The End of the End

Who knew at age 45 I would be burying my ex-husband merely 2 years after I left. Who knew that my children would be without a father, despite the shitty way he treated them. It makes me wonder if maybe I should have stayed. At least my kids would have me there for support and guidance. And I would have them for comfort and solace. If I could do it all over again.... Instead, I fucked myself and my life and my kids all in one fell swoop. And now I am left with nothing. 

I can't seem to get anything right in my life. If I had stayed, I wouldn't have been disgraced or run out of town so to speak. Next year my daughter will be 18. If I had just stayed, I wouldn't have missed out on 2 years of my daughters' life at a time when she needed her mother the most. Instead, I was a bystander, an outsider. I find out what my kids are doing through facebook. That's how I found out their father was so sick. Yes, I had talked to my ex from time to time. I was aware of what he had. I knew he was going for tests and treatments. But I didn't find out how bad he was until my kids posted it on facebook. Not even a phone call. Not even a cry for help. Just status updates on facebook.

So now where do I go from here? I'm in a relationship that is slowly dying, much like my ex. With each passing day it's gets a little worse. With each mistake made by both it slowly dies. As am I. I have lost all interest in life. I don't care anymore. I can't. I don't want to. I don't have the energy to as more and more of my life is being sucked out of me. 

Perhaps I am meant to spend my life alone. I am a loner anyway. I can't get along with people. I don't know how to maintain the simplest of relationships. Hell, I don't even have one close friend. And as I was driving around last night, trying to find a place to go to because I didn't want to go home, I realized that my life is empty. I had no one I could call to hang out with. There was no one I could call just to talk. So I went to the next best place..my beloved water front. 

Somehow even that didn't feel the same. Something was different. I found no peace there. Perhaps it is right when they say you can't go home again. Nothing is ever the same when you turn around and leave. Life marches on with or without you. And I am left behind once again as the spectator. 

And so it will be the beginning of the end...    

I've been so depressed lately. I can't find interest in anything. Nothing makes me happy. All I feel is stress and unhappiness. Nothing in my life seems to be going right. And I feel alone and miserable and just so fed up. I'm looking for where I belong in this life only to find that I don't belong anywhere really. 

Hubby and I have reworked a page that I started called "My Own Little Corner of the World" which is mostly about vintage and retro stuff. It's given me a chance to explore life as it used to be in "the olden days", of a time when our grandparents and parents lived. 

The submissive in me longs for that kind of life. Where the man is in charge, the woman stays home and makes him happy. It just dawned on me as we drove home from my moms today that there is a name for that kind of lifestyle and that it sort of falls under the category of alternative lifestyle as well as Fetish. I remember seeing it on Fetlife. It's called a 1950's household or a Taken-in-Hand relationship. 

There's nothing really different or "fetishy" about it. It just goes back to the time when the husband was the head of the household and the woman stayed home, took care of the house, and raised the kids. Something that women today aren't really encouraged to do. If they do, they are looked down upon and made to feel like there is something wrong with them. 

I am glad that women have come so far in such a short time span. But why are women who decide to stay home and take care of their families looked down on? They're made to feel guilty. 

My mom always told me that you should never put too much pressure on your husband or he will either start having an affair or your marriage will end in divorce. I think, in a way, men have sort of conditioned us to feel that way as well. You feel like you're not pulling your weight or contributing to the household. 

I was a stay-at-home mom for more than 10 years while my children were small. It just made more sense. Day care was too expensive. I'd hate it when people would say "oh you're just a housewife"! Have they ever spent 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week as a wife and mother!?! You have to be everything from the babysitter to referee.

Unfortunately, during that time, my (now ex-) husband was not the type of man who wanted to be head of anything, except maybe his job. He didn't want the stress or responsibility of being the man of the house. So all of that fell to me. I made sure the bills got paid, things got fixed, etc. In essence I was a single mom, only I didn't have to work outside the home. 

I now am happily in a relationship with a man who believes a man is a man and he's responsible for things. Only problem is, we don't talk. I feel like I'm carrying a lot of the burdens. To me, it feels like we have drifted apart. He doesn't tell me things and I don't tell him things. I've kept my feelings to myself.

