One year down the road. One year since that fateful morning when I rolled over in bed to see his cell phone lying on the pillow next to me, one year since I discovered that the man I had married twenty years before, the man I have loved, honoured, and cherished, was a lying cheating jackass.
It's been an eventful year since I discovered that Sir Arsewipe wanted a divorce.
The move came to pass and one year down the road I find I am a country away from all that came to pass. I look back on the last year and so much has changed... yet so much hasn't. I find one year down the road I am still in love with the man I married. I am still mourning the loss of the love of my life. I still miss him. But I also realize that Michael is not the man I fell in love with. The man I loved never existed. The man I fell in love with was a figment of my imagination... always was, always will be. I am a country away... but it still is not far enough... I have stopped running because there is no place on the face of this earth that will get me far enough away. There is no place to which I can run. I have run and now it is time to stop.
So what has happened in this last year?
I left HH on the 9th of September for Newfoundland to make my way in the world without the person who had been my anchor. Set adrift like a hot air balloon drifting with the wind I have come to a halt on these shores... but the thing that holds me here is not roots nor even a solid anchor... it is a place, for now. That's not to say that I am looking to move on... no, for now it is good enough but that's not to say that I won't move on either.... it just means that I am rolling with life. Who knows what the future holds... I may stay... I may not.
I have come through some very dark times this past year. To be quite honest I have been introduced to the very depths of hell and one is never sure if one will return there or not. I hope not but one should never say never. I don't want to see hell again... I hope I never see hell again.... but you never know in this world.
It all started as the train pulled away from the station in Edmonton. I watched from my berth as the man I had loved came closer and closer on the platform and as I got closer and closer I realized that he saw me in the window and I began to cry. Hot silent tears welled in my eyes as we drew nearer to each other. I just stared unable to tear my eyes away. Then, as the car I was in was slowly passing by, he held up his hand in a silent wave to me. My hand went up to the window and there it stayed in a half wave as if to reach out and hold on. He doubled over in agony.... and then disappeared from sight, as the train slowly rolled past him.
I was on my own for the first time in many years and so was he. That was the last time I saw the Michael I fell in love with... he is gone.... fully and completely. He is no more. Nor will I see him again. I am sure he walked away from the platform in distress perhaps because he felt bad about me but mostly I think because he was losing the girls... but I know he drove through the night and by midmorning the next day he was back in HH and on his way to the arms of the other woman... the one that now claims his loyalty.
The trip across Canada was trying... the reality of my parents problems hit home like a thunder clap. They are not well... it is a miracle we all got here safely. But we did. There were many trials along the way. Horrific conditions on the railway... obnoxious workers in Montreal... arduous work in Halifax securing a car and trailer. Long days and dark nights as we drove from Nova Scotia to the ferry. A horrible night in Portes aux Basques. And a disheartening welcome when we opened the door to our new home. The stink of smoke and the filth was enough to knock you backwards... but we persevered and we have begun to make this house more home-like.
And here we are one year later...
There have been bad times and there have been good times. But I knew when I left HH that I was running on adrenaline and that once the adrenaline rush was over I would hit a wall.... and I did. Boy did I hit the wall hard.
October month was a month of getting all the paper-work and medical/driver's licence cards finalized. It was a month of settling my mom and dad into their new home while trying to get the girls settled into their new school. It was difficult but still busy.
Then November came and I crashed. I remember walking the dogs at night and I would sit under the stars of the ink black night at my favourite sitting place which is further out on the end of the point of land I live on. I remember night after night just sitting and crying quietly as the stars shone down their light on me. I remember wondering what in the world I was doing, going to do... what the future held for me.... I was terrified. Money was part of the issue but loneliness was the bigger issue. I felt resentful that I would have to be the soul care giver to my parents and I found single parenting daunting... the whole thing worried me. But like anything it all comes together and much takes care of itself.
