Wonderland sucks and I want to go home

I haven’t really gotten to the why of it yet.  The why isn't important, but it sort of is, too, so here it is:  he had decided to leave me.

He had been unhappy for a while, and he wanted out.

The thing is: I’m a shitty housekeeper.  I’m disorganized as hell, and we have dogs and cats and kids and 2 full time jobs.  The house is in a constant state of barely tolerable clutter and disarray.

I really do try, and sometimes I’m even successful for a day or two, but keeping house is just not my thing.  I’d rather be reading.  Or writing.  Or watching a movie.  Or working.  I get paid to work.  I don’t get paid to do laundry.  Whatever.

But… he had been living with me for 10 years, and he was done.  He still loved me, he said, but his frustration level was so high that it overshadowed even that.  I can’t say that I was blind to the frustration, but he had always bitched about the house.  I had always told him to get the fuck over it, worry about something more important.

In hindsight, this was clearly not a good plan, as this attitude was apparently what made him decide to leave.

{Let me just digress for a moment here.  We're not a Hoarders-worthy house.  It's REALLY NOT THAT BAD.  I swear.}

Because he had this revelation with the Holidays right around the corner, he was going to wait until they passed, and then he was going to leave and go live somewhere else.  Sometime after the first time he had actual sex with her, he realized what a colossal mistake he’d made.  He was hating himself for feeling the way he felt and for doing what he was doing.  He knew it was worse than wrong, and the hell of it was that he honestly didn’t even enjoy it.

So, how did it happen a second time, then?  That was hard to comprehend.  It seems the second time happened because he felt cornered, trapped in a web of his own creation.  Then, he was done.  He knew it wasn’t what he wanted.  He had lost his mind, and he suddenly saw what he was walking away from.

He told me I was his best friend, and somehow he’d lost sight of the fact that he would lose his best friend when he walked away from his wife.  He realized then that he didn’t want to lose either one.  Again, I was totally clueless while all of this was going on in his head.

Of course, in my mind, his betrayal was just confirmation of what I’d always thought in the back of my head:  I’m not good enough for him.  I’m not pretty enough.  After 2 pregnancies, weight gain, stretch marks, and breastfeeding, I’m definitely not sexy enough.  

He’d tried to assure me over the years that he loved me, loved to look at me, that my body bore his children, and how could that not turn him on?  I never really bought it.  I was always just waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though the sex was always great and I had no reason, then, not to believe him.  I was always too busy telling myself what was wrong with me.  Deep down, I never really thought I was worthy of the love and devotion I had had from him for 10 years.

Now, I was stuck in limbo.  I hated him, but I needed him to be with me all the time.  Daily life was too much for me to handle, and I needed him to shield me from it.  I needed him to commiserate with, even though he was the one that has caused all the anguish to begin with.

We went to therapy, but the therapist sucked.  Two weeks in, we were discussing things like chores and division of labor.  It was surreal.  While I tried to remain rational, inside my head I was screaming, "Are we really not going to talk more about the fact that he fucked someone else?!  Seriously?  Can we not go back to that for a minute?" 

I kept having these mental flashes of him with her.  If you have kids, maybe you know what it’s like to imagine what would happen if your child is hurt; not just to think about it, but to actually see it happen in your head.  Your toddler is standing too close to the street, and a car is coming, and suddenly in your head you see her walk out in front of the car, envision it hitting her, rolling over her like a ragdoll, and you see the car drive away while you child is laying lifeless in the street.

Then again, maybe you don’t. Maybe not everyone is that fucked up, but that’s what goes on in my head.  It’s not voluntary, this mental torture; these little scenes of gratuitous violence just pop into my head, unbidden.  That’s what was happening at the time, only it was sexual scenes of my husband with this other woman.

It was sick and twisted, and I couldn’t turn it off.  I told him what was going on in my head.  I think he understood that my mental state was very, very fragile, and I suspect he was afraid that I was going to hurt myself or that I was going to go into some sort of catatonic state while he was gone.  I know he wasn’t keen on leaving me much during those first weeks.  God, it was pure hell.

Why am I reliving this?  Because if that’s where you are right now, I want you to know I’ve walked there, too.  I know.  And if you’re feeling anything like I was feeling, maybe reading this will make you feel a little less crazy.  Maybe just for a minute.

You're ready to get off this crazy train and go home, right?  This new place is scary as hell, and nothing looks right, and you have no idea where to go or what to do next.

Welcome to Wonderland.

Don't let the name fool you.  Wonderland sucks.