If I’m to believe the motivational meme I saw today, ‘No one can ruin your life without your permission’. Hmmm.

Sure. And no one has the right to take everything you hold sacred, wipe their ass with it, crumple it up like garbage, and throw it in the gutter, either. But someone did that to me, didn’t they? So enough with all of the flowery nonsense that’s supposed to empower me and remind me of who’s in control of my life. It certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve had a say or control in  any of the things that have happened in my life in the last 11 months. All of this was put upon us, and everything I’m now doing is merely a response to something difficult or haunting or depressing that I’m facing as a result.

Let’s assess:

He destroyed my past by tainting all of the beautiful and lovely moments from our lives over the past 14 years, making them ugly and heartbreaking and devastating to look upon or think about.

He destroyed my present by making me live within the confines of an emotionally strip-mined heart, while handing me the sole role in the most important two person job on earth (raising excellent human beings), all while living out of boxes in guest rooms with no home of our own, no way to get one, and no idea what the future brings.

And he destroyed my future, because I want with every fiber of my being for these children to get to have their mother and father raise them, but that option is destroyed forever by what he’s chosen to do. I see struggle as a single mom the likes of which I can’t even fully comprehend yet. I don’t feel that I could I ever trust another man again, because I’ve been so fundamentally damaged that even if I could, I’d want to spare them from the baggage I now come with. So what does this mean? This means no spouse for me. This means no family for them.

Roughly translated, no hope.

Taking hope from a person is just about the worst thing you could possibly do. But he never considered any of these possible repercussions. Why would he? It didn’t involve his feelings, so why bother wasting precious energy considering what this would do to me? What it would do to the children? Nope. Not a crap was given the day he decided that he really didn’t need to put on the ‘Honey Show’ with me anymore, acting the part of the sugary sweet guy with the false humility. No. That day that the truth came spilling out like the guts of a tauntaun, he was the emperor, reigning over our lives and our futures, issuing decrees about what would bring him the most pleasure (and consequentially, bring us the most pain).

Emperor Honey’s Royal Decree:

Bring me my pole wench! The one with the tacky tattoos. Yes, I’ll take her. She’ll do nicely. What’s that? She’s a horrible human being? Don’t really care.

Bring me something to eat! Preferably something buttered and smothered with cheese.

Oh, and bring me that pesky wife and family of mine…ahem…it is my decision by royal decree that I hereby sentence you all…ON YO’ OWN. Good luck out there. Be gone with you.

Now…felate me, pole wench!

I certainly didn’t give him permission to abandon his family for a stripper he met while she hung upside down from a pole in a g-string filled with 10’s and 20’s, but he sure did that, didn’t he? I didn’t consent to any of it…but that’s irrelevant under tyrannical rule. That he was disguised as a humble servant until the moment of his decree only made it that much worse, for so many reasons.

Another motivational gem that people say is ‘you’ll just learn to live with it’.

While I’m sure that’s true, what that really says to me is ‘Your fire will go out. You will go numb to it and to everything else. You will have no choice but to accept this fundamentally unfair thing like a piece of metal impailed into your ribcage that never comes out. It will hurt, but as the wound heals around it, the pain will dull. Eventually, you won’t notice so much that you’ve got a 2 foot long piece of rebar stabbed right through the core of you. But it’s always gonna be there. And you’re always gonna know it.

And that’s the best you can hope for when you consider how your future is going to be.

Look, I’m very aware of how much of an emotional vampire I am when I say all these things. I get it. I know I’m making things awkward for those who want to see some growth and some positivity come out of my mouth. I have two thoughts on this.

First, life isn’t like a formulaic sitcom. If I may borrow from ‘Reality Bites’, if you’re wondering why everything can’t just go back to normal at the end of the half hour, like the Brady Bunch or something, it’s because Mr. Brady died of aids. The real world just doesn’t work like that. I will be like this until I’m not like this. And that’s the best I can explain it right now.

Second, there’s a Gary Larsen ‘Far Side’ cartoon that perfectly nails it. If I could have found it, I’d show you rather than explain. There’s two panels, both of dogs at a cocktail party. In the first one, all the dogs are chatting when one dog turns to another and says ‘Say! I’ve just been to the vet, and he said I’ve got worms.’ The next panel shows the party go silent, all the dogs now staring at him in wide-eyed horror. It’s captioned something like ‘The Dreaded Canine Cocktail Party Faux Pas.’ I know I’m that guy. Somehow, my lovely, sweet family just became part of a Springer episode. It’s not something people want to hear about. It’s undignified and salacious and unflattering and negative. So please believe me when I say I’m equally unhappy about Honey’s story being in any way connected to me or my children. And yet, it is. For all time. I’m also certain it makes people squirm to think about how something sacred and permanent (like marriage is supposed to be) can be so perversely vulnerable. I get all of that. So 95% of these thoughts are reserved for the blog, and I smile my way through my days when I’m around friends and family so I’m not that dog at a cocktail party. But here, I will always speak the truth. Even when it’s unflattering and depressing as hell.

You know, if anything, this whole thing shows me that the level of trust that is expected within a marriage is a totally illogical gamble. Let’s see…he could really love me, or he could be totally lying.

Roll those dice! No snake eyes! Let’s bet the house and the cars and what remains of my heart! You really think I’m going to sign up for that again? To let my guard down and possibly invite another emotionally disordered liar to sit down at the same table where my precious children eat? Ever? Never.

And…did he ever even love me, even a little?

Because if he did, it seems impossible to me that he’d be capable of harming me so horrifically by doing the things he did, and by doing them the way he did them. It seems that if he ever had even a shred of love for me, a modicum of respect for me as the mother of his babies, it wouldn’t have been possible to go out and have affairs when he knew I was home with his toddler and his newborn, struggling and in pain and totally alone. If he ever loved me, it would have been impossible to be as cold as he was the night he left. Anyone who is knowingly breaking the heart of the woman that’s trusted and loved you and served you like I did should have had some measure of sympathy for me as I sobbed with anguish that night.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t have a single tear for me. He looked at me very much the way a scientist would soberly consider a germ on a microscope slide. There was no tenderness, there was no emotion. There was absolutely nothing.

This is what prompted me to look up sociopathic behaviors, and to my horror, found they fit him like a glove.

How can a woman come back from this? We live inside our hearts. Our logic and our emotions are connected. Men separate them. We cannot. My heart is hanging on by a thread, life support machines beeping endlessly. There’s a guard tower around it with 10 foot walls and razor wire, and orders to shoot on sight.

If only this meant I’ve turned off my ability to feel. If only I could. It’s the opposite, actually. Now I feel every coldness of this world. I feel the ambivalence of the night sky in my vessels, I feel the emptiness of space itself in my bones. And most importantly, I feel the need to curl my babies into me to shield them from the ugliness that sits right behind the beautiful veil of this world.

Is this going to screw up my children? Am I going to screw up my children? Am I ever going to feel normal again? I’m scared. And I hate it. And I hate him. And I hate that I hate him.

What fresh horror will tomorrow bring? Ah, yes. At least I know the answer to that one…

You gotta be kidding me. Sigh.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, UNIVERSE.