When we left HH what I wasn't expecting was the uninvolvement of Sir A in the girls lives... that has been the biggest shock. He is not a parent except only in as much as it is convenient for him and he can throw money at it. His telephone calls at first were fairly frequent but then quickly began to dwindle. They grew shorter and shorter and by Christmas there were times when two weeks would go by with barely a text. He does not seem to want to be involved in their day to day lives... that has become apparent. He sends them gifts for special occasions but doesn't seem to care what is happening to them. I see his phone calls becoming shorter and shorter and when he has finished I ask the girls what their father had to say and they tell me that there wasn't much time to talk. Usually he cuts the conversation short because he has to go somewhere or his phone is going dead... once he used walking the dog as an excuse. Conversations seem superficial talking about the weather etc... He wanted to visit them at Christmas time so that was good but then plans for summer at first were defined by his working for the JCRs. The girls have begun to realize that he is emotionally unavailable to them. At one point during the year he accused me of poisoning the girls against him... I was horrified because I have done anything but poison them against him... he's done a mighty fine job of that all by himself. What has been the biggest shock is that everyone, mom and dad and even Leah and Shellsea, have let go of him long ago... it's me... stupid me who is having the most trouble letting go of him. The girls think of him very little and have very little respect for him... (the have begun to call him as the F**ktard and Douchy McDouche and his whore is Shortanddoughy). I think it is me who has the most respect for him and that is because I still have a hard time equating the man I thought I had married with the one who is real. It has been very difficult.
December came and by then we were beginning to see the way of things. Bitter remarks were made regularly by the girls and I was watchful of this because I did not want them to become hardened by it. I have even gone so far as to try to subtly warn him that the girls opinion of him was changing but I can't come right out and speak to him because he gets defensive and starts to accuse me of over reacting.
All fall I sunk deeper and deeper into despair not only because of what I was seeing happening to the girls and their father but because I was finally coming to grips with how little I meant to him. We hardly talked anymore. When we did he was usually mean and impatient and belittling. I also was beginning to see the reality of my loneliness and how difficult it will be to make a life for myself on my own. As we drew closer to Christmas the whirl that is Christmas the dark pit of crying was pushed back for a while.... but I was still standing on a precipice. Michael came back to Nfld for Christmas. He arrived on Christmas Eve night and I knew the next few weeks would be painful. Christmas eve and day were not too bad... better than expected actually. But then the day came when I had to meet Michael at Gambo intersection with the girls so that they could spend the next week with their father. He was there waiting for them when we got there and I saw him get out of the car. He was wearing a hoodie that I had given him and one of those skull toques that rappers often wear.... he looked like an old man trying to turn back the clock and all I could think was "pathetic". I did not get out of the car but instead said my good-byes to the girls inside and allowed them to take the stuff out of the back with their father's help. I saw them heading off toward the car he was driving, so I got out of there fast and headed for home. All the time I was stiff... stiff outside, stiff inside.
I never sunk as low as I did that next week. Each day was a pointless effort to get up and try to find a reason for doing so. I tried to spin.... I tried to draw... I tried to write poetry. None of it worked. I really had no reason to get going each day and so I finally went to the drugstore and bought a $50 iTunes card and started watching movies. I watched movie after movie after movie. That's all I did.... I didn't even eat a lot. I hardly went downstairs as I lay on my bed watching movies on my computer. Anything to take my mind off my troubles... some people drink... some people take drugs... some people become workaholics.... I watched movies. I knew I was in a bad frame of mind.... I knew I needed help. I tried finding self-help stuff that would help me get through... some of it helped but not much. All the while I was dwelling on those words "I never loved her... I married her out of obligation" that he had written to Rosie SG. I would cry for hours on end.... and I was so dehydrated that I wondered how the hell my skin didn't just turn into a bunch of scabs.
Those cutting words still haunt me... not a day goes by that I don't shed a few tears over them.
There came a night during that week when I hit such a low... no one can ever know how low you can fall emotionally... mentally.... I felt unloved, abandoned, unworthy, useless, all the reasons Michael had given me for not loving me anymore reverberated in my head like a bell tolling a death. Late one night about 3 a.m. I sat up in bed.... I sat up, turned on my computer and wrote a letter. If truth be told it was a suicide note. I wrote it to Michael. I wrote it to him because I knew that when I was gone he would have the girls. I knew that as soon as I was finished with myself... someone would find it and would give it to him and he would read it sooner or later. It was only one page but it said all I needed it to say. After I finished it I cried and cried and cried and then I started searching online for ways to kill myself successfully. Morning finally came and Narmin wanted to go out. Thank God for Narmin. He was what saved me that night.
