*waves*
Hi. Long time no post. Longer time no public post. Sorry about that. Let me explain.
No there's to much. Let me sum up.
I'm divorced. :)
Okay. Now I'll explain.
I was in an emotionally, verbally, and financially abusive marriage for a long time and I stayed in it because of reasons most abused people stay put curled up like a pill bug. I also suffer from massive episode depression, anxiety disorder, and OCPD brought on by a kind of awful child hood. I was pretty primed to be a victim and the mental illness just made it hard to get out of once it started.
Then I found out my husband of upteen years was having casual, unprotected sex left, right, and center with both men and women and I spent a year and a half being tested for HIV and going to a therapist.
I didn't like the therapist because she spoke a lot about god and I'm an atheist and also she wanted me to forgive and reconcile with my husband, but I stayed because... still in pill bug mode.
Then while on Ambien because I had stopped sleeping, I started having weird sex dreams about my husband. Turned out, not dreams. He was sexually assaulting me while I was out of it on sleeping pills. Oh, then the therapist tried to convince me I really was dreaming because I wanted to sex with my husband, and should give in.
At this point, I was as close to a nervous breakdown as I could get. I wasn't standing on the cliff, I was white knuckling the edge as I hung over the edge waiting to drop.
I didn't drop, though. I ran away to my sister's house for the weekend and researched domestic violence shelters. Because even if I wasn't being hit, I was very much being abused. That Sunday night the local police took me, my son, and two suitcases and whisked us away to the womens' shelter where I went into hiding.
I had to lock my journal and erase a bunch of stuff because I couldn't leave anything out that could be used against me.
I went through the domestic violence process of group therapy and scrubbing the building top to bottom every night until we were all to exhausted too think. Then they moved me to a homeless campus for families and single mothers. There I went through daily therapy, social services help, and a lot of degrading humiliation associated with being so poor I couldn't afford toilet paper to wipe my own ass.
But I had friends that supported me through the worst of it. Linda, who is... amazing. She fed me. Listened to me. Helped me relearn social skills. Amazing. Charles who is so good to my son it makes me weep. Tea and Lynn. Friends I made at work who gave me old work clothes so I wouldn't be naked at the office.
Yeah, I got a job.
I got stronger. I didn't have the money to divorce my husband. Here's the thing. Your spouse can treat you like the lowest shit and make you wish you were dead. But if they don't leave a physical mark on you? No one cares. No one. I had a lawyer tell me to goad my husband into hitting me so she could take the case pro bono. Yeah.
I attended a divorce workshop run by the county to teach people how to file and defend themselves in a divorce. It was the cheapest option, and I would still have to save for two months to afford it. Afterward the lawyer running it offered private one-on-one advice and I happened to get picked. I poured everything out. By the time I was done the man nodded and got real quiet for a couple minutes. "And you got a kid? On the spectrum?" Then he said he'd take my case. He wouldn't charge me anything.
That was the start of the turn around.
My job got even better. I worked myself off welfare and moved into my very own apartment. I stopped wincing and startling. I'm back to creating art regularly. I got divorced.
So things got better and now I'm back.
From this point forward on LJ I'm only interested in fun, drama-free fandom stuff, art tutorials and workshops, and being the best forever mommy I can be. I hope some of that interests you too. :)
No there's to much. Let me sum up.
I'm divorced. :)
Okay. Now I'll explain.
I was in an emotionally, verbally, and financially abusive marriage for a long time and I stayed in it because of reasons most abused people stay put curled up like a pill bug. I also suffer from massive episode depression, anxiety disorder, and OCPD brought on by a kind of awful child hood. I was pretty primed to be a victim and the mental illness just made it hard to get out of once it started.
Then I found out my husband of upteen years was having casual, unprotected sex left, right, and center with both men and women and I spent a year and a half being tested for HIV and going to a therapist.
I didn't like the therapist because she spoke a lot about god and I'm an atheist and also she wanted me to forgive and reconcile with my husband, but I stayed because... still in pill bug mode.
Then while on Ambien because I had stopped sleeping, I started having weird sex dreams about my husband. Turned out, not dreams. He was sexually assaulting me while I was out of it on sleeping pills. Oh, then the therapist tried to convince me I really was dreaming because I wanted to sex with my husband, and should give in.
At this point, I was as close to a nervous breakdown as I could get. I wasn't standing on the cliff, I was white knuckling the edge as I hung over the edge waiting to drop.
I didn't drop, though. I ran away to my sister's house for the weekend and researched domestic violence shelters. Because even if I wasn't being hit, I was very much being abused. That Sunday night the local police took me, my son, and two suitcases and whisked us away to the womens' shelter where I went into hiding.
I had to lock my journal and erase a bunch of stuff because I couldn't leave anything out that could be used against me.
I went through the domestic violence process of group therapy and scrubbing the building top to bottom every night until we were all to exhausted too think. Then they moved me to a homeless campus for families and single mothers. There I went through daily therapy, social services help, and a lot of degrading humiliation associated with being so poor I couldn't afford toilet paper to wipe my own ass.
But I had friends that supported me through the worst of it. Linda, who is... amazing. She fed me. Listened to me. Helped me relearn social skills. Amazing. Charles who is so good to my son it makes me weep. Tea and Lynn. Friends I made at work who gave me old work clothes so I wouldn't be naked at the office.
Yeah, I got a job.
I got stronger. I didn't have the money to divorce my husband. Here's the thing. Your spouse can treat you like the lowest shit and make you wish you were dead. But if they don't leave a physical mark on you? No one cares. No one. I had a lawyer tell me to goad my husband into hitting me so she could take the case pro bono. Yeah.
I attended a divorce workshop run by the county to teach people how to file and defend themselves in a divorce. It was the cheapest option, and I would still have to save for two months to afford it. Afterward the lawyer running it offered private one-on-one advice and I happened to get picked. I poured everything out. By the time I was done the man nodded and got real quiet for a couple minutes. "And you got a kid? On the spectrum?" Then he said he'd take my case. He wouldn't charge me anything.
That was the start of the turn around.
My job got even better. I worked myself off welfare and moved into my very own apartment. I stopped wincing and startling. I'm back to creating art regularly. I got divorced.
So things got better and now I'm back.
From this point forward on LJ I'm only interested in fun, drama-free fandom stuff, art tutorials and workshops, and being the best forever mommy I can be. I hope some of that interests you too. :)