Welcome back to the Carnival

To show you that no good deed goes unpunished…

I already told you that my MIL went and told my wife. It was an unresolved issue that I was struggling with. How do you go to someone and tell them that they’ve betrayed your trust, not once but twice.

I went home yesterday, its hockey season…and I love hockey. The Conference Finals started yesterday, Wings v. Stars. I turned it on to watch the last 20 minutes of the game. My wife was fast asleep on the couch, an image I’m all too familiar with. Her mom was home and this is the conversation we had:

“What do you think we should do? Do you think we should take her in?” Her

“Honestly, I have no clue.” Me

She went upstairs and got dressed and came back down and started to put her shoes on.

“You’re taking her in?” Me

“Well, you obviously don’t care!” Her

“What do you want me to say?”

“What do I want you to say? I want you to say, this is my wife, I’ll take care of her. This is my wife, let me take her in. This is my wife and she’s my responsibility. If you don’t want to be part of this family, grab your stuff and get out!”

“You have no idea what I do for her. You don’t know that at night I’m the only one that covers her up so she’s not cold. You don’t know that I’m the one that puts her legs on the bed so that she doesn’t wake up sore. Take her to the bathroom, get her water, you don’t know any of that so don’t tell me that I do nothing for her or that I don’t care about her.

“You want me to tell you to take her to the hospital or do it myself but I don’t know what the hospital is going to do. Give her more meds?” Me

“They’ll do a spinal tap and help her.” Her

“They won’t. She’s got medication on board to help with that and if they don’t feel that it’s an issue they won’t do it. So they’ll just give her meds, send her home and send me the bill.”

This whole time my wife in on the couch in and out of lucidity like a character from that movie Blow.

We decided to give it another day. Hope that she got better.

When I woke up today they were mad at each other. Her mother has been holding her narcotics for the month but it appears that even that hasn’t helped. She got her narcs filled on the 24th of last month, she only has five days left. So if you do the math, today is the NINTH. So she has until the 14th and then she’s out… she’s overtaken 10 days worth of meds.

But they are still telling me it’s not an issue and that she’s genuinely sick…

In the Cold

Things don’t always work out the way that you want them to. I’ll tell you from personal experience. I left my house when I was 14 because I couldn’t handle the type of life that my mom was living and I couldn’t handle the stress of the family I have. I’m not a loner, I can’t say that I’ve ever been one really, I enjoy the company of others and I’m always willing to help friends at the drop of a hat.

Still, it seems that even the best laid plans go to pot eventually. In my current situation I can’t say that I’m laying the best plans or any plans at all really but anything that I had been thinking about really has been put into question.

After my conversation with the MIL (Mother in Law), I didn’t do anything else. Why, you ask? Well simply put, while I’m not thrilled with the situation and it’s currently giving me gray hair, I wanted to wait to see if the Missuss would wake long enough for me to have a serious conversation with her to see if she would understand where I was coming from and why I was making the decisions that I was making. We’ve shared a lot together and she’s my best friend. I can’t imagine leaving her a “Dear John” letter for her to find and try to pick up the pieces with.

Yesterday she woke up for a little bit while I was getting ready for work. She retold me some stories that she had already told me earlier in the week and rehashed the same sentiments she had at that time. I listened and answered in the right places and everything else.

Her; “It feels like we’re not connected anymore.”

Me: “Well babe, we’re really not and we haven’t been in some time.”

She got quiet for a second and just watched me.

“I’m thinking about leaving.”

“I know, my mom told me last night when we were at the doctor’s office.”

Nothing hurts like a sack of bricks than hearing that one of the most intimate and important decisions in a relationship has already been discussed by someone else. Wouldn’t really bother me that they did talk about it but really, I hadn’t even talked to my wife yet and she had to hear it third party first. That’s not right or is it fair to her.