I have dabbled in hell a few times since that night. I really think I saw the flames of hell licking at my heals... and they have been close half a dozen times as the winter progressed. But I hung on. I hung on because of Leah and Shellsea... because of Narmin... because of my parents... because of true friends like Carol Densmore, and Linde Gillert, Rene Giesbrecht, and Char Stark,... and the best non-sister-in-law a person could ever have.... I held on because I didn't want to die... but I just felt that there was no point... and I couldn't see past my nose and I felt I had no other option.
The funny thing is that it was my crazy sense of humour that got me off the edge. Back at the end of March, I was looking for a website that could confer information about killing yourself quietly and successfully when I happened on a website that I can no longer find. I can't even remember the name of the website. I have to say here before I continue that sometimes I think that there are higher powers that are directing us and watching out over us and then there are times when I think that it is complete hogwash and that we are completely alone in this universe with nothing to direct us at all but ourselves. Whatever the case I found myself on that website and a good damn thing too. Maybe it was the noir side of my sense of humour... I don't know but that website changed everything for me. I don't know why I found that website... whether it was coincidence or if it was a higher power... it doesn't matter. What matters is that it saved my life.
I had decided previously that the best method to do away with myself was to asphyxiate in the car. I would take some sleeping pills turn on the car and just go to sleep..... so I wanted to know some details like should I tape the windows and vents so that there was no air coming in... (well... all I can say is you have to be practical). I knew I would wait until the girls had graduated.... so I had time to plan... I mean if I was going to off myself then I needed to make sure that they were in good shape... which meant insurance... and a will, and finalizing the divorce so Sir A couldn't get his shitty hands on the money I have managed to get from our estate, etc.... The girls, you have to realize, were priority one. They still are but I'll get to that in a minute. Mom and Dad, I believed, could fend for themselves for the most part with pensions and so they didn't really come into my plan at all. (I know that sound unfeeling... but there is my sister and I have since then rethought that whole thing... and you don't really think straight when you are suicidal.)
Anyway I was looking on this website for best suggestions for a successful suicide and there they were talking about things like buying a two inch hose... the best kind is black PVC pipe apparently... and connecting it to your exhaust and feeding it in through the window, but the problem is that with low emission standards in North America that lots of people who try this method are unsuccessful. Then they suggested that you take an ordinary black garbage bag and put it over your head with duct tape around the neck.... I could see me having a claustrophobic attack inside the bag and dying really badly.... I think it was the whole actual indignity of actually putting a garbage bag over your head and using that very mundane thing called duct tape to do such a horrific thing to yourself and then an image of Red Green came to mind (I think it was the reference to duct tape) and I started to laugh.... sick... I know... but I laughed so hard.... I laughed and laughed and kept laughing and then I thought.... there really is no dignity in death... and like that I was me again... I wasn't standing on the precipice of hell anymore... It was all so macabre. Nope, I was ok and I would be no matter what. 'Cause you know what... I'm a survivor. I picked myself up and dusted myself off and I've been going ever since.
The nice thing is that I am beginning to enjoy life again. Simple things give me the greatest pleasure. Sunsets, the sparkle of the sun on the water, the wheeling around of the gulls, the feel of the sun on my skin and the feel of the wind in my hair. The feel of Narmin's little body cuddled into my back at night. The laughter of the girls when they are joking around with each other. I am once again engaged in the world around me.... weirdly enough, I lost my blog at that time... (that's the Becoming Claire Now one) and I debated restarting again. But then that's when I decided on the new one.... it makes you wonder if things don't happen for a reason. The best thing to come of my descent into hell is... he's not worth it.... he lost me. It took a while but I'm not available to him anymore.... and never will be.
I did have one more bad time and that was when I went to visit his family in Nicholsville. There were so many memories and regrets to ponder. It was a very difficult weekend. Somehow I feel such a disconnect with all that that place used to mean to me. The hill where he proposed to me and gave me the ring was hard to see. The Goose arm road where we hiked is as fresh to me now as it was then when we hiked it together. All the memories he instilled in me are still there... it was difficult. Very difficult. But I got through and maybe next time I visit, won't be as bad.
