People believe that you are like the way they think..just saying.

It is important to keep in mind before I start this post that I am a slow learner. I am sure most of you reading this will look at the title and think, "Durf. Of course they do." However I did not. This rambling start leads into part two of why my bubble burst..I promise.

If you could pick one word to describe me, it would probably be nice. I AM very nice. I even looked up the definition of nice, and it is me: "pleasing, agreeable, kind, amiably pleasant, delightful."  Makes me sound like some kind of dessert, doesn't it? I don't get mad easily, I am easy to get along with, I care about people and things. (I had a hard time discarding of a black widow spider in my office one time, for God's sakes.) However, being nice also means that I approach the world from the standpoint that everyone else is nice, too. And mostly they are. I have navigated through life quite successfully on this principle.  Until my second marriage with the man that my sister described as the "Mayor of Crazy Land". And she was right. Damn it. 

I am not going to talk a lot about the Mayor in this blog...it's not productive for my life now, and it's not something I am proud of at all. It really rocked my sense of who I was and what I believed about myself. But he is important to mention in the sense that he was another huge force that blew my bubble apart. 

Once again, please keep in mind that I am a slow learner. When I first met the Mayor, he was really nice. He was charming and fun and romantic..all those things that you read about in books (big mistake to believe that, by the way) and although I was always a person that thought about things, and debated what I should do, and asked everyone their opinion, I knew what I was doing with him was right. This should have been a big red flag for me from the start. 

There were some red flags waving, however..that I ignored. 

1. He never seemed to do anything with his two children. 
2. He lived his entire life on a computer. And I mean hours.
3. He would get irritated by things that I thought were kind of silly to get irritated about. However, I was nice, remember...and just kind of brushed that aside. 
4. He didn't have friends. I always had friends...and thought it was a little strange.

The thing that is hard to admit here is that I was so caught up in the romance of it all that I totally disregarded my friends, my family, and everyone who thought I had lost my mind to be with this man. The thing that is scary to me to this day is that I thought that it was the smartest thing I have ever done..and I moved myself and my two children to move out to New Mexico to be with him. And it was wonderful at first. And then it became real. And I was in no way prepared for the real.

I'm not going to go into the details of the years we spent together, except to say a couple of things. Since I am the kind of person who does what they are supposed to do, no matter what, that is what I did. I had two lives...the life at school that really became my safe place, my home..and the life that I had at home where I would come and do what I needed to do..and pray for Sundays, where all the children and I were alone, without him.

Living with him was like living in quick sand...you could say something one time, and it would be fine. You could say the exact thing a day or so later, and it would lead into a huge explosion and a fight. He would get upset about the slightest things, and contradict himself constantly. And if you dared to question the variances, you were being disrespectful. So I learned to disengage. I became very good at it, in fact. He would start his tirades, and I would just go away somewhere where things were sane and made sense. And nothing much made sense.

And then there were the children. There were mine, and his. And I will tell you if the entire sense of it all was to meet his two children, and somehow make a difference in their lives, it was worth it. Both of his children were lonely, sad, and abused. This I saw from the start. They couldn't really make a decision, cause they weren't allowed to at all. I tried to do what I could to protect and help them. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't, and sadly, sometimes I disengaged to survive.

I will say one thing though about this time. I learned to stand up for myself and stand my ground. It would have been easier just to go along and do what he wanted me to do. But the fact of the matter is that even if I did that, it still wouldn't have been enough. I lost enough of myself as it was in this marriage..I put my children through things that I never should have stood for. But I did build a good life for myself with an amazing network of friends...who became my family. Only really a few friends knew the whole story. It was too embarrassing to admit that I put up with all this quicksand. But it was cyclical...he would do something horrible, there would be an explosion, he would be "sick" for a couple of days, and then it would go back to something resembling normal.It was abuse..but I was too close to the situation to see it. 

And then Reid died. And I will say that it seemed to me that he became the man that I always saw in him...somewhere. He was the one that tried to revive Reid...and got me out of the room, so I wouldn't see him move Reid's lifeless body to the floor. And if he NEVER did anything more for me than that, I am grateful. I honestly think about that, and wonder where I would be today if I had to do that. 

After Reid died, my life kind of fell apart..just saying. I'd go to school , do what I was supposed to do (I think) get in the car, remember that Reid died, and go home, and crawl into bed. I was able to watch "What Not to Wear", but that was about it. And he was wonderful. He told me that he would be there for me, that I could do what I needed to do, and that I didn't have to worry about anything. And he was. He was there for me when I went to Reid's grave site and feel apart when I saw the Headstone. He was there for me when I went to Michael's and tried to find "boy-like" flowers for his little headstone, and I couldn't breathe. And I really began to believe that he had changed..that he was the man that the girls and I always thought he could be.

I was wrong. 

Once thing that I always believed about him was that he told the truth. He was always so adamant about the fact that he was truthful, that I believed it. What I didn't know was that he was NEVER truthful..he twisted and turned everything. I didn't know that the day after Reid died, he was upset at me for not "moving on, and realizing that other people were still here". I didn't know that six months after Reid's death he was telling friends that I had "grieved long enough." I didn't know that he beat the hell out of his daughter's face the day before she fled our house. I believed him.

Big mistake.

About a year after Reid died, I noticed that he began to spend more time at the computer. He was "meeting" new friends, all who seemed to be women. He said that he was "enjoying" meeting new people, and that I was over reacting to what was going on. I knew what was coming down the road, really. I always knew that when he was finished with me, he would treat me in a callous and cruel way. I had seen him do it to others.

And I was right.

When I began to see evidence that the "friendships" were not that, I began questioning. And of course, he didn't like the questions. And the lies continued to expand...and grow..and it got to a point that I could not survive in this kind of environment. He said he "needed time" to decide if our marriage was worth it..and that he would leave if I wanted him to. So I did want him to.

And of course, he didn't.

So I did.

It took me a  very long time to realize that as devastated I was by this, it was a defining moment in blowing that bubble apart. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay married, even as bad as the marriage was. And I was upset at myself that when I finally trusted him, he did exactly what I knew he would do. 

But I left. And even though in the months that followed it took everyone of my friends to keep me on the path that led away from crazy land...I did do that. And that one step led to a lot of changes in my life.