So this week my kids had the swine flu. Tons of people in our area had it over the last few weeks, it was not fun. I had it the week before my kids. My younger son was only sick a day or two. My oldest missed three days of school and is still recovering. This last week was their week with their dad. I hated every minute of it- Especially with the boys being sick.. I tried calling and texting their dad, but he refuses to pick up or text back. So then I have to call up my mother and have her bug him til she gets answers. That usually works pretty good.

 

I got a letter in the mail saying my husband filed for judicial intervention. I am not certain, but it sounds like he wants the courts to decide our fate in our divorce since i wont sign the papers. I just can't see giving him my house in exchange for $4,000! I would rather sell the house, and each end up with nothing but our freedom quite honestly. I hate looking up on the hill where our house is, and seeing his car there, or his girlfriends car there, knowing they are living in a house that is still mine. she can have him, but I hate that she gets my huge house while I am living in this little tiny cramped apartment on the other side of town. Every friday I see my house when we have to take our students swimming at the middle school pool. It makes my stomach churn. Yesterday I got a letter from the court stating to be in court an hour away on November 24th at 9:30am. fun. I just want to get the whole thing overwith and have him not end up with the house.

 

I have not been counting calories the last few days, and I feel it. i really need to get on that treadmill, too.. just haven't done it yet. It always feels like there is so much to do in such little time!!

I have been living with my boyfriend for almost six months now. It has been great, but it's not always been easy. I still feel alot of guilt for leaving my husband, especially when our youngest child asks so many questions about why we can't all live in the same house. Our older son realizes that all we did was fight and I think is alot more at peace with the situation. I think food was always my comfort when I wasn't happy with my life. When I was a kid my dad would always cheer me up with sugar.. lol.. and I think I just automatically still think that way.

 

I'm getting older and a lil more mature and I need to stop letting others influence my life or take away from what it is that I really want in my life. I feel like I lost over a decade of my life by staying with a man I really never wanted to be with. I always do things to make it easier on everyone else and it's got to stop. Atleast I got my children out of it, and I have to think of it that way and move on.

 

I've been counting calories the last four or five days and its helping already. Since I left my husband I have lost 21 pounds, but a lil over 31 total. I really need to keep going and get this extra weight off of me. I am honestly an emotional eater. I need to stop thinking of the huge picture, and just focus on my life one day at a time so that I can cope with every aspect of my life in the right way. When things seem too overwhelming, I give up. I am sick of giving up on things in my life, or for just settling because its the easier way. People go through divorce all the time and get through it, their children get through it.. I just need to remind myself of this instead of worry all the time. My kids have adjusted well to my boyfriend because they've known him for awhile now. He has been great to them, and actually our doing stuff together helped motivate my husband to do more with his kids. My husband honestly never went to a park, never sat on the porch or played ball with his kids until all of this happened. He was always inside drinking. He even had our youngest trained to get him a new beer when his was running low.. automatically. So, really.. this all was for the best even if it doesnt always feel that way. My kids have adjusted to my ex's girlfriend pretty well, too.

 

I bought a new hardcover journal and have been measuring my food and writing it all down. I have an awesome treadmill that I need to get better about walking on.. I have weeks where I do it daily, and then weeks where I dont do it at all. I need to get a better routine going.. but no matter what I haven't thrown in the towel.

When I went back to my house to live with my husband it was really rough. It was so hard because I didnt want to be there, but I really didn't have any other option. He started sleeping on the sofa, and I slept in our bedroom upstairs.

 

I continued to look for work. I got nothing for months, and then called twice on the same day to be hired for two different jobs I had interviewed for. I turned one job down for the other, and it was a mistake. I HATED the job I took, and after only one week, I quit it! This made me so mad.. here i was desperately searching for a job.. then i get one, and quit it! I could not take the people I worked with it was super cliquey and I am just not like that. Months later I finally started a job that would allow me to work the same hours as my children were in school. It was perfect.

