I think its funny how the brain works. How we look back over our lives in one year increments. I think about last Halloween and how happy i was to just have Darren around being able to trick or treat. How I was so excited that he was sober. How I so believed that we would start to work on the next chapter.

I was so foolish to believe we were changing anything. To think you could leave the past behind just because you wanted to.

It's like a fucking time bomb. The deceit and hurt and lies are woven in the past in the worst way imaginable. The threads and links to all the things that hurt are everywhere.

When I think about last halloween I remember the fun I had with my friends and the excitement of the kids.
But it's so confusing to even me, I don't trust a single thing. I don't trust a simple memory of the past. I remember feeling happy and content, but I wonder? Was I being lied to? Is what I remember and think nothing but deceit? Not the kids but with everything involving Darren. Every single word uttered by him I believe to be a lie. Every kiss, every hug, every laugh, a ruse another way to humiliate and hurt me. From when I wonder. The first woman he slept with was shortly after he took a job on the hill. Julianna was born in September and he must have started working there sometime in April. Was she a birthday fuck present to himself? Yontell was a nasty filthy fat pot smoking black girl and it makes me want to vomit to think of where she's been. Where he's been. I am disgusted in so many ways. I remember her. She pretended to be friendly. They hung out and he said they were just friends. hmmmm I've never had friends like that.

But in addition to the fact that my husband fucked another woman what hurts is how long the lies and betrayal have gone on. At that point in time our lives had just started. We were supposed to be getting to know one another. Building our life and our future. I was however to stupid to know what I had chosen. Too trusting and loving. Too beleiving. I had no idea that someone would be capable of the things he would do. Never imagined how much he would take and hurt. I have always believed in the good of humanity and little did I know I had the very worst at home. What an irony.

What I struggle with right now is the feeling that the whole past has been taken from me. Every picture I see I wonder was he doing it then? Which part of the lie am I living now? I wonder how fucking stupid am I? Certainly I am eligible for some sort of award for being the dumbest person ever. I have been foolish enough to love this guy. I was foolish enough to want a forever and future with someone who's sole desire was and is himself. Why did I wait around believing he'd every want or love the life he said he did? That he'd ever be happy and loving and kind to us?

My hearts truest desire has been to just have my quite little life.

It seems so simple on paper.
Fall in love with someone who makes you smile. Makes you laugh. Someone your sorta just like being around. You show them all your sweet soft spots all the parts that are tender and scared and vulnerable and you trust them to keep then safe and love and protect them. It was right here where it all went wrong.

When was that? 1999? 1998? When did it start? Was it when I was pregnant with anna and he blamed me? When he moved his stuff out because I wouldn't have an abortion? When I told him he could leave? Go and be free. When he started using me as his excuse. I was the ultimate get out of jail free card. Oh I can't go, the wife won't let me. Ohh poor me I am such a nice guy, a good husband and my wife is a miserable bitch....blow me in the bathroom?? Oh okay I guess. The gap toothed unemployable girl who stroked his ego (and other things.) Was it there?

I guess what I know now is he was broken long before I found him. I must have been to to believe him. To have allowed myself to love someone who I clearly invented. I thought he was sweet soft and smart and kind. Darren is nothing but a series of lies. There is nothing about him that I know now. He is a stranger I don't like very much. What I know of him is dishonesty and selfishness. Deceit and self-serving. I hate the way he thinks he can treat people. I hate the way he treats me. I hate that he lies still about what he's doing. I hate that I have stayed this long. I hate that I have allowed myself to think there was any future here. I hate that I blew $30000 on getting him sober. I hate that I did not walk away and let him die drunk and alone under a bridge. It is what he deserved. Even his own parents thought that. Completely unwilling to stand beside him, what kind of person does not even command the loyalty of his parents?

There is still this part of me that wants to believe that he is the "person" he sold to me that he was. How sad and pathetic does that make my? Why can I not accept that darren is what darren is? Maybe it's me wanting to redeem myself. Be like I'm not the one who was wrong all this time. I did not fool myself into believing he loved me. But the harsh reality is I did. He did not love me and that's super hard to accept. I think if i just hang on there will be an end. Another side, the other side. But the truth is is this is the side. There is no something else. This idea that he'll turn out to be the guy I always thought he was, that he'll be that guy and I won't get to be there and be with him. The other guy. That I will miss out on what should have been mine. It seems so definitive and final. I wish I could just walk away and have it really be goodbye.