage control, telling me how I had misunderstood him, and that we really did have the same values and beliefs, and convincing me that everything was okay and always would be.

What can I say? I wanted to believe him, so I did. I told some friends, who were horrified and wanted me to break up with him. That obviously didn't happen.