Ghosts from my Past

I've been known to say I have no regrets in my life, because everything I have experienced to this point has gotten me to the exact place I am right now, which is a very contented, fulfilled place.

However, that's not entirely true.

There is a period of about four years in my life in which I have no idea who I was.

I guess to begin the story of my disastrous first marriage, I first have to share the story of Aaron. Aaron was a friend of a friend I first met my freshman year of college. Shortly after we met, we were dating, and shortly after we were dating, I was completely enamored. The story of Aaron and me is another story for another day; the only thing really important to this particular story, for this particular day, is the story of how Aaron broke my heart.

Everything was perfect, to me. About six months into our relationship, if memory serves me correctly, I even asked him if he would be my "first." I'd saved my virginity until that point - kind-of. I'd had oral sex already, including with Aaron, but I'd never had intercourse. And I knew I wanted him to be my first. He declined, saying we should wait until I was sure, until we were sure, and that he was happy the way things were. Or at least, that's how I remember it...my memory has an awful lot of failings.

About a month later, Aaron went to Spain for a month for an exchange program. Two weeks into his trip, immediately after I'd mailed him a spectacular birthday present (but before he received it), I got an email from him comparing us to the Florida Marlins, who had had a good go, but then they changed management and traded off their best players and just weren't the same team that they used to be anymore. I didn't understand what management had changed, or which great players we'd traded off. From my point of view, we were headed decidedly for a World Series victory.

His method of breaking up with me was especially ironic given the fact that he was in NO way an avid sports fan, baseball or otherwise.

I was destroyed.

This is all in retrospect, of course, but I think that at that point, I decided to hell with dating boys. It's not really like I had a long history of dating people with a fear of commitment. In fact, I had a total of three serious relationships at that point. The first cheated on me because I wouldn't have sex with him. I really loved him, in that 16 year-old love way, and was pretty upset when I found out, but the sting from that was gone very soon, considering. The second, he really loved me, and I broke his heart. I didn't really love him, but I loved that he really loved me. Selfishness at its finest. And then, Aaron.

I didn't even consider dating anyone for a long time after Aaron.

A year and a half later, Chris came sauntering into my life. He looked successful, he looked grown up (much too much so, in reality), he looked "together." He was the opposite of a boy - or at least appeared to be so on the outside.

I was waitressing at the Outback, and he came in with five of his friends. I did what I always did - I was charming and flirtatious in hopes of high tips. He glanced at the ticket I was writing, and said, "Nice handwriting." I said, suggestively, "You should see my cursive." He offered to pay the rather large bill. His credit card was declined. "Oh, I must have forgotten to activate it," and he gave me another one, which worked. He gave me a large tip, and his phone number, saying I should call him so he could take me out for my birthday, which was in a few months.

I waited a few days, and called him.

I don't very well remember what happened next. Really, I remember only flashes from the next four years. I remember that one of the first few days we were on the phone, I had an ovarian cyst rupture, and he took me to the hospital in the middle of the night. I remember that soon we were making out and grinding on each other. I remember that he knew that I was a virgin...and that he put his penis inside me anyway, "just a little, because [he] wanted to feel me."

I was really angry about that, but slept at his house anyway. I don't know if I really remember this, or not. I can't imagine that I would have made it up, but it's a blur and there have been times when I've thought things were real but not known if they were, or I dreamed them, but I think that night I woke up to him fucking me. I remember the next morning well. I was sitting on his couch, drinking coffee, and I was so excited that I'd finally had sex. I remember wanting to do it more. But I don't remember it ever really ocurring to me that I'd been raped until long after we'd split up. I don't remember, at all, ever telling him it was OK to penetrate me, or that I wanted to have sex, or forgiving him for sticking it in "just a little."

I don't know if I was raped, or not.

Soon after that, Chris lost his job. I found myself helping him with his bills. Eventually, I just moved in. Of course, I'd been living with my sister, and couldn't just ditch on her, so I continued paying my half of the rent at our apartment until she could find another place. Soon, my credit card was maxxed out.

