As The Story Unfolded

I decided on June 6th... almost right away that the Fairway Divorce Solutions program of getting me through this divorce mess would probably be the best solution for my life. Michael agreed and he actually was the one who called and made the arrangements for our first meeting.  It is a particular mediation process for taking people through divorce as long as they are able to function together as much as humanly possible. The first meeting you have with them is a together meeting where they get to know you and your spouse, and they find out what brought you to the point of divorce in the first place. Then, individually, they take you through a step by step process that will mediate a divorce in the most expedient way possible saving your dignity, your assets, and your children from the traditional legal system which can drain you of everything you own while turning you against each other as effectively as possible, so that there is no hope in hell of ever co-parenting. There is a new franchise that just recently opened up in FSJ and I thank God for that because where a traditional divorce can take up to a year and a half or longer this process will get us through in less than six months as long as we can remain civil to each other. For us it is the way to go.

Having said that I have read a lot of their literature over the last few weeks.... some of it sucks.

According to the Fairways Divorce Solutions literature, I was acting the part of the victim through all of this which is, apparently, messed.... I have difficulty with that because I wasn't acting or reacting or anything... I could barely function... Shock is like that... I feel in the last weeks I have made huge inroads into establishing my independence especially if you consider where I was. But over the next while I will be revealing more and more of my story... just maybe not every day. I can't do that because it will eat me alive.

This is my story....

I have always maintained that I never saw this coming. I felt that my husband was rock solid and one of the good ones. I always thought that if ever there was someone I could trust implicitly it would be him. Wrong!

I have in the last 6 or 7 years felt that we both needed a little more space to chase our own individual dreams. The girls were getting older and needed us less so it was time for us to make room for our own interests after many years of devoting so much to our children. Mike's was the Rangers and the Junior Rangers and all things outdoorsy... mine was the spinning and weaving, and writing poetry or short stories or maintaining several blogs. We would always come together to explore our common interests and that was ok. We had a good and mature relationship, I thought. We had our own friends and then we had our family friends. This I thought was good too since it meant that we trusted each other and knew each other to be reliable. We always connected and tried to have a few nights a week when we would take time for each other and for our family life. We always made special occasions... well, special.

About three years ago I started to notice a marked decline in Mike's interest in my doings. Still he encouraged me to get out there and do my thing which was always with my girl friends with spinning, weaving, or knitting. And I encouraged his time in the Rangers and his canoeing and instruction courses. In actuality I now realize that he had already started to lose interest in me as a person.  He has never come to one of my gallery openings until I forced the issue this fall past. He has never supported my endeavors in the spinning world, that was obvious because he never asked and he has never really cared much about what I did in Olds, again because he never asked much. He has never read my blog unless I read a particular post to him to get his opinion of what I have written.

About a year ago he was going on a trip with the Rangers and he needed me to drop him off at the drop off point so I took him there and he jumped out of the truck and unloaded his gear from our truck and reloaded his gear into the other person's truck with whom he was getting a ride. After a few minutes of watching them unload and reload I got out of the truck to say good-bye and he was running across the road with the treasurer of the Rangers to get money out of the bank as he was one of the signatories. I waited and waited for him to come back so that I could kiss him good bye and wish him well on his trip... but he didn't return because after he came out of the bank he and his buddy went to the grocery store in another pick-up to get a few last minute items... basically in the rush to get on their trip he had forgotten about me and saying good bye in any meaningful way. That hurt... but I let it go and just put it down to comfort of a long term relationships and hurry in the moment.... but it did hurt.

As this year has progressed I kept wondering why it was getting harder and harder to talk to the man that I had always shared everything with. Then I started to notice that his best friend's ex-wife, who had taken over the chair person's position with the Junior Canadian Rangers, was becoming more and more a part of our lives... at least he was talking to me about her more and more. At first it was very subtle... he would offer to pick her up and take her to meetings... then he was talking with her after hours at the school. Then he was giving her rides to FSJ when he was on his way to meetings. Then he was talking about her at home far more than a regular normal girl/guy relationship... this gave me some worry but I "knew" he would never do anything to hurt me or the girls and besides she was a bland creature with very little class.... at least that was my opinion. Little did I know that they were falling in love because he had fallen out of love with me... I knew they had a close relationship but I never knew how close it had become. Just before Christmas they went on a camping trip with the JCRs. It was a winter survival trip and I guess that's when things really got hungry between them. Then he spent all of January and February "thinking about divorce and how to get out of his relationship with me".  Meanwhile I was in my little bubble of complete trust. In January they went to Comox together for the JCRs for PHASE training. They spent a week together and all the while I trusted, trusted, trusted... that he was my husband and he would never cheat... so much so that cheating never even entered my mind.