 

During all this time I was still seeing my boyfriend. My husband knew it, i did not hide it. My husband had been trying really hard to work through things with me, but my heart just wasn't in it. I had ZERO desire to be anything more than friends.. and I could tell it was taking a toll on him. The man that drank atleast 12 beers a night no longer drank, and went from weighing 259 pounds down to about 180 pounds in a years time. I knew both of these were things that would make him healthier, however alot of it was lost by stress that was caused by me and I always felt super guilty. All he wanted was his family back, and I just didnt- at all.

 

I was at a miserable place in my life.. inlove with my boyfriend, yet living with my husband and kids and feeling a whole range of guilt for it. I tried to end things with my boyfriend more times than I could count. I would always stop him from going tho, I just couldnt stand the thought of another decade of my life wasted by unhappiness like I had already endured. I finally decided that somehow, someway.. my husband and I needed to live apart. I had a talk with my husband, and he agreed.

 

My boyfriend talked with a guy he knew that had an empty apartment and i went and looked at it. It was wayyyyy smaller than my house, but all the utilities were included so i took it. My boyfriend moved in with me and the boys.. the boys live with both myself and my husband equally. We alternate weeks with the boys. I am not proud of the way I went about things- having to live with my husband for that year while still seeing my boyfriend, but I didnt have a choice because I wasnt giving up my kids.

 

My mom wasn't speaking to me, my oldest sister wasnt speaking to me.. I felt like the time I needed my family the most, they weren't there. They are both about appearances, and put that before my happienss and that made me mad. Both of my sisters kept worrying about their spouses being more comfortable with my husband than my boyfriend.. both of their spouses are drinkers, too. My boyfriend doesn't drink at all, so this was odd to them. Still, what does it matter what their spouses thought? What about my daily life and happieness.. this was shocking to me that I didnt have their support.

 

Alot of times I covered up fights I had with my hubby before I ever left him. Maybe they didnt realize the severity of things? I dont even know why I covered for him, I guess I just figured we'd always be together and didnt want everyone to know my business. We had been through so much.. good and bad.. in 13 years and always seemed to work through it all.. until I met my boyfriend and then there was no going back for me.

 

My husband was very supportive of my decision to move out. Almost immediatly he started seeing a girl named Melissa. While he was seeing her, which wasnt long, it was the best time we had gotten along in a LONG time.. and it made me feel less guilty. After she left him, he treated me so coldly again, as if it were my fault he was alone. After a few months, he started seeing another girl- and still is. My kids met her a couple times and she moved in my house with him!

 

When he let me know about her, he had asked to switch the weekend that he was supposed to have the kids so that he and her could have her weekends off, alone- I guess she has every other weekend off. He didnt tell me she was living there, just that they were dating. I agreed because lord knows that boy needed a life and I figured we'd get along better. Well, once she stayed overnight, she never left. My kids kept telling me about her staying and so I wanted to get more of my stuff out of the house because I didnt want her using my things, or throwing out my things! I arranged for times to go there when they werent there. My husband and her left love letters all arranged on the table nicely that they were so deeply inlove... lol.. as if it was going to upset me. They also left paint samples neatly arranged and labeled them by what room would be what color... so they were obviously going to paint the rooms in my house. THAT was what upset me. I didnt care she had my husband, but i did care she had my house!!!!

 

It has been about two months of them living in my house. My husband has become more viscious, not nicer like I thought. He has done nothing but refer to my boyfriend as 'retard'.. which is so uncool since our oldest child has Autism and that's one word we never let anyone use!!! My boyfriend completely stays out of what's going on with my husband and has never spoken an unkind word to my husband face to face. Everytime my husband was stopping by our apartment he usually had a nasty remark as I took the boys out front to meet him. I finally set up a video camera and got it on tape him screaming over to me that I was a 'pathetic piece of f'n sh*t". I didnt even say a word to him before or after he said it, and he said it right in front of my boys. I have no idea why he still wants to be like this even after he's moved on in a new relationship. yes, I did handle the last year poorly, but it wasn't like he didnt know what was going on.

