Losing Sleep

Be prepared for some “poor me” whiny-ness and stuff that cheating husbands will say is the reason why they cheat, you know cause I am a dried up old bitch that deserves it.  I am sure they would pull my husband C into the fold and ask him why he puts up with me and does not go out and find another girlfriend.  This is turning out way longer than I had planned.

I am naturally a night owl, so staying up till 1 am watching TV is nothing unusual for me.  The last few days I have had trouble falling asleep though and find myself awake at 3 am and have to get up around 5:30am to get my son off to the bus.  I usually don’t have any trouble sleeping so I know this will pass, but my mind just won’t shut off.  I have had a couple outbursts with C (my husband) over the last couple days.  I feel frustrated all the time and things about him just set me off.  I realized as I lay there in bed that I get no joy from our relationship, I get no satisfaction from taking care of him.  He wants us to be a happy husband and wife.  I am wanting none of that, we are room mates.  He does not make me happy, he makes me sad.  His cheating stamped out any loving feelings I had.  What I do for him now is in exchange for the money he earns, I am an unhappy housekeeper, maid and cook.

The basic thing I have been struggling with is I resent the role of wife.  I resent making the cheating bastard dinner, he does not cook, he has NEVER made me a single meal (we have been married over 20 years).  But as he has said, he goes to work and makes money and sometimes he does not feel like doing it.  Yeah I say, I used to work full time, take care of our kid in my off hours, clean and make dinner, so suck it ( I didn’t say the suck it part out loud).  At the same time I am angry with myself for getting into the position I am today.  I live with a man who cheated on me and if I had enough money I would not be married to him or living with him.  I used to work full time and was confident in the fact that I could take care of myself.  I had worked for a good company for over 10 years, then changed jobs to get into a tech field, and then that job ended when the business went under.  I dabbled with a few things after that but essentially have been a stay at home mom for more than 10 years.  I have worked at home for a couple real companies but the work has never been reliable enough to be able to support myself.  I HATE that I cannot take care of myself and C knows it.  He does not want me to have a job.  If I had a job maybe I wouldn’t be around to make dinner, maybe I wouldn’t need him anymore.  The only thing that I am concerned about with a full time job is the time it could take away from my son.  He is 16, so is just now getting himself around driving, he is becoming more independent.  I still like to be here for him though, go to all his performances, keep an eye on him.

I have spent the last few years wasting time.  I admit my failings.  I have been in limbo, not moving forward, not dealing with C in the way that I should have back when I found out what he did.  Me not following through on booting his ass out and trying to make it on my own gave him hope.  I sometimes wish that he had ended things and gave me no choice.  I sometimes wish that he was a bigger a-hole, that he was mean, that he provided a glaring reason that I should get rid of him and not feel guilty even though I didn’t do anything wrong.  Other people don’t see what I see.  I know that I am lucky in some ways.  He is not physically or mentally abusive as in he does not hit and he does not spend his time yelling at me and telling me I am a stupid worthless person.  He has never been like that.  So compared to that, the things I say here about him don’t seem that bad, but if I were to meet him today for the first time, I would not choose him as a friend or otherwise.  Keep in mind that we married when we were 22 and didn’t have much in the way of brains or money.  His wardrobe consisted of Levis and t shirts.  Over the years our tastes of course have progressed to finer things.  I enjoy a nice vehicle but don’t need flash.  I don’t feel I need fancy clothes or tons of shoes or handbags.  I prefer too spend that extra money on things for the house or things we can all enjoy.  He has already gone through the Porsche stage, just had to have that shiny red car.  He likes his watches, he likes guns, he has little patience for people he feels are beneath him.  He turned into a snob and this is something that my family and friends noticed.  I feel like I invested all these years into him and our family and what I got back in the end was a cheater, liar and stuck up jerk.  He is a micro-manager.  Always asking me or my son what we are doing, what we have done, where we are going.  I am afraid that one of these days my son is just going to explode.  If you read my previous post you will know that I am a somewhat unemotional person most of the time.  C is sort of similar in that way.  He does not lose his temper often and it feels like he is trying to control me and my son emotionally as well.  Sometimes I just want to scream and shake him and tell him to just let loose and stop trying to control everyone’s emotions.  I get so mad sometimes and he makes me feel like I am a bitch if I loose it or get emotional.  Normal people scream and yell at each other, we don’t have to be polite and quiet all the time.

I am 45 and I feel like I got ripped off, that we worked so hard for all those years in anticipation of getting to some mysterious point in our lives where we could relax.  I am currently in survival and clean-up mode.  I get through each day in neutral.  I avoid highs and lows for the most part.  Over the last couple years I have been working on getting us cleaned up financially.  Any credit debt we had I made sure was paid off, we just cleared up our home equity line of credit and I have to say that C was reluctant to pay that debt.  He is afraid the bank will close the credit line and we will have no way to borrow money.  I am of the mind that if we need to borrow then we should not get or do whatever it is we would borrow for.  Or more so what HE would borrow for.  I can tell you that more than one watch was paid for through credit cards and that line of credit and without me having a say in it.  We only have one car loan (which will be paid off within the next year) and our mortgage and I have been saving up an emergency fund.  If a split up and divorce are in our future then I feel better that we will not be weighed down with debt on top of everything else.  And hopefully there are no hidden credit cards out there (story for another day).  I have been listening to Dave Ramsey and if you are interested in cleaning up your finances I suggest checking him out.  He is a Christian and does speak of Christian values etc… but it is not an overwhelming thing if you are not a Christian yourself.

So now we know what HE is.  He is not the devil but he has done mean and thoughtless things that hurt me.  My life now shouldn’t be about what he is or isn’t though.  I know that.  I know that I need to create my own destiny so to speak.  A million dollars falling in my lap would fix most things for me but of course that isn’t going to happen.  I have to come up with a plan and follow through, give myself some choices.

Regarding work, one of my biggest problems is that I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up!  I have never had a career, just a job and I didn’t go to college.  I know maybe a little more than the common person about computers but not enough to sell myself as a professional in it, I have done office work and customer service, worked for a medical biller and a computer engineer but I don’t feel confident in my skills.  Like I don’t know quite enough to be valuable to an employer.  Plus the way they search for employees these days!  You have to get a cover letter just right and geared to each position and work your resume so there are some good key words for the computers to find but make sure that you don’t use other words cause they are bad.  I am 45 and the majority of my jobs fell into my lap and were obtained back when people actually grabbed a stack of resumes and talked to each person.  Before you needed a 4 year degree to work as a receptionist for $9.50 an hour.  It will take some work for me to get work.  I am planning on taking some online classes through a local community college, today in fact I will be looking through the offerings again and hopefully can talk myself into starting this month.  The next signup date is June 18th for 6 week classes.  I will just have to take one to see what kind of time it takes up and how it fits in with the commitments I have made for the summer.  Summer is so short after you start filling it with stuff.  I will be doing a little child care for a friend, my niece will be staying for a month (a handful of anxiety and depression) and a week of vacation in August and then when we get back my son starts marching band camp and then school starts!  I think I want to get a job with my school district, possibly at the high school.  I know it is something I can be successful at and enjoy, it has pretty good pay, benefits and you get some of the summer off.

I guess I need to end this blog post at some point.  I had an idea in my head about what I was going to write but it kept going and I rambled on.  I like lists, so here is an “Improve Me” list to end this post.

– take classes to improve self and employment opportunities
– get a job!
– be able to take care of myself and my son financially if necessary
– exercise and get into shape so I like myself more
– do what will make me happy