Recently the girls and I have been talking. We have discussed their dad at length.... they will be leaving to go and see him in July... as I said, he at one point was putting the JCR camp ahead of everything and wanted them to come at the end of July instead of when they got out of school. This would have meant that they would have had very little time with him at all... he knew that but the JCR thing was more important.... then suddenly there was a change and I found out that the JCR summer camp has been changed in time this year and he won't be attending it. I realized right away that the change in his heart for the time to see the girls was only due to the fact that his schedule had changed and that the girls are not his priority but that the JCR camp thing was and when he no longer had that opportunity it was back to his next best option.... which was the girls. They have never been his priority... he is his priority. I never said a thing about it... I think he has to make his own way in the world now and I am not going to teach him how to be a father... he's had 17 years to figure that out. But the girls see it.... they know that they were second to the JCRs and Rangers and everything else in his life.... Leah told me recently that Opa has been more of a father than Michael ever was. She talks with her grandfather a lot and sometimes I walk downstairs into the living room and hear them talking about philosophy and politics and Leah's future and so on and I think,... yup, my dad is pretty awesome... I am glad they have someone to be a dad to them... Dad even gives them a weekly allowance which is more than Michael does. Michael spends his money on himself... and his girlfriend. The girls see that too. So this summer they are going to BC not so much to see their dad... they are going to BC to see their friends. They don't talk to him, they talk at him.... on the phone even when he is there in person... they just talk at him or they don't talk at all. They all have let go of him... mom and dad, and the girls. My dark times are over but I still have a hard time equating Michael with this jackass that he has become and sometimes it depresses the hell out of me. When it does that's when I repeat... he's dead to me... he's dead to me. And if I treat it like I am in mourning then I can carry on.
What's left? I can tell you.... the divorce is being finalized... the lawyer's have it in hand and it will be done soon. It really is just the final stamp of something so complete already. We are divorced in our hearts and I don't know where he stands a year down the road... if he has any regrets. I don't care. It doesn't matter now. Sometimes I think of him on the platform of the railway station.... it always makes me sad. By July 1st we will be able to file our divorce with or without the adultery forms signed... I couldn't care less. Had the separation gone through earlier in the year I would have sought the adultery thing so that we could complete our divorce but it will go through and in the end the adultery thing is just a byproduct... it matters that he committed adultery but it matters worse that he never loved me... I can tell you those words have haunted me like nothing else ever has... and they always will. They hurt.... a deep down hurt."I never loved her... I married her out of obligation". He broke my heart by cheating on me but he cut off my legs when he said those words. They have taught me that no man can be trusted and no man ever will be trusted. I am well and truly single in my mind. Letting go... more and more all the time.
I still go and sit on my rock at the house at the end of the road and look at the stars but now I don't dwell on things... now I see the stars and I am so glad that I really see them... they are beautiful. Life is beautiful and it is a shame to throw it away. I think of the future sometimes and it doesn't scare me as much... I don't know what the future holds but at least I am not as afraid as I was.
What I know:
1. Michael never loved me:
a. he only after a few months into our relationship left me one evening after a very romantic afternoon of sex and cuddling to go to a dance... you don't walk away from a warm and welcoming woman unless you are stupid or not in love... that was my first hint not to marry him.
b. he kept seeing an old girlfriend even after we were engaged. That was my second hint not to marry him.
c. only six months after we were married I discovered he had been lying to me about money he said that he had but he "was too afraid to tell me the truth about the fact that he had already used it" instead of keeping it to use on his student loan as he had told me he would. When you are afraid to tell your wife that you used your own money... well I should have divorced him then... That kind of told me too he was a coward.
Every time stuff like that happened, I forgave him and gave him the benefit of the doubt because I really thought there was a great guy underneath... just a bit foolhardy though... the lie about the money really hurt mostly because "he was afraid to tell me". Leah told me once... Mom you are a good person... good people always expect good from other people and they always see the best in other people. They say that you reflect back what you are in the world... I should see good in that case... I thought I saw good.... I believed I saw good... because I am good.
