S is for Salsa

There was one meal I could make and know that Ex would eat it - tacos. One night, I was putting out the salsa, sour cream, lettuce, etc. when Ex came into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a new jar of salsa.
                             
We already had two open jars, and I told him I would like to empty those jars before we opened a new one. He said okay and we sat down to eat. Two seconds later, Ex slammed his chair back, stormed into the kitchen, yanked open the refrigerator, and pulled out the new jar of salsa.
                               
He came back to the table and proceeded to scream at me that he could have whatever he wanted and that I had no right to tell him he couldn't have salsa. Then he started sobbing about how he just wanted some salsa. I sat there in total shock. Tried to apologize...I don't remember what happened right after. I think I blocked it from memory. I try not to think about some things. Again, good times.

R is for Romantic

Almost two years after we met, Ex took me to a Japanese steak house for dinner on Valentine's Day. Two weeks after that, he took me to a quiet, romantic Italian restaurant and proposed to me right there at the table. Ex later told me that he had planned to propose on Valentine's Day, but the steak house wasn't romantic enough.
                                
I thought that was very sweet and thoughtful.

When I moved out of my apartment a few weeks ago, I found the receipt for the engagement ring. Ex had purchased it a few days before we went to the Italian restaurant. He didn't have it on Valentine's Day.
                                              
Does it matter? Not really. It is just another of Ex's tiny little lies that added up to an unbelievable man.

Q is for Questions

Nine questions I would like to know the answers to:

1)     Is he married again?

2)     Does he have any kids yet? (Please tell me no…)

3)     Is he in town or did he move again?

4)     Why do I care?

                            

5)     Why did he lie all the time even when the truth was sometimes better than the lie?

6)     Why did he hate me so much?

7)  Is it obvious to others that I am still walking around in a black fog, even though I can force a smile?

                            

8)      Does he lie awake at night and wonder what I am doing?

9) How long am I going to lie awake at night and wonder what he is doing?

P is for Pool

When Ex and I were first married, I was in heaven. I thought I had been given the greatest gift in the world – another person’s love.

We spent our first night as husband and wife in a very fancy hotel in town. Ex reserved the honeymoon suite, which came with a bottle of champagne, a basket of snacks, and, best of all, a late checkout time! Instead of the normal checkout time of 11:00, we did not have to be out until 4:00. We took full advantage of the situation by sleeping in and then going down to the pool and hot tub to relax even more.

                     

I used to be very scared of water. I had recently learned how to swim, but I still preferred to stay in the shallow end and just play around. Ex was not satisfied with that. He took me by the waist and dragged me out to where the water was over my head. He stood there, grasping me firmly by the hips and yelling at me to paddle.

Trust me, I was paddling. Because Ex was holding my hips up, my entire torso and head were being dunked under water and I panicked – it felt as if he was trying to drown me. I finally managed to twist around and grabbed him desperately around the neck. I wasn’t mad, just scared.

Ex, however, was irate. He barely spoke to me for the next three days. Welcome to marriage.

O is for Onions

One night, Ex made himself a hamburger and put red onion on it. He left the chopped red onion out on the counter all night. The next morning,  I woke up with cold-like symptoms - stuffy nose, watery eyes, slight fever. I didn’t think much of it, just thought I had caught a summer cold.
             

The next time Ex had red onion, I figured it out. I had developed an allergy to red onions. Before he found out that I was allergic to red onions, Ex usually preferred white onions. Then he found out red onions made me sick, so he started buying red onions all the time.

                  

He would hide them from me, like I wouldn't find out. I would know red onions were in the house because I would develop a random cold. I could even smell them coming out of Ex’s pores.

I asked him once why he bought red onions when he knew I was allergic. I don’t remember what he said in response, but I will never forget the triumphant gleam in his eye. He had found yet another way to make me miserable and that made his day.

N is for Naked

I have a very high libido. Ex had a very low libido.

I was a virgin when we got married. Ex had slept with three women.

 I love sex. Ex didn’t.

See a problem here?

                                            

 I used to think that Ex’s willingness to wait for sex meant that he loved me. I used to believe Ex when he would whisper promises of passionate nights for “years and years”. I could not wait for our wedding night when we would finally consummate our love.

We had sex four times that first night. And then nothing for four days.

                           

I was crushed. I felt utterly rejected. Ex said he was tired. Later, he told me he had been mad at me and didn’t like me, so why would he want to have sex with me?

At the beginning of the marriage, I would try to initiate sex. I had been a loyal Cosmo reader and knew that the majority of guys wanted their partners to initiate sex, and I wanted to be a great partner, so I did.

        

I would lie in bed naked, waiting for him to come in, tell me goodnight, and then notice I was naked.

