Watched some more 13 Reasons Why last night, just one episode again. It’s best not to stay up too late watching it, so just taking it one episode at at time.
Got to bed later than I wanted still. Didn’t sleep the best, of course. Woke up in pain, as usual. It was about 9:30. Casey was actually still in bed. His eyes were open, though, and once he realized I was up and round he got up, too.
Got Casey a strawberries & cream cinnamon roll for breakfast and grabbed my coffee. He got his tablet right away, as well.
Heard from Colin right away again and got on Skype with him as soon as I was able. I hadn’t even finished booting the computer again lol.
Weighed myself this morning. Down about 5 lbs since Saturday. Probably all water weight, I’ve been peeing like crazy!
Got dressed in SL, then took care of my free book and paid emails, and then launched Sims. Played that for a while.
Colin and I got off the call a little earlier today. He’s been pretty exhausted lately, and I’d rather him get the rest he needs. Plus, any time away from his desk is always a bonus, too.
By the time I was done playing Sims, Casey’s time was up on the Nintendo. He’d switched to it when his tablet ran out of time, and spent a good portion of the time with the Nintendo sitting on the toilet, lol. I had to tell him his time was up on both the Nintendo and the toilet.
Casey said he was hungry, so I got him a PB&J with some cheetos. I’d had my 2 shakes and an apple, so was just waiting for dinner time. I took a shower while he ate that.
After my shower, Casey said he was hungry again. Not surprised, he’d spent lunch trying to go to the bathroom, so ate it late. I figured he’d be pretty hungry the rest of the day. This time I made him a grilled cheese, and I prepared my salad and chips with salsa.
We sat down and ate together, and Dave got home when we were near the end of our meal.
After dinner, I got back on the computer and Dave took Casey outside to water the plants and play. I looked into getting Minecraft. Casey has played it on his tablet and I think he’d enjoy it on the computer more. The version you buy through the web site includes the windows 10 version, which Casey would be able to play touch screen.
So, naturally, I have to boot it and test it out, lol. I keep getting killed by zombies because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m currently standing behind a building, looking left and right constantly to be sure I don’t die again. Just have to wait until morning and then figure this out!!
Dave came in a little while ago and dropped his towels on my bed. Now, these towels, I’d graciously put in the washer for him yesterday, because I needed to also wash a small blanket. Dave had then opened the washer when he got home yesterday, and left it open overnight. I went down to put them in the dryer when I discovered it was left open. So, I rewashed them, because that’s just what I do if things have been in the washer too long. I got them in the dryer and got them good and dry. Then Dave asked if I had anything in the dryer, and I said yes, your towels. He said, “My towels?” And I was like, “Yeah, I put them in for you because I needed to wash Casey’s cat blankey.” So, yeah, then he brings them up and tosses them all on my bed.
I was all like, “Umm, no, I’m not folding your towels. We can fold them together.” So he comes in and we fold one each together, all the while he’s giving “instructions on how to fold towels.” Being a douche, in other words. So then when he finished folding that towel, he walks out. I tossed both folded towels back on the pile and looked at my computer, which I’d tabbed over to Facebook.
So, he ended up coming back in and started folding the towels, while I had Facebook up on my computer. He was, like, “I don’t know how you can sit there and stare at Facebook for 12 hours.” I said, “I don’t.” He then says, “What do you do all day, then?” I didn’t respond. He starts on another tirade about the last 16 years, and I jumped in with, “No, you have been complaining about things for the last year, prior to that you never said anything.” He continued his rant, going on about me not doing anything to benefit him in this marriage, and me not doing anything, period. Nevermind the fact that I’m not working right now because I’m a stay-at-home-mom! Nevermind the fact that I have a shaky work history due to my nervous breakdown after his first deployment overseas. Nevermind the fact that I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and suffered for 5 years because of it! Eventually, as he’s on the way out of my bedroom, he asked me “What meaningful and productive thing have you done today?”
What do I do, on any given day, that’s meaningful and productive? Whether it’s for myself, for Casey, for Dave, for the household? What do I do that makes a difference around here?
