Here it is another day and things don't seem to be getting any better. Now really this could be because I have a 17 year old who just hates that there are rules. I come home from work and no one is around, nothing has been done and I have not heard where this child is. I have been told that I don't have any right to know and it is really none of my business.


I paid for the car from my retirement funds. I pay for the gas from the money that I receive in child support. I pay the rent on the house. I pay for all of the food and much of the hobbies because the child does not work right now. With all of that I have earned the right to know where and when about this child.

Yes, I am not saying if male or female so that if someone in my family stumbles across this they won't be able to be angry at me for getting my feelings out and in something as awful as a blog. I have been told by my older children that I don't have the right to write anything about how I am feeling because they might see it or their father might see it and might be hurt. That assumes that their father cared a wit about me and he does not. From what I know he is proud of how he hurt me and how he got away with it because he claims that he never should be held accountable for anything because of his mental illness. I still don't believe that it is an excuse that he is mentally ill. Mental illness does make those that suffer from it do things that they don't want to do, but unless there is some illness beyond bipolar and ptsd the person who has this knows what they do and they know it is wrong when they do it and they apologize for it with the persons that they hurt. At least my friends with bipolar say that is true. My soon to be ex husband said that nothing that he ever did was worthy of an apology, not the attempt on my life, not the horrible things that he said, not the isolation, not telling me I had no right to be in HIS home, not anything. He was right in all of it.

Sorry I went back into my hurt. So anyway my children have said that I have no right to write about this because he might see it and they don't want him hurt. Really, he is not going to go anywhere near a blog so I am not worried about hurting anyone. I am not telling them that I am writing. They will never happen upon this on accident so it is safe. But I will never identify anyone that I have not told that I am writing about them.

I want my life to become better and until I get this hurt out of me I won't be able to move on. I want so much to become a happy, healthy, loving and loved person. I want a family that loves me and cares about me. I want happiness and I haven't a clue how to find it. This is my journey to get the sadness and anger out and move one. My children have learned to put me down from their father and now I have to teach them that this is not ok. The 17 year old just sent a text to apologize for not letting me how where and when. It is a start so there is hope.

So I begin to write

I have decided that I need to sit and write. I find that in the process of divorce, after 34 years of marriage, I need somewhere to just sit and write how I feel. Yes I have journal but I think that I may want to simply start to post something here so I can hear things from others.

Now truthfully, it is probably going to be that no one else ever reads this but at least if I do this I could possibly hear from someone else that is going through the same things. I may hate what I hear or I could hear that everyone thinks that I am stupid or I could hear that I am whining. I don't care I just need to write. This last 4 years has been very difficult but the last 6 months have been really hard. I need to just try to put it down and see what happens. Who knows I may work out the anger and the sadness so I can begin to move forward. It can't hurt to at least try.

So, why am I sitting here on a Sunday evening writing to my computer? Because I was married for 34 years and I thought it was ok. It was not. In December 2006 my husband put his hands on my throat and tried to strangle me, from there everything went down hill. No matter what I tried to do, how much I tried to be there for him he told me he hated me and never wanted to be married to me. The next breath he would say, but I don't want you to divorce me I want you to stay because I need you to take care of me. Like the fool I was I stayed and I did my best to take care of him. I contacted his therapist when I knew he was in trouble. I kept him from doing things that I knew were stupid. I took the blame and I let him say 'I don't remember saying that or doing that'. I knew that he was fully aware of what he had done, even when he was suffering in a manic stage. I also knew that he was using the diagnosis of mental illness to get away with doing really bad things. Until he began doing things to our son I let him get away with it. But, once he started to try and hurt our son I had him put into the hospital.

Interestingly enough that meant that his mental illness was my fault, he told me that he would not be mentally ill if I had not had him hospitalized.

So for all of this at 54 years old I am alone and looking at divorce and trying to make it. My problem now, how do I date? I have not gone on a date in 34 years. I don't know how to meet someone and I don't know how to be anything but what I have been - the one who tries too hard to make things work and the one who takes the blame for everything.

I do sound pathetic, well this is what I want to stop being. I want to be a strong, happy and health woman with hope and love.

I hope this will give me a place to make myself into the person that I want to be. I don't know that I want to fundamentally change the person that I am. I love being a mother to my grown children, I love being employed, I love working with the theater that I work with and I don't want to lose any of that. I do want to loose the sadness and find forgiveness for both the man that lied to me for 34 years and for myself for not keeping this from happening.

If you find that you want to tell me to stop the whine, you may. If you have advice give it. If you want to just say that I am not alone and this isn't the end for me I would love to hear it. Please don't cuss at me, please don't tell me how stupid I am. Please use repect for me and for anyone else who reads or posts here.