Tension at home I expected but what I find amusing is that the tension isn’t with my wife, it’s with her mother. I feel more and more like I made a mistake by being involved in a relationship where the mother is such an integral part of the relationship. I feel like I’ve failed at life currently. I’ve been led around the nose like a dog and I’ve got nothing to show for it expect emotional baggage.

How in the hell am I supposed to come home everyday knowing that there’s that one person that has betrayed my trust twice in as many days? I don’t even feel like I can be around the three year old for fear that I’ll do something wrong.
Some days… some days it’s harder to wake up than others

That could have gone better

So yesterday I told you about the decision that I came to, that I felt that I needed some space and I got the two reactions that I expected to get. Left field and right field, kind of like what I’m feeling right now.

I love Dax, he’s very honest and open and went right to the root of it, God and my son. Oddly enough those are the two things that I worry about myself. Can I even tell you that this whole situation to me is something that I prayed and hoped I would never have to deal with? Can I tell you that for as long as I can remember I always thought that divorce or separation was never the answer? Sometimes we can be naïve though can’t we?

The way our home life is built has three adults, a teenager and J, the three year old. There is always someone home for him, period. Mostly it’s two people with M being one and being passed out. So it’ll be me and M, or M and her mom, or M and her sister, with J always in tow. He is the jewel of everyone’s eye. He’s a awesome human being and a spunky little kid.

After I wrote up my little thing on here I got a call from my MIL that she felt that my wife needed to go back into the ER again. She was still mostly asleep, she was having difficulty with her balance and her mother was finally worried. She’s been this way for three weeks at this point.

So I’m on the phone with her mother. I’m listening and I’m talking and I realize that I really just need to say my piece and that I need to tell her what’s on my mind:
“Listen. I just, I need to tell you. I woke up this morning and I felt like I needed to make a choice and I feel like I need to get away.”

“You mean like leave?”

“Yea. You know just-“

“Then go. Leave.”

“Well that’s just it. I’m just wondering. I mean, I’m at peace with the decision and I’ve always felt that if a decision was wrong God would point that out, it wouldn’t sit right. If I’m at peace with it, what does that say, have we made the wrong choices with M?”
“You know, I don’t know. I know that the devil can make you feel peaceful and make it feel like its right even when it’s not.”

“I know but, it doesn’t feel like a spiritual conflict. It doesn’t feel like two sides, it just feels peaceful.”

“Well if you feel like you need to leave, then go. No one can stop you. God wouldn’t have loved Jesus any less if He hadn’t gone to the cross. But I’ll tell you this right now, I will fight you tooth and nail for J.”

(Keep in mind that I’m talking to my Mother in Law)

“Excuse me?”

“You made that boy sit and watch a hockey game with you for two hours on Saturday. That’s abuse.”

“What?”

“That’s abuse. Having a child sit still for two hours is abuse.”

“Hold it, back up. You realize that this has spun out like this and it didn’t come from me right? I was just talking, I needed a sounding board. You tell me you’re the Sheppard and that we should come to you. I’m coming to you and this is all that you have for me? Allegations? Really?”

“If you need to go, go. Not everyone is strong. You won’t be part of our ministry.”

“So what will I be?”

“That’s up to you. You wouldn’t be part of our ministry anymore.”

“You know. I always thought that I could come to you and talk to you like a friend and like a mom and a Sheppard but after this conversation I don’t know that I’ll ever really be able to trust you that way again.”

“Fine.”
Click!

That my friends, is a conversation that I’m going to have etched into my mind for the rest of my life and I wish it wasn’t. Why do you ask? Because really, for all intents and purposes for the last ten years, this has been my family. I don’t speak to my own family because of the mind games that they play. Now I’m staring down the barrel of something eerily similar happening here. So now I question myself and my ability to communicate with others.

Really should this be happening?

It appear that the well being of my child is in question when I come near him since I abuse him so badly.