All I can account for these days is making sure dishes are done and the cat litter box is usually scooped. I make mine and Casey’s beds, though sometimes Casey’s isn’t made until right before he goes to bed. I get mine and Casey’s laundry done once a week. But, because of my knee, that’s all I CAN do.
Before my knee injury, I had started following a schedule to keep me on track. Clean out the fridge on Sundays. Grocery shopping on Mondays. Clean the bathrooms on Wednesdays. Do mine & Casey’s laundry on Fridays. Vacuum/Mop the floors on Saturdays. I took Tuesdays and Thursdays to either do my usual daily tasks only (dishes, sweep the stairs and landing, and scoop the litter box as needed, every other day) or sometimes I’d do other things that needed doing, like dusting or picking up toys in Casey’s play room.
Dave just doesn’t get it.
We met in 2001, around my birthday. We had an awesome relationship, but I wanted more and asked for things to be open. He said he couldn’t handle it. We stayed together. We got married on February 16, 2002. He deployed to Kuwait a few weeks later, for 6 months. He came home, I went nuts. Knowing what I know now, looking back I can recognize that it was hormone induced anxiety and depression that just went into hyperdrive when he got back. A hormone induced nervous breakdown, if you will. But back then, I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew I was crazy, and I was suicidal. I ended up in the mental hospital, where they diagnosed me as bipolar. They treated me with bipolar meds that made me gain a TON of weight and also turned me into a zombie.
The next 5 years are a blur. I can pick out bits and pieces. For the first year and a half, I was in and out of the mental hospital a few times. Meds were changed constantly. I struggled to even get out of bed, much less do ANYTHING with my life. I barely had a life.
I remember Dave wanting to become swingers in 2006. I’m bisexual, and I guess he thought of it as a way for me to enjoy that half of myself.
I remember a party we went to, but I don’t know where we were living at the time or what year it was, but I remember Dave was really into this overly obese woman, and I flipped my shit.
In 2006 we moved to North Carolina. I don’t remember if that party was before or after we moved.
I remember Dave starting to treat me poorly. Talk down to me. Belittle me. His narcissism was just beginning to show.
While we were living in North Carolina, a psychiatrist there adjusted my medication to a combination that, more or less awakened me. I started to come out of the fog. It was still medication for bipolar, but I wasn’t a zombie anymore.
I started to work again, albeit not for more than a few months here and there for a few years. But I was proud of my accomplishment. I was becoming human again.
In 2008 we moved to Illinois. Dave’s dad had committed suicide. I got 2 jobs, working at Walmart and Panera part time. After a few months, I quit Walmart to try and work at Panera full time.
I loved working at Panera. I wanted to become a manager. But then my osteoarthritis in my back kicked in. The store manager refused to give me a break from dining room duty, instead ensuring I was put on it even more often. I felt like I had no choice but to quit. I got a job at Apac, answering phones. I did really well there, too.
During my time at Apac, in 2011, I left Dave for a week. I stayed in a hotel. I wasn’t planning to go back to him. I was trying to make arrangements to move out on my own. He begged for me to return to him. He promised he’d change. He promised he’d give me everything I wanted. I went back to him.
Then, a few months later, I got pregnant with Casey.
I kept working for a while, but stress (probably hormone related) and a bad phone call at work changed things for me again. I was on this call with this woman who couldn’t give me all the necessary information for me to be able to, legally, speak to her about the patient’s medication. She kept changing her story around to try and get me to give her the information she wanted. I clenched my teeth to avoid going off on her. Now, I have tinnitus in my right ear that won’t go away. I can’t work at a call center again because of it, unless I have a headset that only covers my left ear. I kept working there, regardless, for a while, but eventually went on medical leave. I was authorized to, anyway, because I was pregnant and having a difficult time. I had to keep getting medical documentation to support it, but I did.
Side note, Casey hung out low in my tummy and caused me great pain in my lower pelvis.
So, then I had Casey. Dave and I tried to find day care where we felt comfortable sending him AND could afford, but came up empty handed. We calculated the cost of our best option, and determined we’d be better off financially for me to just stay at home with him.
