No crying today, just peace. I’m up here on a mountaintop looking down on a green valley. Although I can see cars moving in the distance, I feel alone. It is still and quiet.
Being in nature has always been a way to balance my mental health. Back when I was married, there were times when I would be driving out to a farm to pick vegetables, and I would get this feeling of euphoria, the elation so intense my skin felt like a boundary keeping me from expanding exponentially. Now, I wonder if it was because in those moments, I felt free.
It’s interesting that now that I really am free, I don’t feel those moments of pure rapture. Life is complicated. You make it through a traumatic event, and you probably feel better at that moment than you do later when you reflect on what happened. I didn’t have time to reflect on anything back then. Looking through my journals, just about every entry was a plea for God to fix my marriage. And to be honest, God was there. Whether it was just in my mind or not, I could feel his peace. I could feel his strength.
Knowing what I now know, it might have been worse for the kids if I divorced. For one thing, he threatened to kill me if I tried to take the kids away…so there is that. But, he would have had joint custody, and I our children would have had too much time with him alone. The one time I was away for an extended period of time was when my mother passed. I flew out alone for the funeral and was assured that he would take care of the children. He took paid bereavement time to stay home. One of my children called me the day of the funeral and begged me to come home. Apparently, their dad was holed up in his office playing video games and told the oldest they were in charge of everything: homeschooling, cooking, cleaning…everything. This was the beginning of the end.
My mom’s death changed something in me. It was an unexpected loss that blew a hole through me so wide I couldn’t feel anything. The day I heard about her accident and death I lay on the coach wailing for hours. This, from someone who had never cried in front of her children. After that, I could no longer be the buffer between my husband and children. I just didn’t have the emotional strength to run interference anymore. And the children suffered for it. When three more family deaths occurred within a year, I fell into a depression. I heard him tell our children that they were responsible for taking care of me and they better make sure I was okay. Nothing surprising there.
I think he could feel me pulling away. He tried to regain his power and control over me by getting angry, screaming in my face, throwing things, storming out and not returning until the next day. But when he looked at me, I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t cower because I didn’t care what happened to me: all he saw on my face was disgust. It would be another four years before I had the strength to file for divorce.