 Sometimes that worked. If Ex was in a decent mood, he loved it. If not, which was most of the time, it irritated him and he wouldn’t talk to me for days. And I do mean days. Ex was really hard to read at first, so I could never tell what his reaction would be.

 It didn’t take long before I stopped trying. I learned my lessons well. No more Naked Me waiting in bed for my loving, horny husband. I didn’t have one.

M is for Mom

On our second date, Ex and I went to see a movie and then to Steak N’ Shake for a late snack. It was snowing and we sat in the warm restaurant and talked for a very long time. It was not normal second date conversation; we talked about kids, our plans for the future, our relationships with our families, and other serious topics.

Ex told me that his mother was a real bitch. He said she was mean and hateful and that she was not only a horrible mother but a horrible person as well. I was shocked. Huge red flag. I think Ex saw the look on my face because he changed the topic immediately.

                                    

The next date, Ex’s tune had changed dramatically. Now he loved his mother and told me stories about how he had been a difficult child and that she was a saint to put up with him.

He went to visit her shortly thereafter and came back raving about how great she was. I stupidly decided the huge red flag was just the result of a bad day for Ex and chose to believe the new Ex instead.

                            

Every time we saw Ex’s mom, he would treat her with the utmost respect – opening doors for her, pulling out her chair, giving her hugs, and carrying on lovely conversations with her. He channeled his anger towards her directly at me. Ex never treated me more badly then when his mom was in town or when he had just seen her.

One time when he had just returned from visiting her, he started yelling at me and called me “mom”. He swore that it never happened but it did. Several times, in fact. Just an example of him getting mad at me for something that had nothing to do with me. Oh, how I wish I had paid more attention to that red flag.

                         

I should have put this under "F is for Flag".

L is for Litter

Although he professed to care about the environment, Ex did practically nothing to help it. He left lights on, kept the air conditioning blasting, left doors open so the air escaped, left the water running while he brushed his teeth, drove a V8 truck, and drank bottled water. Ex claimed to care but did nothing to show it.

                               

One thing he was big on was not littering. He told me once that if I started littering, he would divorce me. I could tell that he meant it, too. It really hurt my feelings but I didn’t say anything. He actually apologized later and I told him I appreciated that. Didn’t really matter, though, because the damage had been done. Littering was a big enough offense to break his vows.

                     

I should have thrown a candy wrapper out the window on our way to the hotel on our wedding day. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

K is for Kiss

            The last time Ex kissed me, I was shocked. We were walking into church and he just stopped and kissed me. Ex was never affectionate like that, and it made me so happy. Briefly. The moment was ruined when he asked me if his breath was bad. I guess maybe I should just be glad that his breath wasn't bad, because that was the very last time my husband kissed me - to find out if he had bad breath. Now that's love.

                                   

J is for Junk

            I’m moving again. I have lived in this apartment for two years and twenty-five days. I’m not ready to go. I thought everything would be fine and dandy; I’m moving closer to school and will save $170 every month. That’s a lot. Unfortunately, it is so much cheaper because I am moving out of a large, two bedroom apartment and moving into a shoebox. Baby shoes.

                                  

            Packing is bringing up bad memories. Last time I packed, it was to move out of Ex’s house. The act of sorting through our things into “mine” and “his” piles was so hard I thought it would kill me. It is also when I started drinking. A lot. (See “A is for Alcohol” if you want the gory details.) So, packing is bringing up urges to drink. My psychiatrist told me I need to go to AA but I don’t want to. Not at all – so I have decided to just stop drinking.

            Easier said than done. My junk is not packing itself!

            I am shocked by the large amount of junk I have. There are some things I have had since childhood, like jacks and a rubber ball, which I haven’t touched since I was twelve but have packed and moved with me for years. It is a bit ridiculous. I am taking a boat load of junk to the thrift store. Included in that junk is my wedding dress.

                                   

           I can't believe I just called my wedding dress junk. It is a beautiful dress and I could probably sell it for a few hundred dollars but I don’t think I could stand to see someone wearing my dress. I would rather just go to sleep at night knowing that some happy woman just hit the jackpot at the thrift store.

            One girl’s junk is another girl’s jackpot.

I is for Insomniac

"Song of the Insomniac"

Slap, slap, slap

The only sound I hear

When I’m out at three A.M.

And no one else is near.

A car alarm goes off

But no one stops its tweet

Chirp Beep Honk

When I’m running down the street.

        

Sleep would be much better

How I wish I could.

Problem is the guy upstairs

Who thinks this is the hood.

Abandoned cars out back

He makes my life a hell

TV’s either on

Or I hear his girlfriend yell.

       

She clomps around in heels

No matter what the hour

They even scream and yell

When they’re standing in the shower.

My landlord doesn’t care

No word has she said.

Which is why I’m out here running

When I should be home in bed.