I realize that my life is my own but that I have to answer for my actions in the long run. That there’s Someone up above that’s watching my decisions and seeing if I lead people astray and if I bring them closer to Him. This, however, this is something that I’m just looking at in complete disbelief.

People are flawed. God’s people even more so. He calls the flawed to Him. I know this for I am flawed like no one else but I can’t really sit here and rethink what I felt yesterday morning after a conversation like that. I really can’t.

When is it enough?

When is it enough?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself about the situation that I currently sit in. I’m sure that many of you can’t understand what I’m going through; I hope that for your sanity you never have to find out what it feels like to be me (Tom Petty). The crisis at hand isn’t one of faith, though that plays a hand, it’s one of self. Am I being true to myself? Am I being the type of person that in the long run will look back at my life and say, “I was happy.”

How am I? How are things?

Since I last went ahead and posted I will tell you that not much has changed. My day is the same, every day. I go to work, I put up a good front, I don’t want people to know how much I suffer. It’s one thing to put this on the internet where strangers and friends from afar can see my situation and comment on it. I can take that, I can’t take the look. You know the one, the one that you give friends going through a divorce, a death or a job loss. The look of pity and sadness that makes me want to cringe into a corner and pray to God that I’m never seen again.

After that I head home. Usually I buy dinner on the way home. I get home to my wife, my mother in law, my sister in law and my three year old. I buy them all food. I set up a dinner tray for my wife and watch as she takes two or three bites of whatever I bring home and dozes off doing it. Then after she realizes that she can’t eat, she asks for a bowl of cereal with milk which 9 times out of 10 ends up on her or the floor. My carpet will soon be rancid with the smell of spilled milk. I help put our three year old to bed and then take my wife upstairs, where she gets her last dose of meds for the night and put her to bed. This is at roughly 7:30pm in the evening. I am then confined to my bedroom because she might choke or cause a mess and I must make sure that I’m available to help. She doesn’t wake up again until about 4am when she wants to talk, or have me walk her to the bathroom, gets another does of medication and falls asleep again. I wake up at 6am, go through my morning routine and go back to work to do it all over again.

Yesterday I went to Blockbuster to return some movies and went to Best Buy to ogle all the new toys. I called after an hour to see if anyone wanted me to bring home dinner and the first thing I get from my MIL is that Mary has been calling me for an hour and that I haven’t responded. I tell her that’s not the case and even though I’m not lying I’m treated as if I am. Until Mary reads back the number she’s been dialing….her mother’s cell phone number.

She spilled bowls of cereal on herself twice this weekend.

So last night, after another midnight bathroom break I came to the conclusion that I can’t live like this. I’ve tried, how I’ve tried. But seriously I’m constantly sick. I’m in the bathroom all the time right now because my nerves are just shot. I don’t have an appetite, I don’t enjoy any of the things that I used to have fun doing. It’s not helping me, it’s making it worse.

I woke up today with a game plan. I have a friend, R, who I’ve known for years. Almost ten in fact. During that time he’s seen a lot of highs and lows for me just like I’ve seen for him. He’s getting married at the end of this month but he’s been through this marriage with me and has seen some of the worst that it has to offer. In the past he’s offered to let me stay at his place when things had been at their worst. I wish I would have listened to him then. I wish I would have taken his advice.

Instead I’m coming to him this time and asking for help with a place to stay for a couple of weeks. I feel like a separation is what’s needed right now. I feel at PEACE with this idea actually.

I am a firm believer in the fact that if you are making the wrong move, you’ll know it. You’ll feel it in your soul, heart and mind. When I finally made this decision it was the first peace I had felt in a couple of weeks. I don’t know what this means for my marriage, I don’t know what it means for my future but it means that I’m finally taking the proper steps. Maybe this will get her out of her funk. Maybe it will help me make an overall decision.

I’m not a happy person right now. I look in the mirror and don’t know who I am. I go to bed at night and all I wish is that I wouldn’t have to wake up again.

It’s not how I want to live my life….