Fourth of July

It was very hard not being with you today. It seemed very strange and a little lonely and I don't know why. All I use to do with you on the Fourth of July was have a strong yearning for you to want to take me to see a nice fireworks show. Last year and the year before we went to the water park but now I look back on it and know it was because I always did the planning, I was lucky if you got an idea to do something...then I had to do all the work.

That is something I realized. The yearning. Yearning for you to love me, yearning for you to want to do things for me, the yearning for you to want to do things for me, the constant yearning. It was like a pain in my stomach, it felt like my soul was screaming for you & you couldn't hear it, like my soul was aching.

I have learned that if I had stayed with you I would have done ANYTHING for you to love me. I would have let you kill me. I would have let you tell me how to wear my hair, how to have my nails, what color to paint my toenails, how much I needed to drink, what kind of shoes to wear, what I needed to be doing for you. I loved you so very much that I let you control every aspect of our life down to where our children would go to school and we didn't even have children, even what they would be named, and I thought that getting to name the child if we had a girl was a victory. That I let you get away with being a jerk to me and to my family and to all my friends and I would have continued to let you because I loved you more.

I still can't believe you let your (soon to be) new wife have tacky long fake fingernails, and in really loud tacky colors like Barney purple. I remember last year you got mad at the way my toenails were painted because you called them sloppy. I actually went to Wal-mart & removed the polish in the bathroom and then went to a nail salon to get them painted. It is so strange how you never would say "You can't do ________" but I already knew. It is because you would say things like "You don't need to get your hair cut too short." or "She's getting a little short with your hair" or if I had a drink when I got home you would come in and look at the bottle and see some gone & say "Oh I see you're drinking again" (but it was ok for you to drink and drive when you were hanging out with your "friends" behind my back, it was ok for you to drink and drive, it was ok for you to have all these people I didn't know as friends and hang out with them but I couldn't). It was so strange how you would say I could go see my friends and when it came time you wouldn't let me, but you wouldn't say "NO YOU CAN'T" you would just throw a fit and make me feel like shit. How you would remark on shoes I liked in the store as "trashy" or "slutty" but it is ok for your (soon to be) new wife to buy her shoes at the Hustler store...where they sell REAL STRIPPER SHOES!!

I was so stupid to think that you had Holly Housewife Barbie to replace me. I thought it was going to be someone tall, skinny, long blonde hair, blue eyes, and Barbie pink lips with a monogrammed apron. Then I saw the pictures your new wife was posting, and I realized that I was the one that actually owned the monogrammed apron and the pink Kitchenaid mixer. I still blame myself but I know I can't be her, I can see she is really trash and that is even harder to take because I never knew you as this trashy person. I thought you were so much better than that, you made fun of women like her and even had a shirt from the Hustler store with a stripper on the back that said "I support single moms"...that was she is, even though I already know she or her husband hasn't filed for divorce...he's not in the picture and here you are taking care of someone else's children. But the really sad part is, you had been working this part time job with her before I ever cheated, and even before I cheated I told you I wanted a divorce & you told me no. You told me I could put up with the way things are or get out but you were not going to get divorced.

It was the only thing I ever trusted you with and I would have spent my entire life in a loveless marriage, alone. Because you never had time for me & you were always working (because you had a whole other life I had no idea about) & you would have kept telling me we needed to have a baby so that when we did get divorced you could control my life for 25 more years so we could argue about where's my child support check every month & I would have worried for each and every holiday how long I would have had my child & I would have had to hear your name come out of my children's mouths & hear HER name and have HER in their life. I would have shot myself. I know I would have. People tell me that is what you wanted, to be able to have control over my life like that the way your dad did it to your mom, and being with you for 11 years I knew that she bitched about child support EVERY SINGLE MONTH because he paid it when he felt like paying it and because they settled out of court she already knew if she went through the court system she wouldn't get as much money out of him because he used her. I tell people that is impossible, no one would really think like this. I don't see how you would have won, you would have never been rid of me but people tell me that people do think like that. It makes me sick to my stomach that you would have put me through that but you don't really want to get this all over with. That is why you won't agree out of court for a divorce--you want it to go to trial so you can call forward your witnesses of how awful I was & all the things I did to be such a terrible wife (even though your grounds for divorce are irreconcilable differences). That is why you are appealing your domestic violence case, because you just want to be right even though you lied. You lied on me, you lied on the police and you had the audacity to bring up who I was friends with on Facebook but you and your new wife are already taking vacations together and you have already bought her an engagement ring AND a WEDDING BAND (yeah. I saw those pictures she posted).

As I wake up from the coma I've been in for almost 7 months I am sadly starting to realize I don't miss you or even love you. I miss the man I thought you were. I still love the man I thought you were. But you aren't him anymore. You weren't him then, you were trying to be something you couldn't be & the person you are now is trash & it is kind of sad to see but I know how happy you are. You don't have to do a whole lot anymore and unlike the days of our petty arguments like when the garbage was overflowing and I begged you to take the garbage & got upset when you wouldn't take it for 4 days, you have someone that won't nag you about that. Because she doesn't care if you take the garbage or don't. She doesn't care if garbage is piling up on the floor or not. She's sleeping on the same sheets I slept on, laying her head on the same pillow I laid on (yeah, saw the pictures she posted of her and her friend laying in your bed...glad you still like the Ralph Lauren pillows my mother bought us for Christmas). She doesn't mind that my things were still everywhere in that house since I only had 12 hours to get all my belongings and leave before you got out of jail. It doesn't bother her in the least to pose in front of my butterfly windchime in the kitchen, that you bought me on our honeymoon. And it doesn't bother you because you are a monster.

And sadly, I would have never left. I would have had the yearning for the rest of my life. That hope that you were going to do something, anything, to just be a part of our marriage. I would have continued to stay and be abused, hurt, lied to, laughed at, deceived and made a fool of--all for you to love me. And I am stupid enough to think that I would go back. I am stupid enough to think was all of that worth it to stand beside someone and watch fireworks? I know it isn't fun without you but maybe it is because I am selfish since I loved you so very much & wanted us to be happy. Deep down inside it always felt right to me, like you really were the one who had my heart and I feel like a huge part of me is gone. I feel like a huge part of me is dead but somehow I know this is how it has to be, no matter how bad it hurts.