A year ago today, I was laying in bed, alone, very pregnant, wondering what was happening with my husband. He had just left to go to the airport where he would be embarking on a two week long business trip to the other side of the country. He had not told me until an hour prior to his departure that he would be gone for a solid two weeks (what I believed to be a somewhat imperative bit of information for someone who was so pregnant). He had been acting strangely for weeks, months really, and when I began to cry telling him I didn't want to not see him for two weeks, he replied with "maybe we need the time apart" and would not expand upon this. He then left for the airport with me still in tears.
I did not hear from him for another 48 hours.
After several phone calls, texts, and lost sleep, I hacked into every single account of his I could find. Emails. Bank accounts. Phone records. You name it, if I knew of it, I hacked it. I'm not proud of it, but I did it. I did not like what I found.
He did not respond to me until 9 AM on Monday morning, to which he said he would talk to me more later in the day to explain what inappropriate crap I had found.
And at lunch, we had the ILYBINILWY conversation. He was literally crazy. He suggested we put our unborn child up for adoption and immediately commence with divorce proceedings.
He then managed to keep himself out of our house for 10 of the last 12 weeks of my pregnancy.
In May, I gave birth to our beautiful, sweet, smart daughter. I hoped that her presence would help him get his sh!t together. It didn't. So I left.
Over the summer I spent little time with him, working on myself, trying to enjoy my daughter, and trying to forge a life for myself, with or without my husband.
And then on a glorious day in July, he finally realized that he "may need to speak to a professional" about his unhappiness. And then that was the beginning of things turning around.
I did not come home until December. He wanted me to come home sooner, but I was the one who wasn't ready. I was too angry. But through a lot of work on both our parts, we were able to celebrate our first Christmas as a family together.
We've come a long way in a year. I still have doubts about what was true and what wasn't. I still have nightmares, I still have insecurities. But I am a much stronger person, and I'm thankful for this process.
I could not have done this without you. All of you. Thank you so much for supporting me, my family and my marriage (especially when others looked at me like I was crazy for "putting up with" my husband's horsesh!t).
For those of you who are new(er), have patience, have faith. Faith in yourself. Faith in the process. But most of all have patience. Have the patience of Job.