The three things above were my hints that I should never have married him, but the truth couldn't help but hit me in the face... and this one is the one that most haunts me...
d. when he told his online and telephone whore Rosie Seidel-Grazuities that he never loved me... well you can't get more blatant than that.... I was a damn fool... an enabler... it never occurred to me in all my twenty years with him, that I might be wrong about him.
I also know this:
2. Michael has a sexual fetish for things sick and out of control...
a. he came home a few years before we separated with some really sick porn with a woman gagging in the video from giving... well it was disgusting I'll just say that. It turned him on but just grossed me out... I had him throw it out. (I think he resented me for that.)
b. he wrote pornagraphic stuff to Rosie (in the hardest language possible) on a regular basis even initiating it. I showed it to a friend and she said it was like the worst hard core porn she had ever read.
c. he chased Samantha in ways that were perverted initiating sexual things with her knowing he had a wife and children and that she was vulnerable from her own divorce.
d. there have been things intimated and unprovable that he has had extramarital sexual encounters all through our relationship.
e. he cheated on Samantha since the sexual encounters with Rosie according to the dates of his FB messages, were ongoing during his courtship with Samantha.... forget the fact that he was still having sex with me... and I'm willing to bet that he was telling her that he wasn't getting any at home.
In addition, I also know this:
3. Michael is a coward:
a. he was too afraid to tell me that he didn't love me right from the beginning. (as said above.)
b. he was too afraid to tell me he had lied about the money issue when we first got married.
c. he was too scared of initiating my anger and scared of emotional or deep conversations so he didn't tell me when things were making him unhappy all through our relationship.
d. he was too afraid to tell his mother for over a week we were splitting up.
e. he was too afraid to make a decision to stay with me and the girls when I asked for a reconciliation... he had to ask his mistress.
f. he couldn't come out and say that his decision was to split with me when I asked for a reconciliation... he just kept beating around the bush and wouldn't come out with it.
I have discovered since leaving him this:
4. Michael is proving to be a terrible father:
a. the girls have told me about how very hard it has always been to go to their father with anything that concerned them and they have not felt they could talk to him.
b. he has gone weeks without conversing with them by phone or email since they have lived with me here in Nfld. and even when I hinted to him that he should pay a little more attention to them he has ignored me.
c. he put the JCRs first over the girls when it came to planning their trip until the dates got changed.
All of the above saddens me but it has taken me this whole year to come to grips with the reality that is Michael. I cannot change the past and on bad days I curse that I ever met him... his happy go lucky attitude was what attracted me to him... but in the end it was the same lack of seriousness that was our downfall. His sense of humour will always be what is his biggest attraction but it will also always be his biggest fault.... not a serious bone in his body and sometimes there needs to be a sense of decorum and a sense and seriousness. Marriage is serious... it is hard work... no one goes through it without temptations and choices.... Michael was tempted and to be truthful I have had my temptations over the years too.... but it is whether or not we choose to act on those temptations that will bring down a family. It is what we do and not what we think that hurts people and crushes them. Michael chose wrongly... maybe he regrets.. more than likely not... if he doesn't maybe he will... I don't know.... but again it doesn't matter because in the end here we are and this is what we have left to live with. His actions and thoughtlessness has brought a woman who did not deserve it to the brink of hell. And no matter what else he has done, he has financially ruined me... my future is greatly reduced because of him. It will take a miracle for me to live out my days anywhere near being equal to him financially. You only need to look at our projected budgets to see that. I will live on $15,000.00 dollars a year for the rest of my life (if all goes well) and he will live on $89,000.00 less my $15,000.00.
Michael has always reminded me of a joker/court jester. Always ready with a laugh or a light hearted quip with no regard for those he might be saying it to or that he might be hurting someone... he never knew when enough was enough. I always thought him to be a bit too light hearted, too easy going, too much at the whim of others but I never thought him hurtful. I would never have married him if I had.
To answer that question there are two things that must be addressed...
