My Cheating Addict of a Spouse (for 19 Years Now) Would Never Leave Me

 

I Was Oblivious, Too Caught Up in the Constant Drama, and Didn’t Know It

The rain was tapping on the large, unexpected basement window. The tapping was a secure anchor point for my loneliness and confusion. I am alone and my husband, my best friend, is in Iraq. My husband had refused to pay our rent after he had been shipped off to Fort Drum, New York to be deployed, hours after I had given birth to our new daughter. I was now in his parent’s basement, bassinet and all.

I had missed his call in the wee early morning hours the other day. His fiance was excited to inform me that she had woken for it around 3 a.m. He called her after I didn’t pick up.

Yes, fiance.

My phone showed the missed call. I had slept through the rings. It felt like a failure. I was deflated and exhausted. Sleep was elusive.. In all rationality, I knew he wouldn’t be back at the main post in Kurkook, Iraq for another couple of weeks but, I had missed the call. My loop was left untied, hanging in the fragments of my reality. I would rather have someone rip my fingernails out with pliers one by one.

“A long December and there’s reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin’

Now the days go by so fast” — Counting Crows

In reality, it was November. The radio didn’t know that. Was he thinking of me? Will next year be better? Did he know that to breathe, I had to pause my thoughts? I held my mind hostage to get a few peaceful deep breaths, gasps so rigid, I could feel the tears behind my eyes.

Crying would be giving in to the madness. Besides, I didn’t want to wake my firstborn 2 month old. Her colic had been intense. Did she feel my torment?Was I not faking well enough? I had been practicing masks since I could remember, shallow portrayals of my insides.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were coming. We had been best friends since he was 17 and I was freshly dropped out of Christian college at 19. This was the first holiday season I would be without him in six years. We were musicians. I had left my grass roots black gospel church to play flute with him on drums at his evangelistic pentecostal mega building in another part of town.

He was homeschooled most of his life and adopted by his uncle and aunt at four. I had grown up military brat style all over the country and had never seen the ocean. My father was a heavy handed man that fought the temptation to ring my brother’s juvenile arms like rag dolls, slap me around like dead weight, and lift my 300 pound 5 foot nothing mother from the floor by her neck. Don’t worry; It was only about every 6 months and victims were random. My mother stepped in the way for most of it. It sounds worse than if you had actually lived through it.

My husband and I were ripe for drama. We knew nothing about nothing. Worse yet, we didn’t know it.

Without an anchor, I was adrift. I swam in the numbness. The waters felt so thick, I was convinced I could hold them, touch them, bring them close. Pain would have been better than to not feel. Not feeling kept me moving though. It was a drug I relied on. It came through every time.

“Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.

And talked a little while about the year

I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower

Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her” — Counting Crows

“Can’t you just forgive me? You know I’m sorry. We need to heal, to move on.”

My husband was desperate and lonely. Desperate for normalcy. His loneliness was complicated. He had been treating it with one night stands, porn, phone sex, and an engagement with another girl to boot. It didn’t seem to matter that I was there, always available. The cocaine, the opiods, the alcohol, all of that was merely something to do, a distraction. He thought he wouldn’t be coming back to the states. Truly, the addictions started well before his time in the service.

“Now is not the time to heal. You are 1,000 miles away. This is not healing,” I whispered back through gritted teeth.

We had many calls like that. I avoided.

I realize now that I was correct and it was an excuse. We were on a sinking ship. We needed life rafts, preservers, and a way to get back to shore. It was medic, stitch up, and pick up your ass time.

I didn’t want to heal either. My hatred for what he ruined, the hopes I had dared to dream, the life I had hoped to imagine one day. How dare he treat me that way? And, then, I became angrier when I thought of our daughter.

Sticking up for myself was a moot point. I could tolerate a lot. She was fresh, innocent. How could he taint the start of her life? Statistically, things weren’t looking so hot for her now. I think back to my dad considering an abortion, not wanting me, when my parents were 18 . . .

I am writing this while my six kids sleep. A family member is coming over later for advice about her marriage tonight. My kids will be at the dojo choking people. I have five girls and a boy. Jiu-jitsu came into their father’s life about 6 years ago. He looped our kids in quick and it has turned my little girls into budding Black Widows. My son, well, he needs the energy release. He’s still little.

I am left here as the sun peeks over the suburban houses to wonder what I will say. I have spoken to many young wives and girlfriends over the years. I hate it, but I am glad to. It’s an oxymoron I am indebted to live through.

The spurned partner roll is one that people fear, similar to that of the widowed spouse. I went to church after my husband left me. Women would come up and hug me, but no one wanted me to sit by their families. Being close might taint things. I would go up to men that my husband had been mentored by for help or to inform them of what was going on and their wives would step between us. What silent tact!

No one had real advice.

“Divorce him. You have biblical grounds.”

I heard that mantra over and over again. It didn’t turn out that way. We went on to have five more children together. Our youngest is turning 7 this month and our oldest, 16 this year. We will have our 20 year anniversary in July. Life has moved on.

What do I tell her? To keep faith, when christianity is nothing but I fuge mist I lived through for fifteen years. Do I tell her my life is this way because I made it this way? Do I tell her that my contrarian insides gritted me through it all? Do I talk to her about luck, superstition, and the rampant parts of my mind still searching for reason and rationality after all these years?

What I can tell you is that my husband’s addictions nearly ate him from his insides out while I watched. They may never leave.

It’s my choice. I am glad to stay and thankful for every day I have with him.

The secret is, I didn’t have to.

“And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself

To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it’s one more day up in the canyon

And it’s one more night in Hollywood

It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean I guess I should

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” — Counting Crows