I was wrong. I’m sorry.

This has been a long time coming.
I tried to write this awhile ago, but it kept coming out wrong and will probably come out wrong again.
There really is no way to write what I am going to write and come out looking good.

About 5 years ago I hurt every single person I knew. It’s hard to type that and not tear up.

I wasn’t happy in my marriage. I had not been happy for a few years. I stayed because the thought of my daughters saying that their parents were ‘divorced’ scared the shit out of me. I came from a two parent household. I had mom and dad and my brothers and sisters. There was some other guy my mom was married to when she was really young and there was a story attached to it, but in my eyes…growing up…I had a real family. I was going to give my daughters exactly that.
That’s not really the whole story. The whole story was I was scared to death. I was relatively young, had no education and no hopes of really being anyone that would be able to take care of all these babies.I could go on about the fear and anxiety of even THINKING about leaving caused me, but I won’t. We all know how it feels to be trapped.

I loved my ex-husband. I probably always will. He gave me three reasons for getting up every morning. He made me someone. I hated my ex-husband too. He lied to me over and over again about everything. He was a professional liar. I believed the lies for a very long time. Then one day, I realized just because I don’t have a high school diploma doesn’t mean I don’t have ‘gut feelings’. I started listening to those gut feelings and I following up on them. I became a professional spy.

I really got into it too. They started out as little things I could figure out. Time management wasn’t one of his better qualities.
Calculating in my head how long it would take to get from where he said he was to home became my mission in life.
I have it down to an art form now. If he says he will be here in 15 minutes, I ask where he is and with that information I can calculate how long it will really take him. Being horrible with time doesn’t make someone a liar. Lying about where you are to start with is what makes you a liar. Lying about ever other detail from financial to personal in your life is what makes you a liar. I found out everything.

This isn’t about him, it’s about what I became. My ‘gut feelings’ began to rule my life. I kept it all a secret though because no one that knew him would believe me. There is NO POSSIBLE way that man could be doing the things my gut was telling me.
If you were a part of my life you saw the little things. You knew what I was talking about. For those of you that saw this couple from the outside, you had NO clue what was going on inside.

I had Alyx and Shea back to back. I don’t regret it, but my body just wasn’t ready to be pregnant so soon. After Shea was born I had a serious case of postpartum depression. In ‘serious’ I mean I should have been hospitalized. I was a happy mom. I did all the happy mom things. Inside I was freaking out. Along with being a mom to two little babies and Kara, I was dealing with bills, lies, school, car seats….I finally snapped. It was my neighbor who actually looked me in the eye and said, “You need help, you need to get on something. You have postpartum depression.” I had not even calculated that in my head until he said it. It made sense and I went to the doctor to get pills. The pills didn’t work, they made it worse. I went on some sort of patch thing and that made things normal again. I could sit on the couch and be a normal person…until the power got shut off.

During my pregnancy and the horrible months after I couldn’t deal with money. I use to be a freak about money. I would put every single cent in the bank, calculate my checkbook to the last penny. Check my account about 4 times a day. I knew exactly how much I had to ‘play’ with and how much I needed to make my payments with. Then something snapped inside of me during those freak out moments and I just stopped. I couldn’t even think about writing a check. I had my ex take over the bills until I got better.

I was sitting on the couch and the power got shut off. I called PG&E to get the power restored because clearly it was a mistake on their part. I was wrong.
The PG&E bill had not been paid in 6 months. How it stayed on this long was a miracle. I found a box…a large box of bills that had not even been opened. I had some help getting all the bills in order and figuring out how much we owed. It wasn’t good. He had not paid anything. My depression, anger and frustration reared it’s ugly head and I think it was somewhere around this time I lost my mind.

Most people would have gone to the doctor. I went to Las Vegas.

Before we left (‘we’ being mom, kathy and i) I went up to have Kathy do my hair. In the process of being up there I heard an old co-worker on the radio. I called him up and we ‘chatted’. It was nice to catch up with an old friend and we exchanged email addresses and said our goodbyes.

I was gone for almost a week. Something really shitty happened in Vegas concerning some money issues that pushed me over the edge. I came back refreshed and set to make some changes.
I checked my email and there was an email from my old co-worker. That was the door.
I emailed him back. That was the walking through the door.
I started to finally feel alive.
That is when I think I lost my mind completely.
Oh the joy of feeling alive again. I can still feel that tingle. I was high on life. I couldn’t eat or sleep. All over a few emails and some secret online chatting.
I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I just enjoyed someone talking to me, someone listening to me, someone telling me they thought I was smart and beautiful. Someone to justify my anger and frustration.
Besides, it’s not like I was really doing anything…I was just chatting with him.