About three months after we'd met, he suggested we move to Tampa. He needed to find a job, and it was a city, and it was warm. He sold his truck and bought a motorcycle. I remember making a list of the pros and cons of moving with him. It was a very biased list. Among it was not included that I might become pregnant because of a foolish incident involving a bikini and a public hot tub, thereby changing the entire course of my life. If I'd thought of that con, I might not have moved with him. Of course, it stands to reason that since he relied on me for financial support, that he wouldn't have moved without me, and that I would have become pregnant by some foolish incident instead involving a pair of snow skis and a sledding hill. But, I moved with him, and the foolish incident involved a bikini and a hot tub, a lack of birth control since I couldn't afford it, and a lie involving the United States' Military's assurance to Christopher that he was incapable of conceiving children, uttered soley to prevent the pesky use of a condom, and resulted in a pregnancy.

We discussed it and decided not to get married just because I was pregnant. A few days later, he proposed. I believe his marriage proposal consisted of flashing me the diamond he bought with the proceeds from the sale of his motorcycle and saying, "Do you wanna?"

I didn't marry him until around 2 1/2 years later. He showed up at our small wedding in khaki shorts and a Hawaiin shirt, after I'd spent hours finding the perfect dress.

Sex with Chris was horrible, and he didn't care. At first, there was the newness of the whole sex thing to get me through. But he had these awful habits that always made the experience so awkward and unpleasurable for me...often, the ONLY foreplay consisted of, "Come over here and suck on my dick." He'd grab something - a breast, my crotch - and say, "What's this?" in a cartoony voice. I enjoyed coming up with clever answers the first 5 or 10 times...but that continued the entire 4 years of our relationship. I talked to him several times about how much I hated those things, and he just blew me off and continued. What did he care? He was getting off.

Thinking back, I'm absolutely disgusted that I ever fucked him. He was fat, and hairy, and sweaty. He was that stereotypical dickish bald-guy-with-goatee. And I wasted the sexiest, tighest body I'll probably ever have on him.

He was really awful to me. I don't remember a lot, but I do remember that any time I tried to talk to him about being unhappy, he'd tell me good luck getting another guy with a kid in tow. He almost never had a job, but he refused to stay home with our son. I had to work overtime...and pay for daycare. And then, he would spend our money on things like speaker systems and XBOX games. He once bought me a new truck...with my name on it. The second he would get a job, we'd move out of our moderate apartment into a huge, high-rent house...and then he'd lose his job, and we'd have to abandon our lease and try again to find an apartment that would rent to us despite our rapidly-deteriorating credit and bad rental history. I had perfect credit when I met him...and he asked me to get credit cards in my name to buy fancy memory foam pillows and fancy DVD players and a fancy BBQ grill.

And I went right along with it. I worked my ass off, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. The computer job market is hard! He'll find something that will last. He can't look for a job if he has Kaiden at home all day! He's just stressed out...he'll be nice to me once he has a job.

I didn't love him. I never did. And I knew I didn't. One time, I was in counseling, and the counselor said to me, "Why on earth don't you just leave him!?" And I said, "I'm not doing anything else right now. I want to see where this goes."

I felt bad for him. He didn't really know how to laugh, how to have fun. At least, not like I did. And once we had a baby together, I wanted so much to be the perfect little family. What happened at home mattered a lot less than what we looked like when we went out together.

When I was pregnant, I antagonized him. I tried to get him to hit me, so I could have a reason to leave.

I just don't understand who I was then. Or what I was doing. Or why I let it happen for so long. I didn't even marry him until three years into the whole disaster. All of it is just completely contrary to what I know - or what I think I know - about myself.

I suppose it doesn't matter why I did it, or who I was, or what I was thinking. It's over now, and it's almost definite that without going through all that, and leaving my ex-husband at the exact moment I did, I wouldn't have met Anthony, and I'm completely in love with Anthony. That day I woke up and decided to leave Chris, for whatever reason it was, I became an entirely different, better person. That whole experience was probably an invaluable contribution to the person I have become.

And yet, I struggle with it. I struggle to have a good relationship with my son. I just don't feel like I have the maternal bond with him that I do with my younger daughter, who Anthony and I had together after we were married. Chris hasn't seen his son in nearly five years, and has caused me a whole mess of hardship and heartache since we've split. I still harbor lots of negative emotions toward him, even though I'd like to say I just don't care anymore. I have nightmares about being married to him. He can still make me cry.

