Maybell XXV: Moving Toward the Lighthouse

[Maybell]

Feeling hurt and less detached today. I think he and I might really be over.

He graduated from college in 3 years so he could get started on his adult life. I think I was part of that push for early achievement. I don't think he had any clue what grown-up marriage would be like and not much desire to engage in one. I've never been very important to him.

He is not a thoughtful person. He didn't help AT ALL yesterday. Except to play with the kids a little. He's like that everywhere. Waiting to be served. Never helps with the dishes at his parents' house or anywhere else. Never helped with the kids or anything. Would walk into their house, greet them, and then start reading the paper once he'd gotten his beer. In seventeen years I don't think he ever once helped with the dishes after a big family meal at their house.

Our financial condition is beginning to deteriorate. I saw an indication that he may have been on a date in the statements. (I know we're not supposed to snoop but the cash has dropped so much and so suddenly that I was trying to figure out why.)

I don't think I am broadly codependent. I think I've been trying to compensate for my H's lack of emotional involvement for years. Yesterday I saw him more clearly and I saw a guy who was willing to ask for big things but not to give little things. I asked for THREE things. All small. All things my daughter knows how to find. I received one of them, because it was electronic. One of my gifts was from D11, but none of them were from my boys. That kind of hurt. He didn't try to foster their ability to show me loving gestures. They give me plenty of loving gestures anyway without his guidance but it says a lot about him. His gifts were from each of the children, and they were very excited to share them with him.

I think what I'm feeling now is just blow-back from having been around him so much yesterday. I'm working hard to be detached but today I'm exhausted, yesterday I was even more exhausted, and I'm just feeling emotional.

What am I supposed to do with that Buddha gift? I don't want to use it. I don't want ANOTHER thing to set out when I'm trying to clear my life of things that don't serve me. But he chose it for me on purpose. (I think it was in a clearance bin, though).

He really hasn't understood me in a long time and the words to help him understand are stuck in my throat because of how he's treated me.

On another note, I talked to my mom a couple of weeks ago and when she asked what i wanted for Christmas I said I'd like a bag for work. I asked, very hesitantly, if I could choose it because (all I'd wanted to say was size, shape, and color)... and that's as far as I got before she launched into a HUGE tirade about how she wasn't going to buy me some tacky cheap crocheted thing and that I shouldn't think so little of them and on and on and on. It was very ugly, heated, and long, and I just sat there on the other end of the phone trying to get a word in edgewise to defuse the whole thing and I never could. I don't even remember how it ended or how I got off the phone. It was awful. So I didn't choose a bag because after that I felt like every time I laid eyes on it I'd just remember the tongue-lashing I'd received, and I didn't get anything from my parents for Christmas either. Nor did I send them anything. I tried to text a few times but they ignored em, I called twice after that but they declined my calls so I haven't spoken to them in a couple of weeks. I don't feel like I've been treated very fairly by them and I'm tired of making the effort. D11 asked me if I'd ever treat HER that way if she went a few weeks without calling and I said of course not, I couldn't imagine behaving that way.

I want to change my life NOW. I want my H to either man up and return to the marriage or LEAVE. I want to know how to treat my parents so I don't keep walking into these booby traps, and I would like to keep them at serious arms length too. I just want to settle into a life that is MINE from this day on (not in this house) and be OK. I want to be happy.

I'm ok, just tired and emotional from the holidays.