I'm Back

I suppose all my readers from three years ago have since moved on. That's what happens. People come, they say what they need to say, they work out what they need to work out, and then they go about their lives, better off for the experience. That's what I did. The thing is, I thought I was done. Happily ever after, you know? I didn't realize that right around the time I stopped blogging, my husband was engaged in a very slow and subtle campaign behind my back with the goal of making me look like a bad person. No one was off limits. Not my siblings, not my brother-in-law and his siblings, not even my children. I had no idea this was going on. I had a few small clues fall in my lap, but they were so totally nonsensical that I paid them no mind. I really wish I would have caught on. I could have saved myself an unbelievable amount of heartache.

This resurrected blog will undoubtedly be the story of how I got from there to here. Where is here? Here is a place where my son is out of prison, has moved out of state, has a good job, a good woman and her children, and their very own newborn son. Here is where my three daughters still live in-state and my husband has alienated them from me so we don't even talk. This place is where I have cancer and my abusive husband decided to ramp up the abuse into the physical realm while I was too sick to defend myself. I told everyone about it because it seemed to me like the best way to make it stop. Surely he'll be afraid to do it if everyone knows, right? The things is... it was too late. The years of shit he'd been filling peoples' heads with made it so either no one would believe me or no one would care. It's worse than ever now. I sort of got used to the people in our circle having what I felt were strange reactions to my presence, but now they have all turned on a time and it's like I don't exist.

So here I am, alone in the house I finally kicked his ass out of last week. I have one friend left. It's my mother, who has made amends to me for the things in our past, some of which I was right about and some of which I was wrong about. I think people were shocked that I would kick my husband out of the house and divorce him since he made such a big show of caring for me when I came out of the hospital. What they didn't know is how he treated me when we were alone. So why did he wait until I was so sick and frail to get physical? Because he's a coward. He's also a malignant narcissist and that is what all of our problems have been about all along. I just wish I had seen it sooner. MUCH sooner. Sometimes abuse is hard to recognize when it progresses gradually and it's not physical. Now I see it for what it is and always has been. I just hope it's not too late to save myself.