And, So It Begins Again

I sit here, typing, while my kids massacre their bedroom with chalk again, and my husband is somewhere with his girlfriend.

Yep. His girlfriend. The new woman that he is absolutely obsessed with, to the point of ignoring his friends, his family, his children, and his 32 weeks pregnant wife.

It is REALLY fucking cathartic to type those words. Because I've been holding it in, hiding it, and just not saying anything because I am SO fucking tired of feeling like a failure. But *I* am not the failure in this situation. I did everything right. I never pressured my husband to ask me. I stood by him when he needed me, through several mental breaks (one landing him in the hospital), job losses, homelessness, multiple occurrences of infidelity (one ending in that trip to the hospital), 2 children (one with Autism), and one more pregnancy. I have tolerated being a video game widow several times over (Because Fallout, Eve, and Grand Theft Auto are apparently worth losing sleep over), being the one that stays home while he would go out with his buddies to "hang out". Not having a job or a way to look for one because only one of us had a car, and we could never afford to buy a second. Or to pay off my tickets so I could get my license back. Missing out on things with my friends because an impromptu thing came up with HIS friends and was more important because of course dude things are more important. Not having any support through treatment and surgery for cervical cancer, 2 pregnancies, back injuries, severe mental illness problems...

And, now, I am just tired of it all.

I spent Friday night in the hospital having early labor stopped. Yes, it worked. Yes, I'm supposed to refrain from stress.
Why was I stressed out in the first place?
Let's see, among the litany of amazingly peaceful things happening in my life (literally bubble baths and bath bombs are the entire list), why would I have any reason to stress out?

Because I have had enough. And told my husband so. And gave him an ultimatum: Treat me with the respect and care I deserve, or find a new place to live as of Halloween. His name isn't on the lease, and I am almost at a place where I can change the name on all of the bills so he doesn't have that to worry about. Anything and everything would be in my name.

It shouldn't be my problem that his girlfriend wants all of his attention, but isn't willing to let him move in with her. He is 100% my problem, but 100% her pleasure? I don't fucking think so.

So, here I go forward. I am scared shitless. I have 2 kids to support, another living with my parents, and one on the way. I have no transportation in a city notorious for having shitty public transportation and where all of the stories I've heard about Uber and Lyft are fucking terrible. Where having a job requires some form of transportation and having a back injury is not an option. Where living any sort of life requires a job of some sort. Where I haven't been able to find a job in 8 fucking years. Well, 8 years next month.

I am tired. No, I am exhausted. I don't have the option for a nervous breakdown because I won't ever have the support system, and my children will become wards of the state. Where no one gives a shit that my mental illness creates hurdles no one can see, so no one cares, and I am expected to push through just because. Where if I were to cut my husband completely out of the picture, I would be seen as a feminazi bitch, and "part of the problem".

But my husband? No. He'll just be an asshole, and everyone will shrug, because men are socialized to sexualize women and not be caretakers and ignore their children. He was raised to see women as caretakers, children as a bother, and was literally left to fend for himself while his father ran off to chase sexual encounters. That same man is now a fundamentalist Christian, spouting hate as often as possible now that he's home recovering from surgery.

I've given up everything I was. Some for the better. Some in the hopes that those parts of me would one day be deemed acceptable.
And everything was for nothing.
Everything he didn't like in me, he found beautiful in someone else.
Everything I loved about myself, he would cut down.
Everything I wanted, he chalked up to a pipe dream.

This is me demanding myself back.