During the winter I started to notice that Mike would stay up very late at night...  sometimes only coming to bed around 2 a.m. Or I would wake at night and look across at him and he would be "reading" on his phone. I would ask him what he was reading and he would say some new book that he had downloaded. I thought it was strange that he would be reading so late at night but put it down to age and insomnia for him. I would put my hand in his and gently fall back to sleep.

Over the spring I started to notice him drawing further and further away from our family as he sought every outlet to be at the school working late. One day I walked into the sunroom and he was writing something on his iPhone... he had been using Facebook a lot and as I got closer to him he turned his phone away from me... I never thought anything about it because a couple of minutes later he made some inane remark about the email that he had just sent to CBC complaining about a news story he had just heard on the radio. It was only long after, that I remembered that turning away of the iPhone.

When spring arrived he started to go for bike rides each evening because "he wanted to get into shape". Ok so he was going through some mid-life crisis thing so I encouraged him to go bike riding... all the time my mind was occupied with getting my level 5 homework done and some days I was working 10 - 15 hours a day. Yes I would watch TV as I spun... you need something to occupy your mind. But he saw watching of TV as laziness, he saw my working on my "hobby" as a turn from him... a lack of concern for him and his needs, a lack of empathy for anything that he wanted. I would often find myself tired in the evenings and so many nights supper wasn't on the table when he walked in the door... I would be still spinning and so there would be mad scurryings to get supper... or he would offer to get it and since he is such a great cook I would let him. I always did the dishes with Daughter #1 afterwards before going to bed. He says he did 2 to my 1 of the housework... but he has never cleaned out a sink or cleaned out a toilet except to throw a container of CLR in once a year. He has never swept or vacuumed or cleaned a window. He has never had to make a bed though he has done it in the last year a few times not because he needed though because I always made the bed when I went upstairs to have my shower, after they had gone to school. He has never given a dog a hair cut. He has never gotten a breakfast unless I was sick. He has maybe gotten 5 suppers a week out of seven during my crunch time in spring when I am trying to finish work on my Master Spinning certificate... and then only a week here or there did that number reach that high. But I am a bad wife... because I have tried to finish my Master Spinning certificate and left him to do a few extra helping jobs as I have worked at it.

Mother's day came and he was away once again with the Rangers... which really hurt though he did get back in time to have lunch with me... I got up that morning feeling pretty low since I hadn't heard anything from him, not even a text to say happy mother's day... but the girls gave me a lovely pot of flowers that were so pretty that I just cried because I was so happy to have them remember me in such a lovely way.  He came home from his trip with the Rangers, and said he had to go to town quickly and he would be back in short order.  An hour and a half later he came through the door with a bag of chips and a movie and said happy mother's day. That hurt.... I was so all fired important to him that I got a bag of chips and a rented movie... but then we would be spending some time together so I said thank you politely.

In the week after I finished my level 5 homework, we had decided on many projects for the garden... potato beds, and new beds for carrots and beets.  He had purchased 30 strawberry plants from a fundraiser in town which just so happened to support his chit's daughter in a trip to Ghana for working with orphans the same fundraiser from which the girls had bought my beautiful hanging flower pot. We had had a couple of arguments over the feeding boxes that we had used for the the sheep. I wanted them to plant beans and peas and he wanted them for the strawberries.  He won because I was sick of fighting him on everything (I was starting to feel tired of always disagreeing) so I made a plan to use my old red barrels for the beans and peas. I had found it strange that he was so angry all the time... snapping at the girls, snapping at me, snapping at the dogs...

We spent the long weekend getting the plants in... he worked on the potatoes, strawberries, and beans and peas since that was the serious heavy work and I worked on the flowers. We had the radio playing as we worked exchanging chat and I thought that things were better than they had been for a while. That weekend the seniors in town were have a plant sale and I thought I might get some nice bedding plants so I asked him if he would like to come along and help me pick out bedding plants. We headed off in the truck and when we got there, we parked and started walking toward the building where the plant sale was being held. I was a few steps in front of him and I noticed Samantha (his chit) coming out of the sale. I had no idea at the time what was going on right under my nose. As I walked toward her I said hello with a smile on my face and I noticed that she looked at me sourly and then looked at Mike with a look of absolute longing that it almost took my breath away.

That was the day that I began to look for every opportunity to check his cell phone. That was the day I got suspicious. That was about two weeks before I figured it all out. That was only a short time before my world crashed.