Meanwhile, things between us started off great, but he fell back into his old ways very fast. Treating me like shit, even in front of others.
We were getting ready to move to Texas in 2014, when I asked for, pretty much insisted on, an open marriage. I guess I just wanted someone else to fill that hole Dave left inside me. He finally caved and agreed to it.
So, Casey and I took a road trip down to Georgia and I slept with my first love, Nik. March 26, 2014. I don’t remember ALL of that trip, but it was all-around a nice trip. I’ve always loved road trips, and with Casey being a bit older it was easier. Anyway, we headed home and moved to Texas that July.
In Texas, things got harder between Dave and I. I think it’s partially because I stayed at home more. I was too scared to really go out much! One day, not long after we moved there, he saw I was on Tinder. When I first discovered Tinder, I thought it was just a way to meet new people. When I realized it was a hook-up app, I stopped talking to people, but kept swiping. When Dave mentioned seeing me on Tinder, we agreed it’d be a suitable way to meet people to actually do something with our open marriage.
Around the time I discovered Tinder, I also met Colin on SL. He’s from Scotland. It’s highly unlikely we’ll ever meet in person, but we fell hard and fast for each other.
Things were fine for quite a while with the open relationship. I got to have my fun, but Dave rarely did anything. When he did, it’d turn me on to hear about it. But then jealousy started affecting me. I felt he was getting to close to anyone he was talking to. He wasn’t just meeting a girl and having a fling, he was developing relationships. That’s why he was rarely having any fun, he was too busy working on relationships with these women. I kept trying to call off the open relationship. He kept going behind my back and continuing the relationships. I feared losing him, so I’d cave and let him do what he wanted.
Then came Amanda. He went out with her once, and then had her over a few times. I got to meet her. She was very nice. We went out a few times, just us girls. I liked her. She was a friend. I even slept with her once. But then Dave told me he believed he could love more than one person. And that he loved her. And I lost it.
Clearly I believe you can love more than one person, I love 3! But I got jealous, and can’t cope with Dave loving anyone besides me.
That was right around our 15th anniversary. A few weeks after our anniversary, Dave asked for a divorce. We were already making preparations to move to Wisconsin in April of 2017. This was March, when he asked for a divorce. I immediately packed mine and Casey’s things, enough that I wouldn’t need to go back for a LONG time, and went to Georgia to stay with my parents for a while to figure things out. Dave and I communicated a bit, and my parents pressured me to stay with him until I had a job and could take care of me and Casey. At first they were going to pay for all my moving expenses and for my rent until I was on my feet. Then they were going to pay for my moving expenses and a couple hundred a month for a year. I had no choice but to go back to him, move with him, and figure my life out.
While we were in Georgia, Dave saw a psychiatrist and began counseling. The psychiatrist diagnosed him as being “emotionally abusive towards others.” A narcissist. His therapy seemed to be helping as well. And then we moved to Wisconsin. He said it was a lengthy process to resume treatment due to insurance. Something about not being able to get into the doctor for months, waiting on authroizations, etc. I never heard anything more about him seeking help.
There are 2 things going on with him. First, the deployments changed him. They’d change anybody! I get that. Second, he’s narcissistic.
For the last 12 years, he’s treated me like shit. Nothing I ever do is good enough for him. I can clean the entire house from top to bottom, with the exception of dusting and picking up toys in the play room, and he’ll rant about those and not even notice that everything else is sparkling. That’s just one example.
But, back to what triggered all that. What do I do, in general, that’s meaningful and productive?
Not enough.
Does that give him an excuse to treat me like shit?
No fucking way.
Now it’s almost 9, I need to get Casey to bed and work on getting there myself. I have therapy in the morning. Boy do I need it! I wish I didn’t have to take Casey with, but oh well. Gotta do what I gotta do. I only see my therapist once every 6 weeks, I can’t cancel. I need this appointment.
I’m going to have Casey do his important stuff, read to him, play a bit of minecraft and figure that out, and then try and squeeze in an episode of 13 Reasons Why before I crash.
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