 

I was served with divorce papers in August, and I am trying to stahl things until i can get money together to hire a lawyer. I saw a lawyer about a month ago and he told me if I signed the papers that I was given, i was insane because they give me nothing except $4,000. He keeps my house, no child support.. blah blah blah.

 

 

When I left my husband, I went and stayed with my parents. I had done this a few times before, but living with my mother isn't so easy and I usually could only take it a week or two and then I would take my husband back. I love my mother because she is my mother, but sometimes we just dont get along.

 

My parents have been together since my mom was 13 and my dad was 15. They are now 61 and almost 63! My father pretty much does what she says, and that drives me crazy- but maybe that's why they have had a successful relationship and I haven't! LOL

 

Well, soon after I left my husband and went to my parents house with my boys I started seeing a new guy. I had actually been talking to him on the net, and was trying to set him up with my friend Lisa- but after we kept talking and hanging out, things developed between us. Instead of being happy for me, my mom was angry because I was married and how it looked. She thought he was a nice guy, but said she has three daughters and three son in laws.. blah blah blah. Once things got started with this other guy, there was no going back for me though. I had wanted out for so long, My husband used to tell me I was too fat that no man would ever want me, so i should just get over my problems with his drinking. He would also say "guys dont like girls that already have kids" ... I started to believe those things after a few years of him saying it. I just felt trapped with my husband, so leaving him and then meeting a new guy was like a breath of fresh air!

 

My husband tried to get me to come home by showing up every morning before school to help get the kids off to school with me, he quit drinking cold turkey, and started doing things with the boys and taking them places. He never would even go outside with the boys and i before this, so everything was getting better in our lives from this split.

 

After he realized I was seeing someone new he got super angry and called me all kinds of names. He and my mom started talking on the phone behind my back and she was letting him know what was going on with me and the new guy. She kept telling my sisters that she just wanted me back with my husband because it was going to ruin holidays at her house if my husband took them to his family's house half the time.. blah blah blah. She stopped being that supportive mother- the one that was appauled by his drinking- and started a mission to put my family back together- even though its not what I wanted! She kept saying 'well he quit drinking now" .. and I would tell her "do you know how many times he has promised me that? it's never done... ever!" but she didnt care. She started treating me and my new boyfriend like she couldnt stand us, and it became harder and harder to live there. My dad didnt agree with her, but he never stood up to her, so I really had no support.

 

I had been a stay at home mom when I was with my husband, for 8 years.. when our oldest was diagnosed with Autism. So now, not having a job was causing all kinds of problems. All I had was $3,000 from taxes that I split with my husband- and it was going fast. I was paying my parents, i was buying food, clothes, toys.. things that we didnt bring with us i was rebuying when i needed. I started looking for a job, but nothing was panning out. The stress from my mother was not helping. One night she started screaming at me like a crazy woman because I was on the phone at 1am telling my boyfriend goodnight. It was ridiculous. I was 31 and she was talking to me as if i was 16. She knew what she was doing.. she was trying to FORCE me back into my marriage. Her and I had words- so bad that she kicked me out at 1am in the pouring rain. Luckily my kids were staying with their dad that night.

 

My boyfriend came and picked me up, and i stayed with him. After I woke up, I realized his place was not big enough for three more people.. so I ended up asking my husband if the boys and i could come back til i got back on my feet. He was fully aware that we werent 'back together'...

My husband wasn't always 'abusive' or whatever, but there were times things got pretty physical. I just ended up building up years long resentment towards him inside.

