After many years of dishonesty, half-truths, and flat-out lies, I finally made my husband of 17 years leave. 

Fourteen weeks ago, my life changed.  I hope/know it's for the better, but, because I loved him implicitly, it's difficult some days to realize (again and again) that my future is not with him.  That I won't grow old with him.  That we won't be there for each other through the rest of life's remaining struggles and joys.  Some days it fucking sucks.

The first few days were terrible.  I was fortunate to have a very good friend that volunteered to come and stay for a couple of days.  She totally re-did my bedroom while I was at work; paint, bedding, curtains, wall hangings, etc.  She went all out.  I fucking love it.  I love that my place of solace, my comfort zone, no longer resembles anything it looked like during his tenure with me in this house.  I am so grateful for her doing that for me.  I think the coming weeks would've been even more difficult-looking at that each night-knowing he was with his girlfriend, and I was here alone, with our children.

I've had some bad, bad days and some incredibly, unbeliveably worse nights, but I finally think I'm coming out the other side.  I know three months isn't really that long, in the grand scheme of things, but it has seemed like a millenia to me, as of late.

He's only seen Lydia 3 times since he left, because she has expressed to me the discomfort she experiences with him, so I am the buffer.  I dictate when and where he can see her.  Because he is using methadone (for his "therapy"), he is not allowed to drive them anywhere, for any reason.  Our older daughter, Natalie, has completely ignored him since he left.  The night before he actually left the house, he and I had a bad fight where I confronted him with my suspicions of his affair.  The girls heard.  Natalie took a shovel to his truck.  It was brutal. 

When I realized how upset my girls were due to my reaction, I had to stop.  Shut up.  Figure this out.  Kids are freaking.  But the damage was done.  They heard us and were crying and there was nothing I could do except try to difuse the situation.  They, of course, wanted to scream and rage and fight with him.  I told them no, that  if he wanted to go, he could go. That they need not worry about us, we would be fine.  I promised.  And so, on Friday evening, July 14, 2017, he left.

Presumably he went to Jenny's, but who knows?  I know that 75% of what he says to me is generally a lie, so, I can only imagine where/what/when he did/didn't do.  But it cannot be my concern anymore.  He chose Vicodin and Methadone and Heroin over us, his wife and two daughters.  I will never understand addiction.  How can you want ANYTHING more that the safety and security of your family and its happiness?  I just don't get it.

I probably never will, either.  I don't think someone like me is SUPPOSED to understand that shit, because if we did, we would lose our "innocence" in the world.  I certainly am not as blind as I was before, and nowhere near as blind as I was at 24, but I apparently still have a lot of learning to do.  So does he.  And so does he.

He has joked about sharing custody of the dog.  Not interested.  Fuck off.   You left us.  You left him, too.  

It's almost as though he is trying to pretend everything is "hunky-dory", and that this is all ephemeral.  It's not.  He left.  He will stay gone.  He cannot come back.  The girls don't want him back.  What an eye-opener that was.  To have them both independently tell me that they didn't want me to let him come back.  I cried and cried in private later.  Realizing what I'd put them through, all while trying to "save my family".  What a farce.  He truly doesn't understand the extent of the damage he has done because he's wearing his "I'm in therapy and fixing myself now" glasses.   F-you dude.  I fucking BEGGED you for years to get treatment.  You told me to fuck off.

So i did.

When you have more to do, you somehow find a way to make it happen.  It's amazing, really, how much I handle on my own.  My job and its after-hours demands.  The household; laundry, cooking, cleaning, yard, dog, etc.  The kids' schedules with school and music and extra-curriculars.  The rides here and there and picking up friends and driving them home, too.  And then, just life, the ins and outs of the everyday mundane. 

The more you have to do, the more you get done.

In the first weeks he was gone, I cleaned out the garage, the patios out back and finished demolishing the shed he started destroying in 2015.  I burned all the wood.  All of it.  There was a stack of wood in our back yard, from 15 years of tree shedding, debris, fallen trees, etc.  This stack was at least 30 feet long, about 4 feet high and about 3 feet deep.  I burned and burned and burned it all. 

We had a plaster ceiling fall in our hallway/stairwell about 6 years ago.  We cleaned up the plaster mess and eventually, about 6 months later, got it drywalled.  That was it.  He wouldn't finish it, but everytime I brought up doing it ourselves or hiring it out, he adamently declared that he would do it.  He never did.  I've hired it out to a local gentleman, and he is doing a beautiful job.  It's almost done!

I paid to have the fencing I'd already purchsed, installed in our back yard, enclosing it for our dog.  I cleaned out our "living room" aka junk/gathering room, and have turned it into a lovely workable office space and a cozy fireplace area for the family.  I am purchasing a car from an old friend for our older daughter because she will be 16 in June and I will need her help for the transportation.  I am making this work.  Without him.

I always told him that he was with me because I WANTED him with me.  Not that I needed him.

I wasn't wrong.  

I never NEEDED him.