H is for House

            When I met Ex, I owned a nice little house in a nice little neighborhood in a nice little suburb. We decided – okay, so Ex decided and I blissfully and blindly agreed – to keep Ex’s house and sell mine. My house sold right around our wedding date, so the timing could not have worked out better.

            Ex never called his house “our” house. It was always just his. Even to me, it was his house. We used the furniture I already owned, but I considered it “our” couch and “our” dining room table, not just mine. “Our” furniture in “his” house.

           

                 

            That first summer, I spent days digging up the dead weeds and planting grass. I put Band-aids on my blisters and watered the lawn until it was a lush, green carpet. As we were pulling into the driveway one afternoon, Ex noticed the lawn. He said that his lawn looked good. His lawn.

                          

            We went inside his house and I made a dinner he decided not to eat. But that’s another story…

G is for Google

I used to Google his name all of the time. I would search in and out of quotation marks, with or without Ex’s first name – which he didn’t use, except for business matters – and even Google his standard user name. You would be amazed at how much you can learn about someone’s life just by searching for their email address.

                     

I’m not proud. Not only did I over-use Google, but I used to drive by his house in the middle of the night, too. I wanted to be sure Ex would be home and asleep. I didn’t want to get caught stalking him, you know. If he wasn’t asleep, he may be looking out the window and see my car, which I had before I even met him. If Ex wasn’t home, I would freak out. What if he came driving down the street and saw me? Worse, where was he in the middle of the night? At some girl’s house?

The one stalker-ish thing I managed not to do was call him. I didn’t really want to talk to Ex. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I didn’t want to deal with that. Okay, those are all lies. The only reason I didn’t call him is because he would know I was calling him. Even if I used a pay phone and was completely silent, Ex knows me well enough to know that hang-ups are something I would do. He is my hang-up.

                          

Stalking is now a thing of my past. I still want to. I still want to drive by, still want to Google his name, still want to know where he is and what he is doing and who he is doing it with. Ex and I haven’t been together for twenty-three months. We have been divorced for seventeen months. It still hurts, but, shockingly, the pain is lessening. I never thought it would.

F is for Fiction

1)      He told me I was a coward

·        Yes, I did run when a tiny bird at the zoo started chasing me. Yes, I was afraid of it. But being a coward means being too afraid to do things. If I was really a coward, I would not have gone into the walk-in aviary in the first place. Sure, I’m afraid of things, but I do them anyway. That makes me brave, not a coward.

 

2)      He told me I didn’t love him

·        He could not have been more wrong. I will love him forever even though I know I cannot be with him. Being together would not be good for me but it would be worse for him. My therapist said Ex would hate himself even more for treating me badly but he wouldn’t stop, so his self-hatred would grow. I loved him enough to let him go.

3)      He told me he loved me

·        It is true that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else. He is not capable of love. Everything he did was the opposite of love. You don’t treat someone you love the way he treated me. He did not love me.

 

4)      He told me I wasn’t funny

·        Whatever. I’m freakin’ hilarious.

5)      He told me that I had no friends and everyone hated me

·        True, but only if we were talking about Ex instead of me. I have tons of friends, but he has none. I do feel sorry for him about that, but if he would stop being rude to everyone and thinking the being mean was funny, maybe people would like him. Turns out he doesn’t have even one friend anywhere.

E is for Eating

Perhaps a more appropriate title would be “E is for Eating Disorders”.

            Right after I left Ex, I lost eighteen pounds in about one month. I don’t know if my sudden increase in alcohol consumption had anything to do with it or if it was just the depression, but for a long time, I had absolutely no appetite. I would start eating a banana and it would literally take me at least five hours to choke it down, one little nibble at a time. I was just not able to ingest anything.

                               

People commented on my weight loss and expressed concern. I told them all I was fine even though I wasn’t. My clothes fell off of me and I had to start wearing layers. I loved seeing my ribs and having no creases in my stomach when I bent over. It was great. I felt totally in command of myself, but at the same time, felt completely out of control. I liked being skinny but I knew I was too thin. It was a difficult combination.

            Then things switched and I suddenly became hungry. I started eating everything I could get my hands on. I would eat until I felt as if I would burst. I ate mostly junk food. I started to gain weight, which caused me to freak out; I knew something had to change, and fast. I stuffed my face for several months until I was finally full – I stopped eating again.

                                

            I have stabilized at a certain weight and am trying very hard not to care that I no longer weigh 100 pounds. Logically, I know I am at a good weight for me, but inside I am screaming “You’re fat!” Ex liked me rounder and so when I was married, being this weight did not bother me. It made me curvier and I felt more feminine. Now I just feel fat and sloppy. My clothes aren’t fitting as well as I would like, meaning they actually fit me instead of falling off like they used to. I feel too soft.

            Today I ate five almonds, one string cheese stick, and a bowl of Cheerios...