When I tell them I'm divorced, they all wonder /why/. Did he cheat? Kind of. Did I cheat? No. Were 'expectations' not being met? Yes, I suppose on both sides.
The fact is that the reason I am divorced was not cut and dry.
I wanted kids my whole life. At 17, desperate for some order, I attempted to join the Navy but was refused on the bases of the anti-depressants I was taking. The recruiter told me that I'd have to be off them for a year.
In that year I met James. I was 18 1/2 years old.
Both of us came from divorced families, and neither of us were Chicago natives.
I was born in Ct and moved to MO when I was 2 and Chicago just before my 5th birthday. Most of my early life is spiked with memories of my parents fighting. By the time I was 14, they were fighting more then they weren't. Around 15 years old, with my sister being 11, they divorced and I mostly felt relief.
James was born in a suburb of Chicago but moved to California when he was five. He considers San Jose his home. At the age of 8, he walked into to his father's room to his father having sex with a woman who was not his mom. James' mom left his dad, and took James and his sisters back to Chicago a few years later. James' dad basically faded out of his life, except for the occasional phonecall or blackmail visits (I'm paying your tuition, you can come and see me).
We agreed that we wouldn't do what our parents did. At the time, we had said we wouldn't get divorced, but we didn't want to cause any children strife.
We were very poor when we moved to DeKalb together. Neither of us had jobs, and while my father was contributing, most of the money I had from my grandmothers death had been used up. So kids had to wait. Everything, including our marriage, had to wait.
In 2003 my father died after a short battle with cancer. The extra income I was (somewhat) getting from him disappeared. My mom and Stepdad didn't have the money to support themselves, my sister, my stepbrother and part of the tuition for my other stepbrother plus James and myself so we were on our own. James dropped out of school to work.
In 2004 we signed paperwork granting us legal marriage so I could get a better financial aid package and better tax returns.
In 2005 we had our wedding.
There was never any cold feet but there were times through out our relationship that I wondered if it was really going to work out. Times when we'd get in major fights and I'd be screaming at James and he'd be completely silent. Times when neither of us were talking to the other. The times I tried to get couples counseling always fell through. One time James tried to drive us completely asleep.
That same year, just a few short months after being married, I went on a study abroad trip for 4 weeks to Malaysia.
I graduated in December of 2006 with a degree in Psychology. James wanted me to find a full time job so he could go back to school. I couldn't. The best I found, almost a year after I graduated, was working at a supermarket.
From the date of the wedding, I would occasionally bring up the subject of having a kid. James always told me that we had to wait until we both had steady employment. Also at this point, since I was no longer in school, I lost access to my antidepressents. Plus I was starting to feel zombiefied again (I started them again after my father died).
In the summer of 2007, our friends' who had been together not quiet six months announced that they were expecting. This did not help my mood.
When we moved to DeKalb, I made the choice to go on birth control pills. My sex drive dropped to almost nothing while James seemed to always want sex. After our friends' announcement, I suggested going off the pill at that point, but James again went back to the job issue.
I got a job in November of 2007. It was a shitty job, though initially I really enjoyed it.
I convinced James of two things that Jan. The first was that the timing was probably never going to be ideal to have a kid so since we both had jobs, we should go ahead and start trying. The second was that he had to go back to school in a year.
I got pregnant in April. The first time I knew I was pregnant was the day our friends had their daughter Lydia. I was feeling a little off, my breasts had been hurting for a few days, and I had to pee like mad.
By the start of May I had my first doctors appointment. The pregnancy was fine except that I was constantly tired. Between being pregnant, and working 20-30 hours a week I had no time for much. Plus I worked days and James often worked nights. The sex drive issue started to cause more and more fights.
In 2007 I met a boy. He was married with two kids. We met through a gaming club. He lived three hours away and kept asking me to come and visit and meet his wife. I kept promising to try and come.
James had always been jealous of gaming club even though James and I met at a game. We frequently gamed together. But he didn't like this group or this crowd.
In 2006, we went to my family reunion and James met my troubled second cousin Brit. She was attracted to him and stated as much but he rebuffed her. Ever since he kept talking about my 'hot' cousin.
What I didn't know was that they kept communicating and when we went to my reunion in 2008, they made plans for her to come and visit in Sep.
James started pleading with me to let him have sex with her, just once, to 'get it out of his system'. That it was the last time he'd get to have 'fun'. I didn't want to agree.
