It's Been Months, Nothing's Better. Now What?

Is it true? Can it really be this much later and worse? 8 months. 8 Months later and there have been good days but they've been mostly bad (silently).

I haven't let even my closest people know how bad. I cry almost every night. My boys know I'm not myself, they remember the fun mom before all this. They know the happy version and they understand the version they have now is the "Fake". Fake - the one thing I never want to be called. This is the version that holds her depression in to try and protect her boys and pretends this isn't killing her. Now I'm not only a fake I'm also a liar. The first and most important rule of being my friend "Never Lie To Me" yet both my husbands made that their favorite pastime. Go figure. Now, I'm just as bad.

20 years ago I was diagnosed with depression and put on so much medication that I could barely function. When I pulled myself up from that and came off the medication I fought hard to learn how to keep from it. Today I would beg for those meds except that I have 2 teenagers who need me able to function. I would love to sleep at night and not be concerned about waking up in the morning to take my kid to summer school. I would love the zombie feeling from the antipsychotics and antidepressants and sleeping meds because I wouldn't have to feel anything that I'm feeling.

I thought I was getting there. I went and shipped things I've been unable to ship for months. I cut all my hair off because I needed a change. I bleached it because I didn't want to color it. (Yes, I know how that sounds.) I went out for the first time in well over a year. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to move forward and in one fatal swoop it's all gone and I have to start all over.

That girl. Her name is my name. She is with my man. She isn't me. She's a stranger that is nothing like me. She isn't good enough for him. She isn't what he needs. She doesn't know it but, she's the rebound girl. She's his next target to get him through in the interim. I pray for that girl who has my name. She has no clue what she's in for. She probably thinks I'm the bad guy. I guess thats ok. She doesn't know me. She only knows what she's being fed.

He knows me. He knows my hopes, and my dreams. He knows my plans for my future. He knows he's the only man I see, the only one that matters. It's why I stayed so long. Chance after chance. Treating him to walk on me like a doormat. Letting him come back time after time and teaching him that it was ok to put me and our family second.

Our marriage was my glass. It broke years ago. I tried for so long (and I'm still trying all by myself) to put the pieces back together. The shards cut me from time to time but I hold on continuing to pick them up one by one. Sometimes I can get several at once. Other times I drop a few and have to start over but this time. This piece has my name and when i try to pick it up it cuts so deeply into my hand that it slices it open. Blood pours from the wound and I try to stop the bleeding. I have a bottle of wine. I tell myself it'll be ok. I hold onto the 1 pillow of his that I have left. I try to find anything with a remanent of his smell. Nothing. None of it helps. This piece with my name is infected. It's swelling and it's sore. it's the piece that he knew would do me in. It's the 1 thing that he knew he could suck me in with.

He knows my history. He knows my first marriage and my trauma from the cheating and the other women and he knows that I have this odd need to compete even if i don't want the prize. So he did what he does. He used that. He picked someone with my name. To parade around my friends. He called my friend and said my name in the middle of the night only it wasn't me he was after. He took her to my lake.

Was it not enough that he wouldn't be the man I needed? Was it not enough that I lost my son to his birth mother? Was it not enough that he left all these 'things' for me to go through and clean up and 'deal with'?

Now he has to take what's left of my dignity too?

There is 1 thing keeping me going right now. 3 boys. 1 who calls at random, 1 who needs a ride to summer school and another who is growing so tall.

I don't know if I would even be here right now if not for them. I don't want to be. I pray sometimes at night that I don't have to do this anymore. That he just take me home.

The breast cancer they thought I had.... The tumor they said is benign and will never change. I pray sometimes it changes. Anything to make it stop. It doesn't.

I don't understand Gods plan. I don't see how this is going to help me. I trust that it will but I can't see the forest for the trees. I miss him. I miss his smell. I miss running my fingers through his hair, the hair on his head and his chest. I miss soaking in the bathtub with him. I miss his laugh. I miss scaring him when he would nod off in the drive way or get so involved in his video that he never heard me walk up. He screamed like a girl it was the greatest thing ever.

2020 for most people was a nightmare for me it was a dream. I had the man I had fought so hard for. He was loving and kind, he was proud we had worked through things and he was home, he was happy. He was medicated and his bipolar was regulated. That man loved me but he didn't last. He changed. It was just a dream that I woke up from.

It's all over now. Here we are 8 months later. I have tried to talk to 2 guys. 1 I knew already but it was too soon and just too weird. The other was ok but not my speed. Both gone. Neither worth the effort. Never met or saw them, just chatted nothing more. They aren't him. 1 of them knew he even said yours is the type of relationship that is on again and off again. He said he would be back I denied it. He wont be back, not with me. He has a new version of me with the same damn name.

Am I jealous? Yes. Why? I don't know. At least I'm honest about it.

Mostly right now i want to finish my glass of wine and go to bed. I want to sleep through the night. I want to start over and try again tomorrow but the thing is that's a lie. I don't want to deal with tomorrow because I"M BROKEN. Tomorrow I have to start trying to pick up that damn BROKEN GLASS again. Tomorrow i find new nicks and scratches.

I just want to run away. How funny is that? I think about running away now more than I did as a child. I've always been a fighter now I just want to run.

What has he done to me?

He found a different me with the SAME DAMN NAME...