I did a little research online this afternoon and I did find a page on a Taken-In-Hand relationship. But it seems like every time I try to seek out something different as far as lifestyle goes, it just all blows up in my face. Maybe the submissive in me misses that kind of lifestyle. But no matter how much we've tried, it just seemed to make our relationship even worse. But not having any kind of direction in a relationship seems to make me just apathetic. Like I am just drifting through my life. 

On my days off I am so depressed I don't even want to get dressed or do any housework. I just want to sit in front of my laptop and ignore life and engulf myself in what little entertainment I can find online. 

I don't even want to broach the subject with my hubby because of the disastrous effects the last 3 times we tried it. Plus with his new job, he works early mornings and stays up all night, so by the time he gets home from work, he goes to sleep until he has to pick me up from work. I doubt he would even have the time or energy to take care of me or anything else. 

As it is, he used to make sure I took my meds in the mornings, he used to make sure I was fed, etc. Now it's all up to me (not that I'm not capable of doing it). We barely see each other because either he's at work or he's asleep. By the time i get home from work and we eat dinner he falls asleep after we eat. Or I'm the one who's tired (like last night. I crawled into bed a little after 8:30pm and almost immediately fell asleep).

How can you miss something you never really had in the first place? Or maybe it's more of wanting something that I can't have. I dunno. Either way, there is something missing in my life and I don't know what it is.

I need to get up to make cigarettes. I don't want to do anything. I'm ready to go to sleep out of boredom. Tomorrow is Sunday. Different day, same shit. Nothing changes. We don't go anywhere, we don't spend any time together, nothing. And I don't even care anymore. Sad.  

Memories of a Shattered Soul

Alone I sit, a song plays, triggering a flood of memories. 

Memories of what once was. 

Summer winds blowing through an open window. 

A light on. 

Sitting alone waiting for someone to talk to. 

A night sky full of stars. 

A quiet room. 

How could I have fallen for a game? Or was it?  

The lines are blurred between what I thought was real and what reality was. 

How could I have fallen?

Crickets chirp. A dog barks in the distance.

Hello, are you there?

Are you listening?

Or am I all alone in this room?

Mistake after mistake I've made.

Will I ever get it right?

Maybe I'm not supposed to.

The distant rumble of thunder.

A flash in the sky.

The scent of rain in the air.

Has it all been in vain?

Why is it this way?

What have I done to deserve this?

What was so horribly wrong that I have done in this life?

I know memories will haunt me forever.

And with it pieces of a shattered heart remain.

Pieces of a shattered soul.

To never be the same again.

Memories that I will forever cherish.

Memories that I will hold onto forever.

And once in a while they will come flooding back to me.

And the feelings of them will engulf my mind and my soul.

Reminding me of a time that was and will never be again.    

           

The Deconstruction of a Relationship

It is truly a sad thing to watch a relationship slowly fall apart and knowing that there is nothing you can do about it. All the things you once felt are gone. The relationship slowly dwindles. Neither of you have time for each other; there's always something else. 

Once you realize what is happening, you slowly begin to shut down and shut out the feelings. You become numb and indifferent to what is going on.

How did this happen? How did it get to this point? Why? You ask yourself the same questions over and over. It takes two people to make a relationship to work, but only one to destroy it.

This is what I feel is happening with my relationship and I don't know how I can fix it or if I even want to bother anymore. I'm tired, mentally and emotionally. I'm depressed beyond belief. I don't really care about anything that is going on around me. I get up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. Same thing day after day. 

He says it's not true. He says it's all in my mind. Maybe it is. But all I can do it tell how I feel and how it would look to someone who didn't know us. 

Maybe it is just me. Maybe I am incapable of maintaining a "real" adult relationship. Maybe there is just too many strikes against me. Maybe I am "settling" instead of holding out for what I truly want, if I even knew what that was. 

I see the same thing happening now that happened in my first marriage. There is a saying about how if it's just one person then it could be them. But if it's more than that, then maybe it is you. In other words, if someone says they don't like you or something you are doing, chances are it is just their opinion. But if a bunch of people observe the same thing, then chances are very good that it is you.

I don't know what the future holds, nor do I care. I will just go through each day doing the best that I can. It's all I can do. And I will watch this relationship either flounder and die or hope that things will change in the future for the better. My money is on the first rather than the latter.