 

The last straw was when he was laid off and drinking every day.. he and I kept fighting about money, about everything. The one night he was pretty smashed and decided he wanted Chinese food. I told him I would call it in, he could barely speak right. He insisted he go pick it up, just to do the opposite of what I wanted. He was walking in the living room and tripped over a bowl of popcorn my son had been eating while watching tv. My husband laid on the floor eating the popcorn that he spilled. He wasnt even making sense and finally got up and took off to get his food while I was on the phone with my mother.

 

When he got back he was so proud of himself that he made it there and back without a problem, and was screaming things at me. I muffled the phone and my mom asked me what was going on. I didnt want her to hear what he was saying. She asked if he was drunk again, and i said "of course" and she said "why do you put up with that?" I said "what am i supposed to do- I married him and he has me 'locked in'.." she said "you are never locked in, you have your father and I."

 

After I got off the phone with her, my husband was unloading the food that he bought. Our younger son came in the dining room to see what he had bought. My husband told our younger son "mommy's an f'n loser.. tell mommy she's an f'n loser!" and all the sudden my four year old said "mommy, you're an f'n loser!" and laughed. My husband hi fived him.. that's when I knew I had to leave. I ended up packing up clothes for me and the boys and going to stay with my parents.

When I was 14 I started dating a boy that was my age. We were young, but feel deep inlove and stayed together til we were almost 20. I then met my would be husband at a retail store where we both worked. I was so devastated about my breakup with my previous relationship, that I was just looking to move on.. something that would help me cope with all the pain I felt. Bad Idea!!

 

Not long after I started dating my would be husband, I got pregnant. That settled my confusion. I was going to be a mother and I had to start being responsible. Although I had the right idea in mind, it made me put my hopes and dreams aside to fulfill this 'duty'.... I didnt think of myself anymore, just my child and how things were 'supposed' to go. 

 

We moved in together about 5 months into my pregnancy and I realized he had a real drinking problem. We had drank quite a bit before I was pregnant, but most 'kids' our age did. Once we were living together, everything was planned around his drinking.. going places, buying things, getting baby stuff... as long as he had enough beer /alcohol to get through til his next payday. Drinking was a daily thing for him. I felt so trapped being pregnant and being angry at him for being this way.

 

After the baby was born it was more of the same. We fought ALOT!! I left him a few times but it only was for a day or two.. My mother and I didnt see eye to eye ever, and staying with her when I was upset with him wasn't much better.

 

On new years eve one year he wouldnt help me with our son when we were at a family party, and I wanted to leave. I had asked for help numerous times, but he just kept drinking and playing drinking games. When we left I was furious. Once we were driving away he smacked me over the head with a full bottle of beer, as our child slept in his carseat in the backseat! thank god I was able to keep control of the car! When we got home, the fight only escalated and he ended up smacking me in the mouth and fracturing one of my front teeth! I have a fake front tooth now from that incident. He laughed after it happened, so i grabbed the phone and called the police and had him arrested. 

 

He got a year probation and of course I took him back. I always did. I was always too afraid to go out on my own with our son, and then in 2002 I found out I was pregnant for our second child.. so we got married because i had no medical insurance. It was a really quick and not so happy event in my life. Our wedding photo is hilarious.. i am in a black dress and look terrified, my husband is smiling ear to ear and so is the JP that married us. One week to the day after our wedding, I miscarried. Therefore I got married for nothing! It was awful.  

 

I just kept on keeping on.. just going through the motions of everyday life and everyday responsibilities. I wasn't happy, I wasn't having fun. I wasn't enjoying life with my children like I should've been because I spent so much time being angry inside at him, and at myself for letting my life turn out this way.

 

When I was a teenager life seemed so fun, so full of hope.. and now life was miserable and I just wanted a change and begged God for a way out, almost daily, sadly.

 

We finally bought a house in May 2006. It was one of our biggest dreams. I thought things were finally looking up.. things were great again for awhile. Then, he got laid off from his job where he had worked for over 10 years. He went into deep depression and our relationship was never the same again.