regret sucks

Today is the birthday of my ex-husband. The divorce isn't final yet, but the relationship is wayyy over. Last year, he turned 30, and I bought him a very nice hotel room, with a jacuzzi tub and fireplace. Why? because my 30th sucked, sucked hard. I wanted my husband, the man I chose to spend my life with to have something beautiful, grown up and nice. Nicer than anything else I had ever had. I did not share the room with him. He took his girlfriend. :) Yeah, his girlfriend. all our marriage, he had been looking at other women, talking online to women, searching for .... something... and eventually he found someone as stupid as me to want him. She was 19 when we met in person. She insisted she didn't want to ruin our marriage, our relationship came first. But as with ALL those extramarital affairs, that changed. She wanted him full time. Went as far as to say that the kids and I were in her way. Now, I was friendly, and she asked me if I wanted her to stop.

I said no. OF course I said no. I said yes for HIM.. why would I say no now? bit by bit more and more of my marriage was taken from me and given to her. And it didn't start slowly either. 2 years later, he and I have THE fight about how she's more important than our family, and suddenly, *I* have fucked up. And now *I* must work very hard to put everything right. Now *I* must become perfect so he will not leave me.

SO he got a hotel room. I stayed home with the kids (as usual) and counted down until I could collapse and break down fully. I didn't make it to 8pm. More junk, hurt, etc.. and I left on our anniversary (the 8th wedding.. we'd been a couple since 1994) and here's his 31st birthday. I felt like I was doing just fine. He came and got the kids for his weekend with them.. I didn't like his new aftershave. I think the Vandyke with the haircut is goofy. He's gotten tanned, maybe he's been working outside, or just laying in the sun.

As big and bad as I try to become, I will always have that 17 year old girl inside me who moons after him. Who sees nothing but her Knight in Flesh Colored Armor. Right now, I'm a fat 33 year old divorcee with 5 kids (at their dad's this weekend) freaking out about making it to next month. I can't remember how he felt. I can remember his smell. I can remember some sounds. but I DO remember the disapproving look. His scorn when I was breaking down on Christmas because he'd spent all of my birthday so sick he didn't spend it with me. His total lack of regard for my emotional well being. And I am acutely aware of how it has shaped the person I am. I am hard, I am cold, I am ruthless with some things. I regret later, but I act now.


I hate that most of all. I am what I hate. I can change, right? How can I do that when I look at the house we lived in and see things according to how HE would have wanted them? and I feel this massive pressure between my eyes that they aren't as he wishes. Still, he's there. He's here. he changed me. and I'm not aware of it when it happens. sigh

Picking up and moving on, not something I'm proficent with. I want to have a happy life, a full life. I don't know where to start.

One alligator at a time?