Good things come to those who wait

I am excited to announce that it's official...I am divorced.  No longer a married woman...it feels great!  It has been a long time in the making though, it's been over a year that we have been separated.  I know I have made a blog about it before but I need to make another one.  So please bare with me if you have already read about this in a previous entry, but it's an important subject.

My marriage was built on sand, very unstable.  I never loved my husband.  I can admit that now.  Our relationship was anything but healthy. I was so unhappy with myself that I allowed myself to become something I am not.  When you allow yourself to get in such a dark place, bad things happen.  I was over 200 lbs, I had just lost my job, I was a newly single mother, and this man came along.  He told me everything I thought I wanted to hear.  I could tell there were problems before we got married, but I did nothing. I felt as though I had to just deal with it because I was unworthy of anything better. 

The arguments started rather quickly.  To him it was always a competition between him and Hayden's dad.  He wanted to come over every night and every morning before work.  Big red flag right?  You would think.  When I was at work, I was to be texting him, on my lunch break I was to call him, if I didn't call him as soon as I got off work there was an argument.  I wasn't allowed to walk down the street alone.  I couldn't go hang out with friends or even co-workers.  My life was miserable.  I thought it would be better when we got married, but this is never a smart thought.  If that thought crosses your mind please take it as a huge flag.  Things that are bad do not improve once marriage happens. 

Before I knew it I was deep into a pit of misery.  I wasn't supposed to lose weight because then men may notice me.  I am 5'2, being 200 lbs is very unhealthy for anyone that size.  If I did not want to have sex every night there was a huge argument.  My life was pure hell.  I had to delete my facebook, change my cell phone number, and heaven forbid if I saw a male I knew while walking in walmart or something.  I had no idea that I was in an abusive relationship.

You, or at least I, always think of abuse in the physical sense.  It is so much deeper than that.  There is mental abuse and we tend to forget about it.  The man I married was incredibly possessive, controlling, and emotionally abusive.  At times borderline physically abusive.  I remember one occasion when I was leaving for work, he claimed it was to early and I was really meeting someone else, he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, held me against a wall, and got right in my face and started yelling. I was physically restrained from leaving on more than one occasion.  It was very scary. 

When I made the decision that I had enough, a weight instantly lifted.  For days my phone was constantly getting blown up with phone calls and texts. Finally it stopped.  Finally I was done.  Finally I am free.  The point in this blog is that if you or anyone you know may be in a relationship like the one I was in, then please get help.  It is very unhealthy.  There isn't one part of me that doesn't believe that if I stayed in that relationship that it would have branched into physically abusive and maybe even worse.  It may have been the longest year of my life, but the tears that threatened to fall as soon as I saw the judges signature on those papers today, they were further proof that I had made the right decision.

I won't lie and say it came easy, even being in a loveless marriage it was still hard to leave.  You get used to a person, you start to believe the awful things they tell you.  You get brainwashed.  One day you have to make the decision to pull your head up and get some air.  Dating has been more difficult because of my experience.  I am ok with that.  I just wish that I could find someone who would understand my damaged past a little and cut me some slack...but that's a blog for a different day.

xoxo