That was about 5 years ago that I hurt every single person I knew. I left my husband.

He trusted me. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t trust him anymore. I didn’t believe anything he said to me because 90% of the time it was a lie I would catch him anyway. It didn’t matter that he never cheated on me while we were married (even though he did before we were…and of course lied for ten years about it) He trusted me, because I never gave him a reason not to. I hurt him. I didn’t care either. It was actually gratifying to see him in as much pain as I was in for all those years of lies. I was finally released from having to lie for him to cover up a lie he said to someone else. It was nice not to feel embarrassed when he was caught by someone other than me. I didn’t need to ever have to be a super sleuth again. I was done.

The ‘not feeling guilty’ thing caught up with me though. It always does. I had a freak out attack about a month later.

I didn’t think that all the things I had dealt with during my marriage would effect my relationships in the future. I was wrong.I was pretty sure that every single person I knew was lying to me about something.

I remember one night about a year after I left my ex, I got mad at the old co-worker that I was involved with because I was sure he was lying to me about something. He looked me in the eye and asked me why I was mad at him. I said, “Because if you loved me you would lie to me!”
It was like hitting a wall at a hundred miles an hour.
I marched that comment right into my therapist and said, “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME!?”
I was nicely asked about what was said when I confronted my ex about the lies.

“I love you honey. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I just didn’t tell you because I love you.”
That’s what he said first.
“I didn’t want you to get mad at me.”
That was the second.
“I didn’t want to hear you bitching about it.”
That was the third.
“Honey, I love you. I will always love you. I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t want you to get mad. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

I was told over and over for years and years that he lied to me because he loves me. I was going to have to learn a healthy relationship. My attempt at a ‘healthy’ relationship was to say, “Fuck it. If you don’t like what you see or I don’t like you…keep on steppin'”

I drove the old co-worker I was with away for many reasons. The main one was that I was done having kids and I knew he wanted some of his own. He would have stayed with me. I couldn’t live with killing off his family name because I wouldn’t have any more children. Oh, and he was also paranoid and anxiety ridden and drove me to drinking and smoking 2 packs a day. That’s really all beside the point though.

The next ‘real’ relationship I was in was good. I say ‘real’ because I respected him. He lasted for more than a couple weeks and when I gave him that, “Don’t like it…keep steppin” thing I had gotten so good at, he just looked at me and laughed. He laughed at me. HE LAUGHED. He also sat my ass down and told me to grow up. He also showed me what it was like to trust again. He showed me what ‘healthy’ felt like. It was the first mature relationship I ever had. It wasn’t the ‘dreamy’ kind of love, but damn it I totally respected that. I knew why we were together. We were together to heal each other. It wasn’t going to be a life long relationship and we both knew it. Honest, real and nothing hidden. I loved that. I needed that. When our relationship ended I was balanced. I knew I was going to be okay. I had left all that shit behind me and I was ready to start fresh.

For those of you that know me, you’re laughing your asses off right now because you know the next two or three people that came into my life. This point in my life was like getting out of rehab, being clean and ready to settle down and something happens and you become a drug dealer. You didn’t expect it to happen, but you find yourself WORSE than when you got help.

I took all the skills I learned in my marriage, all the dreamy things I learned from co-worker, all the mature behavior I learned and I became…a ‘player’. I was good too. I was REALLY good, because you didn’t expect it from me. I think the best part about it was that I finally got to ‘not give a shit’ what the other person thought. I didn’t care if it would last or end.

Then I met Shaun.

I had perfected not giving a shit, not caring what other people did when I wasn’t looking or what someone had said about me. I think at that point I had experienced the worse, heard the worse and managed to live through it. There really isn’t anything more you can do to me to throw me through a loop.

Except me falling in love with that person.

I thought all the things I had been through had taught me a lesson. I was wrong. I’m even more afraid of the things that happened in my past happening again. I hate that person I became when I was married. I hated questioning everything, but I’m glad I did because I found out what was being hidden and it made me make the choices that I made.

These things are still effecting my relationships. I’m trying to work through them. I don’t relate lying to love anymore. I don’t think that people are always lying to me. I finally give a shit what is going to happen in the future. I hated that person I became. I don’t want to be that person, but I also hate more than anything is wondering if I am being stupid and not. If I am not seeing the big picture.

It’s human nature. I understand that. I am using up emotional energy that doesn’t need to be used up. I know this. I’m sorry.

I haven’t quite learned how to trust yet. I thought I had.

I was wrong.

My name is Kristine, I don’t know how to trust. Where do I go now?