1. I don't want to ever see or have anything to do with Michael again. This past year has driven that home forcefully. I have no respect for him whatsoever... none. I know at one point he said to Rosie that he hoped we could be friends... To that I say a resounding "no". I don't know him and apparently I never did and as a stranger, and knowing what I know about him now, I don't care to know him. What I have learned about him... what I see in him is that he is not a nice person, not a kind person. What appeared to me to be kindness and easy going-ness is nothing more than apathy and lack a daisy-ness. And since he has proven to be unfaithful not only in marriage but as a son-in-law, and more importantly in parenting as well, I really don't care to have contact with him. He has become an ugly person to me.... on the inside... where it counts. I want him out... O U T... out of my life and that includes his financial support. I am hopeful that I will eventually be able to support myself and when I do I will gladly relinquish his support. However, having said that, some basic things have come home to roost. Knowing now, that I was never loved by him, I have begun to understand the nature of our relationship. I have begun to understand that I was nothing more than his whore and his housekeeper all through our marriage, and as such, room and board does not even begin to cover the cost of what he owes me. Whores get far better pay than room and board....or anything else that he gave me, so he can make up for it now. I figure I am entitled to the money he pays me and I am not ashamed to take it. He has left me high and dry at a time when the support of a partner was most needed. With my illness of Celiac's disease, my ongoing back issues, problems with high blood pressure, and my parents subsequent need of full time care, I don't think anyone realises the difficulties of finding a job and working full time while I have parents that are so needy and my own health issues at hand. Actually he is getting off fairly easily. In addition, I am not willing to take any old job just to disconnect from him. I will not work in anything that does not pay very well or where I am required to do heavy or hard manual labour... to raise his kids I have given up the ability to have a career and any job I get from this point forward, unless it is self-employment, would never give me the income that I could have generated had I had the opportunities as a young woman that I could have had. Yes, I realize that it was my decision not to work and be a stay-at-home mom, but had I known that he was going to dump me, had we not had a conversation about that where he promised to support me as a stay at home mom, would I have made different decisions... you bet your fucking ass I would have. Our vows said till death us do part and the discussions we had when I was pregnant with Leah about me being a stay-at-home mom and losing the possibility of a chance at a career and him promising to take care of me led me to make that decision. In that discussion he promised he would never leave me this way.... and so I trusted him... so much for promises. So I will take his money for as long as I can and I don't feel one bit bad about it. As a matter of a fact I'd take a lot more if I could.
2. I take each day as it comes now. I don't plan for the future because it is too dark to see far enough ahead. For now I will work on my paintings and my MS program and my writing. I will teach spinning as I can. I will live each day to the fullest trying to take pleasure in the smallest of things. That is enough with which to be going forward. I do know that as soon as the divorce is final which should be by the end of the summer I will be going forward with my change of name... I used to be Frankie... but it doesn't fit anymore. Even after I moved back to Nfld... I would think of myself as Frankie Nichols. Slowly that has changed over the year. The last time someone called me Frankie by accident I felt really weird like that was a lifetime ago or another person. I have not fully become this new name I have chosen partially because I still have to use my given name. I am working on that.... the hardest thing has been letting go of the Mrs. Nichols which I was called. This comes as a surprise. I had finally become accustomed to being called Mrs. Nichols. It took twenty years and I'm not even sure when that happened but somewhere over those years I began to think of myself as Mrs. Nichols.... it has been harder than I expected to go back to my maiden name. But I will be a new person with a new name soon. I think the new me deserves that.
Leah has an inkling of the dark times I have gone through over the last year but Shellsea and mom and dad do not.... it is difficult to tell them how low I went. I don't know if I ever will talk about it to them... they do not and probably should not know about it... it would break their hearts to know about my descent into hell. Suicide is a dreadful thing to talk about.
When I left HH I took with me some items that belonged to Michael and some things that he had given me over the years... small things... things of no consequence... things that he probably won't miss but things that were meant to be inclusive of him in my family and me in his... They include a little pin he gave me that he had gotten from a bubblegum machine a chicken pin... the stocking that I had made for him. The first ornament he ever gave me for our Christmas tree... things like that. Today I will burn them... he is not my family anymore. He is just the sperm donor.
My family has a weird dynamic... we are a motley crew. It consists of me, Leah and Shellsea, my mom and dad, and the two dogs. We are a family now and you know what... we make a good family.
That is all.
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