At some point, you wonder “what is my breaking point?” How much can one person take? How many times can a person turn a blind eye to the world burning?
December 25, 2019- Christmas- we stayed in our bedroom, shouting with the door closed as if that would block the sounds from our children. Threats of divorce were thrown around, and a very real truth was stated. He told me: I feel like you have one foot out the door. That when you graduate, you’re going to leave.
I confirmed that was true. I had, at this point, put in 19 years of trying to make it work and failing in every way I possibly could. I was tired: tired of being the only one who tried, tired of everything falling to my shoulders, tired of being the only one in our marriage.
We came to a crossroads. He had until May 2020 to get therapy started. I was tired of his rages, tired of the gaslighting and the angry words and feeling less than. I was tired of his delusions and psychosis (seriously, not just tossing that word).
I reminded him that normal people don’t see and hear things that aren’t there. Don’t take their loaded duty weapon out and sweep the house for the boogeyman that doesn’t exist. That people aren’t parading through our bedroom, that people aren’t outside our window, that people aren’t there. Our children are lucky they didn’t come out to that nonsense. I wonder, sometimes, if he’d have recognized them as our children before he pulled the trigger. Thank god we never had to find out. Thankfully he doesn’t have a duty weapon or a job that aligns with needing such a thing. Our personal weapons are unloaded.
It wasn’t always like this, but it wasn’t better. He used to rough me up. Busted my lip once, made me bleed. Once forced me to give him a blowjob in the living room in the middle of the day, when our children were just upstairs playing; until he filled my mouth with his cum. He knew how much I hated that, knows how much I hate giving blowjobs at all. Doesn’t care.
I kissed him for the first time in ages last night, he couldn’t sleep and I offered to let him fuck me so he could just go to sleep already. We had to do it in the bathroom because the baby was in the bed and he bitched about his leg hurting afterward.
I’m just tired because here we are in the middle of March 2021, and he still hasn’t sought therapy or even tried to get any of his shit under control. He acts like a petulant child who doesn’t get his way, more often than not. Today was my first day off in months, where I didn’t have the responsibilities of having a child or baby attached to me (my district had it as a holiday, and tomorrow is a workday). He had work, as he usually does: Sat, Sun, Mon.
I took the baby to school, dropped her off at 6:50 (so later than I would if I had to be at work by 7). I came home and made sure that our younger son got off to school, logged attendance for our other son, checked in with our other daughter, and went back to sleep. I had been up too late the night before because when he can’t sleep, I’m unable to sleep. My nap was short and then I ran errands that I hadn’t gotten done over the weekend. I had lunch with my 15 and 18-year-olds.
He had a bad day. He was texting me about it and decided to tell me that he would call me on his way home. I reminded him that I had class tonight. This is not a new development. I’m on week 10 of this class, every Monday night at 6:30 pm. He comes home and I have about 15 minutes left of class. Of course, dinner was cooked and waiting: breaded steak, black beans, and rice. Tasty and a huge pain in the ass to cook. But I did it. For them.
He isn’t pleased he has to wait for my class to end. I used to do them up in my office, but the baby needs minding, and I can’t keep her quiet and entertained in there, and still focus on my class. I moved downstairs to my bedroom, where she could watch TV in the living room. He would cop an attitude about me taking up the whole bedroom (and make me turn off my camera and mic so that he could come through and change into the PJs he will wear until Saturday morning when he goes to work).
So I moved to the kitchen table, pointing the camera screen at the corner of the room out of the way. Nothing to prevent him from walking through, nothing to prevent anyone from walking through. But he glared at me when he dropped his bag of Hot Pocket and whatever else on the counter. Glared at me when he walked in, walked through. It took 10 minutes to finish the class and then I went to him, asked him about his day, about what he’d wanted to discuss on his way home.
He got on to me about the house not being cleaned to his liking. Said, “I see you decided not to clean the house today.”
Mind you, the house isn’t bad. There is a load of laundry I need to fold, and I need to mop. It’s not like we’re living in squalor. In fact, I spent Saturday and Sunday scrubbing toilets, wiping baseboards, etc. I do all of the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing. I know that deep inside, he’s acting like a child who feels slighted and is lashing out at me like a child would lash out at their parent because their parent is a safe person. But he is not my child. He’s not a child.
Being married to a neurodivergent and/or mentally ill person is incredibly difficult. Especially when they won’t take steps to better themselves. He won’t follow his doctors’ suggestions to get healthier, to eat/drink healthier, to lose weight, to take his meds, or use his CPAP machine. He won’t take the steps that he needs to find out what is truly wrong with him, and it’s infuriating.
I have less than six weeks of student teaching left, and then I can apply for my license. That argument we had back on Christmas 2019 has played on my mind. Because here we are. Time to decide. Part of me gets hopeful that things are finally turning around, but then he does something stupid like buys a whole truck when we owe $4k to taxes. Or he loses his temper or complains about things I can’t fix.
A quiet woman is a dangerous person. When left to my own thoughts, I think about the future. I have one foot out the door because there is no incentive to stay. Only fear has held me in place:
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