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.