I just want to know what I was thinking. I just want to make what I did fit in with what I feel like I am.

Unintentional Isolation

For whatever reason, I have lately been feeling more and more isolated from the world as a whole. I'm interacting with people, but I'm not connecting with them - any of them, including my husband. I've tried to rekindle my connection with people, but I've had no luck. I don't even know exactly how to describe how I'm feeling - I just feel separate, disconnected, isolated. Sometimes it seems like loneliness. Sometimes it feels like melancholy. Sometimes it feels like numbness. Sometimes it feels surreal, like I'm watching myself living my life but not really participating.

It would be easy to blame it on moving away from my friends, but I don't think that's what it is. I've actually spent a good deal of time with my friends over the past several months, and I talk to them every day. I've made new friends here, too. I talk to my family almost daily. In fact, I think it would be fair to say I'm talking to people more often now than I have in recent history - quite likely in an event to stop feeling so isolated. But, it doesn't help.

It's starting to affect my marriage. My husband's concerned because my usually vigorous sex drive has dropped to nearly nothing, and I'm often not really enjoying sex like I did a few months ago. I've also become distant from him and spend most of my time not really feeling any substantial feelings for him, which is very unusual for me because I'm usually the "overflowing heart," extremely affectionate type.

In part, I blame my husband's ongoing depression. I wish I didn't, because it seems incredibly selfish to focus on how his illness is affecting me. But, I can't deny that I do. By now, the behavioral cycles are abundantly clear. He goes for a few months with most things seeming fine and then, out of nowhere, he has a blow-up and seems to blame me for everything that's wrong in his life. And then, within either a few hours or, at most, a few days, regardless of what I do or don't say or do, he realizes what happened and apologizes. For awhile, it was emotionally exhausting to feel like I was being attacked when I didn't know what I'd done wrong, and to feel the need to defend myself, and to feel like my husband hated me. But eventually, I just stopped defending myself. It just made it worse, anyway. I pretty much learned to step out of the way and let his episode run its course and wait for it to be over. And, it still played out the exact same way...his anger, his blaming, and eventually his apology.

I read on depression support websites that you have to establish a certain level of emotional detachment from a depressed spouse to protect yourself and be able to support your spouse through it. But how do you turn that off? How do you detach yourself a little bit, and still continue to love your husband madly?

I feel helpless. I can do nothing to help him. Support really means nothing. He needs to take steps to help his depression, but he's not and I can't force him. I encourage him to take time away from the kids and I, but he won't. He constantly flip-flops between wanting a job and wanting to continue staying home, but never makes any decision, never takes any action. He knows he's burned out, but he won't do anything about it. He won't go anywhere, he won't do anything, he won't make any friends. And I can't fix it.

So, I don't know if his depression is why I'm feeling this way, but I do know that before I started feeling this way, I felt that his depression was really the only thing wrong in my life. I love him, I love my kids, I have a great job and great friends and make good money and everything is just fine. And my marriage is great, too - except for his depression.

And that pisses me off! I am totally against the "when X happens, everything will be fine" mentality, because I know that once X happens, Y inevitably happens and things continue to be rough. But the thing is, I *was* happy. Even with his depression, even through the struggles, I was happy. Deliriously, most of the time. But I lost it somewhere.

I do NOT want to believe that I'm depressed. I don't even want to consider it. It's not a matter of being afraid of weakness, because I've been depressed before, I've been on medication, I've dealt with all of that. I just don't think this is that.

My self-image is starting to go to pot, too, though. I eat when I'm upset. A lot. And I've gained back some weight. Not a ton, but enough that I feel like my belly is bigger. That's part of the reason I'm not enjoying sex as much - I don't feel very attractive.

I'm rambling on and on in the hope of discovering something new, some secret to what's going on in my head, but I just don't think that's going to happen. I've always thought I'm pretty self-aware, but this all has me at a loss. I guess that's just one more argument for why it probably is depression, but dammit. Dammit. I don't want to think that my husband's depression has thrown me into a depression, and it would be one crazy coincidence if it just so happened that I developed a chemical imbalance or something like that out of nowhere in the last few months.

I just want to feel alive again.