Letter to my husband

I can't hold on anymore. I am so tired of being miserable.
I went to a baby shower today. And I sort of sat in a lump the whole time. Someone was passing a baby around and I didn't even try to get an opportunity to hold it. When in the past, I would have been socializing with everyone, I would have pushing to be able to hold and play with the baby. But I didn't. I felt like a pretender. A married woman with a ghost of a husband, a ghost of a life. I listened to everyone talk about the trivial little fights that they had with their husbands, and them complain at how things get so boring sometimes...and I feel so alien among them. It is so wrong to be jealous of that triviality? To want the mundane, even if it means that I live a boring existence...just as long as I am not alone in that boring existence?

I did so well, for so long, hiding the pain. I just can't anymore, it bleeds through....like sweat making makeup run.

And now, people just assume that I am being over emotional. You do it. You tell me that all you want is your best friend back. But your best friend never left, she is still where you left her. Dealing with that abandonment on a daily basis....struggling between hating you for leaving me, and between wanting you so badly. Wanting you here so that I could feel complete. I try to confide in you, try to tell you what I am feeling. But you shrug it off, shrug me off.

It seems that Jimmy now feels that it is ok to treat me disrespectfully as well. I guess that is because I let you. He doesn't pick up after himself. He sweeps stuff out of his room and leaves it and the broom out in the other room for me to handle. He dyes his hair and leaves permanent pink stains all over the bathroom and the rug....leaves a giant white bleach stain on the cream rug. I tell him these things that he is doing. I show them to him. And all he does is just shrug, look at it, and walk away. He doesn't apologize. Doesn't clean it up. He only acknowledges that it exists and leaves it for me to clean up.

Where I felt that I was being taken advantage of by one man, now it is two. However, if I tell either of you about it, if I voice legitimate concerns, I'm just shrugged off....I'm just being overly emotional.

Here's the crazy thing. You know me! You know what I am like, and you know that this is NOT like me. This is not my true self....but a self that is reacting in a perfectly natural way to a horrible situation. Just like your PTSD symptoms are a natural reaction to the horrific events that have happened to you.

I don't want to go to a shrink. I don't want to have to go to a stranger and tell them my life story just so that they can pat me on the head and tell me that it will get better. I don't want to go to another person who is just going to shrug me off as well as soon as that hour is up. I don't want to be put on medication. I'm in a stupor as it is, it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things if I am in a stupor but with a smile on my face. A fake smile. Painted on.

I should be working right now....but I'm so tired. Tired of having to do everything on my own. Tired of looking into a future without you...a future where I would have to be doing everything on my own. Or worse yet, the thought of a future with you, but a future where I am still doing everything on my own. The thought of that is a prison sentence. I am in prison.

I'm in prison and I am guilty of no crime.

I didn't do anything to deserve this. I've always gone through life with the notion that if I was a good person and was good to other people that I would have a good life. This is not a good life. This is hell.

There has to be a way out of this. There has to be some reprieve. If you are where you say you are, they have to tell you when you can leave. They have to allow you visitors. This is a violation of their oath= to do no harm. Because all this is now harm. It is leaving unnecessary scars...wounds that just fester and won't ever heal.

I can't be happy or positive anymore, it's gone. My reserve has dried up. You didn't come home for Thanksgiving....I haven't heard your voice in weeks. And I know that you won't come home for Christmas or the New Year or our next Anniversary and I that I am just going to turn into this wreck of a hysteric woman whose husband deserted her and couldn't let her go.

I need to be free of this.

And I know that you will read this, and frown....and then shrug it off. I'm going to post this on my blog...so that others can read this, and shrug it off too. I'm just going to keep pounding my head against the wall until the wall crumbles or my head caves in. I'm going to do these things, because I am beyond the point where I have the power to do anything constructive about it. I'm beyond hope. I keep reaching for you to save me, and you're not there....

I love you.
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