Do you know what you'd do?

having a child with very young children gives me pause. pause to reflect on when my children were very young. i had a fabulous, intelligent, gorgeous husband who gave me beautiful children, had a fantastic job, helped around the house (including cooking), and everyone loved him. what happens between the time the children are young, and when they start to mature, is way beyond what anyone can figure out. people change. children grow and change. shit happens. before i go further i have to say this man gave me the 'best years of my life'. he allowed me the freedom to learn to fly, and to persue nearly any other dream i might have had. him being the entrepreneurial man that he was gave us the opportunity to do and see things most young couples don't get to do and see. for the most part, the children were involved in all that we did just by being. they led stellar lives themselves. as teenagers they had vehicles, friends, and 'stuff' that most of their friends envied. amazingly, they've grown into wonderful adults. i attribute that fact to good genes, not how we raised them.

something happened in our marriage. i like to blame it simply on alcohol, but in reality the alcoholic he became was likely caused by the disease he caught while in viet nam...called post traumatic stress. the problem became obvious about 12 years into our wedded bliss. i won't go into the gory details. it was tough living like that for the following 9 years, for both of us. the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back came with the affair. i'm guessing it was his way of getting out of a bad situation; a life he couldn't quite handle.

so what would you do? i flipped out. i couldn't work for a year. i did really stupid things. i figured if he could have an affair and leave us for another woman, i could have a boyfriend, kinda like the frying pan into the fire stupidity! the boyfriend was a total loser. absolutely gorgeous, but stupid as a rock. some things just don't matter when you've lost every credible thought you've ever had. gradually i went down the road to destruction...of myself, my kids, the house we'd lived in for 17 glorious years. the hurt from the devastation was deep. i can't tell you what happened in my life over the following couple of years. i didn't do drugs. all that i went through during that time would make a lot more sense had i done drugs. i have no excuse except to say my emotions got the better of me.

why the emotions? why not see the reality, file for divorce, take the asshole for everything we'd worked so hard for for 21 years? i have no idea. it is just what happened. i lost it. i had loved this man totally for most of my adult life. him leaving us, no matter what we had to go through, was beyond my comprehension.

i read somewhere it takes 6 months for every year you were married to recover from a breakup. that's a little over 10 years in our case. that pretty much says it. it'll be 15 years on st. patricks day and i've pretty much been over it for the last 5 years or so.

leap to the present. i now see this estranged husband on nearly a weekly basis at my daughter's home. a few years ago he suffered some health problems and she convinced him to move close to her. he lives 80 miles from us, has gotten rather feeble, so he stays at her home for days at a time. this allows him to see his grandchildren. keeping in mind she was the only child left at home when the shit hit the fan and came with me when i left california for a new life, her forgiveness of her father is sometimes hard for me to fathom. i manage to be cordial to him. he's suffered more than he deserves, but sometimes i just have to attribute that to 'divine retribution'.