Tonight....

Packing up tonight.  I've been packing for the past 2 weeks, but it's crunch time now.  Friends are coming to help move tomorrow, muscle for the big stuff.    My husband wants back in the house so badly that he finally agreed to my all my requests for furniture with the exception of the mattress and boxspring.  I guess he doesn't want to sleep on the floor.  

It's been a REALLY strange few days.   I didn't expect to be so emotionally conflicted.   It seems like everything I put in a box or a bin has some sort of memory attached to it.  Memories of the good times, and of course, memories when times weren't so good.   In one way I'm so glad to be getting out of this house, then again, it's reality biting me in the ass.  This is really it.  The end.  I pack with a heavy heart.  I took down all the wedding pictures, packed the frames and left him the photos.   I can't bare to take them with me.   I found my scrapbook, the one I made right after we were married...  photos of my shower, the wedding, the reception, and the honeymoon.   It seems like a lifetime ago.   I was so in love, so naive, so unsuspecting.   *sigh*...   I wonder, "How did I let things turn out this way?" 

I honestly thought I was marrying forever, that we would grow old together.   Then I think, "could I have done something different?"  The violence didn't escalate until I was pregnant.  "Was I depressed?  Did I cause it?  Maybe things didn't get better after I had our daughter because I was suffering from post-pardom?"   

Looking back on it now, I was depressed.  But it wasn't post-pardom depression.  I was depressed because of the way my husband had beaten me while I was pregnant.  And after my daughter was born, (6 weeks early), when she was in the NICU and I was in the hospital having fallen victim to a nasty staff infection, my husband left us.  Went back to NY for week.  He claimed he had visitation with his other daughter.  So he left a sick newborn in the NICU to spend a week with a healthy 7 year old.   Made no sense...   except now, it makes perfect sense.  He never truly cared.  Makes me queasy now just thinking about it.  I begged him not to go.   I felt abandoned.  

Kind of like how I felt when I found out back in February that he had been having an affair.  I just want to scream at him, "HOW DARE YOU!!  After all the shit I have put up with, all your lies, your abuse, your emotional torment, now you decide to throw it all away.  And for what?   Some 2 dollar tramp who strokes your ego?"  I get teary eyed and then angry because I told myself I wouldn't shed another tear for him.   Then I realize, once again, she did me a favor.  I should be thanking her.   Because deep down I know, if I hadn't have discovered the affair, I would still be with him.  I would still be enduring his violence, his heart wrenching words, and his soul crushing actions.  

How do I get passed the hurt?   How do I stop loving him?   Maybe I am as crazy as he claims.  How in God's name does someone still love a man who has slapped her, backhanded her, thrown her into walls and doors, pushed her down the stairs, abandoned her when her baby was in the NICU, and cheated on her?  I truly have no idea.   I pray that it goes away and goes away quickly.