The morning of June 6th I woke up at 7 a.m. after a bad night of insomnia and Mike was already in the shower getting ready for school. I called out to him and said that I wasn't feeling well and could I please be exempted from making breakfast. He called out that yes certainly if I wasn't feeling well he and the girls would manage without me. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Shortly after I woke to a quiet room and sounds of  Mike rummaging around in the kitchen, downstairs. The girls were in their room getting dressed and I noticed his phone charging by the side of the bed.  I barely breathed as I picked up the phone and turned it on. First I checked his text messages... but there was nothing there incriminating.... I don't even know for sure what I was looking for. I just wanted to know that his and Sam's friendship was just that... a friendship. I put the phone down and began to relax but my mind was working overtime. He has an app on his phone to receive text messages via Facebook... I didn't need a password or anything because it simply opens up to his messages when you stroke your finger across the phone. It was there that I found all the damning evidence I needed.

I had to do a double take... I checked his messages to her... and I had to do a double take again because what he was saying to her was always what he would say to me. "Sweetie this and I love you that. And good morning my love..."

I took the phone downstairs with tears in my eyes and panic in my heart.... and I confronted him in the kitchen, pointing to the deck outside where the girls wouldn't hear our conversation...... we stepped through the door and within minutes I knew my life as I knew it, was over. He fully admitted the whole thing... and he seemed relieved. What he didn't and still doesn't understand is that was the day... that was the moment when my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. That was the moment that saw the end of my innocence, and the end of my belief in love. That was the end of my faith and trust and respect. With a resounding thunk the guillotine did its job.

Marriage dead.

And that was the day that I lost me. Lost: one female... 47 years old... never to be seen complete again.

The pieces of my heart are still all over the ground outside on the deck where I heard from his mouth his version of the truth.

Crazy glue only can do so much. When something shatters, even if you find all the miniscule parts that can hardly be seen, even if you were ever to put those pieces back together again, it would still be cracked... maybe incomplete. A Picasso painting, where nothing looks right.

When I leave here there will be apart of me that stays... those miniscule bits of my heart that will always stay where they fell that dreadful day.

I remember hot tears. I remember the last time he held me as I folded into myself when the reality of what he was saying hit home... "I love you, but I am not in love with you anymore." I remember my girls holding me.... I remember him calling the school and saying that he needed an emergency sick day.... I remember being hardly able to speak and being so choked with the terror of this loss. I remember hollowness... in my bones... in my chest... in my arms. I remember hours of this... I remember a long agonizing day of shock.

I told my mom and dad right away on the phone because I needed people around me who loved me and cared for me.... The Daughters and I went to their house for supper... I hardly choked anything down. I couldn't eat. The agitation was starting to set in.... on the way home we stopped at the Post Office to pick up the mail. I remember thinking this is such a mundane thing to be doing when the world is falling out from under me. Surrealism was my life in that moment. Daughter #2 came out of the post office with a pamphlet in her hand and said mom this might come in handy. She handed me the Fairways Divorce Solution pamphlet. I looked at it and my chest ached all over again. But I took it and then promptly forgot about it.

And then that day was over and another day came and it was more of the same.

I had been abandoned... But that was only the beginning my friends... that was only the beginning...

I don't know how I got through those days.... I don't know how I survived... my bed was empty... he moved out to the trailer. And each night I would get into my bed and curl up in a fetal position and cry until I had nothing left and then I would sleep for a few hours, an exhausted sleep that only kept me going and did nothing to refresh me.

I ate very little and lost twenty pounds in a week... I thru up everything that I forced down my throat... I gagged on food... And always there were the tears... I was so dehydrated that my skin looked ancient. I remember looking in the mirror at one point and thinking that I looked 80 years old.

But that was only the beginning folks that was only the tip of the iceberg... it got worse before it got better... if you can call this better... I guess it is... I am maintaining my weight... and I am moving on... but I feel like I have all the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Where my heart is there is a hardness... there is a solid and still hardness... I can't make it better, because I have tried. It will not go away... I am hopeful that in time it will, but for now it is there and I must learn to live with it. It is what keeps me going... I think of it as my own little Chernobyl. It is what keeps me going but it is also what will eat me alive if I cannot make it go away.

This is where I will end tonight... I am tired and I have to face Sir Arsewipe tomorrow as Daughter #1 and he will be returning after three weeks of me being here and him being there.  Much has come to pass while he has been away... much has made me understand... much.... but that is for another time my friends... that is for another time. This story will unfold only as I am able... but that time is not tonight...

I will need all the strength I can glean... tomorrow I have to drive home with him.... an hour and a half of more punishment. I will kick him out tomorrow.... it is not healthy for me to have his presence so profoundly near. I will kick him out... and for that I need to be at my best... so I am off to sleep and hopefully get more than the usual few hours... I live in hope... I live in hope.