Finally after nearly a month of badgering, I said let me go and visit my friend and you can have sex while I'm gone and I wont' have to know about it. At the time, the date of my trip and the date of her trip were suppose to overlap.
For reasons I don't recall, she delayed her trip. So I was around when James took a week of vacation time to hang out and have sex with my 18 year old cousin. James was almost 27.
When she left he promised me that it was over. I believed him.
I gave birth to a baby boy on December 28th, 2008. The labor was hard and our son, David-Michael was stuck. He was also sick. He had to spend another week in the hospital and we were allowed ot stay as well.
James was gone almost every day running errands. Even when he was at the hospital, he wasn't really there. He would be playing video games or sleeping (which was similar to our home life). He didn't seem very concerned with David.
We got to take David home on Jan 4th, 2009. He was a good infant, but it was clear he missed his dad. That week James went back to work. He said that we couldn't afford him to take off any more time. I had asked him to take off all of Jan so he could get into a rhythem with school. That didn't happen. He still worked mostly nights and since I was taking as much maternity leave as possible I was home all day with the infant. At no point in my life had I planned to be a Stay At Home mom with no help all day.
The next week James started school. All those little problems that had occured at that point became managified. James would leave early in the morning, around 7 or 8, come home for an hour around 11:30, and wouldn't be back till 9 or 10. Tuesdays were different. Tuesdays he often didn't come home. David always had a fussy time on Tuesdays when he thought James should be back but James wasn't.
As soon as James got home, he didn't ask what was needed or what help he could be or anything. I would usually try and have sometime ready for dinner, though David took up most of my time, and James would eat and then try to play video games. He would nag me about dishes, and laundry and general cleaning up. I would ask him to David for 20 minutes so I could shower, and he'd bitch about how he had just worked a long day.
At some point in all this James said that he wanted Brit to move in with us. The inital plan was as follows:
Brit would stay at home and help out with David and maybe pick up a job (since she was going to quit her job at Olive Garden to move) to work around my work schedule. Having someone else around the house to help with cooking and cleaning and just having an adult to talk to would help me.
Well that didn't happen. She decided to transfer to a resturant about 40 minutes away. Since she would be bringing in more money then me, it was "decided" that my job had to take a back seat to hers. Decided by her and James. I had little imput.
When my leave was up, I was put in a bad situation. I couldn't make my hours 'mesh' with Brit's needs and the place I was working needs. Despite the fact that I am sure I had a FMLA suit, my mom, sister, James and Brit all pushed me back to work. In addition, I was breastfeeding and would have to pump at work.
Pumping at work was a joke. They didn't respect the amount of time I needed. I had to track someone down to open up the 'pumping' room (which was the security room and was tiny). Then if I ran even a minute over, I sometimes got yelled at. In addition, despite all this pressure I was producting enough milk to cover my next shift, Brit decided at least twice to feed David formula because defrosting the milk was 'too hard'. She did cook but apperently, after David and I went to sleep, she and James stayed up talking about what a crappy job I did around the apartment. Whenever she watned James to take off time, or rearrange his schedule because her best friend was visiting, he'd just do it. He took off a week when her friend was visiting. If I asked, I got bitched at.
See where this is going?
Brit didnt' make it though the summer. She couldn't get her paroll transfered to DeKalb and had to go back to Kansas to go through a drug diversion program (remember when I said she was troubled?).
That left me scrambling to find coverage for David. Thankfully I met a wonderful woman named Sarah who had three children and was starting to watch infants. This let me open my avaliblity. Of course by then I had killed whatever good will I had previously had at work. I was workign shitty positions and shitty hours.
About a month and a half later, I found out that Sarah couldn't keep watching David at night. He was just too hard to get to go to sleep without me. Thus I had to change my schedule aroudn around and got more hours cut. I was depressed and near tears and I'd come home to an empty house with just David.
James did poorly his first semester back and never stopped blaming me for it. I was the reason he never got any home work done, since he had to always clean up (nevermind that he came home and played video games). That summer we did couples counseling. He took over the conversation and I was told, point blank by the counselor, that James deserved his downtime too as if indicating that him playing video games was okay and that all I did all day was sit on my ass. We never went back.
By the end of the year, it was clear things had gone down hill. I couldn't accept it though. Not on a rational level though some part of me knew. James gave me an ultimatium. Get help or get out. I didn't get help in the window he gave me but I did get it as soon as the window expired. I moved out a year to the day that we brought David home.
At first when I moved out (sicne I couldn't keep the apartment we were living in) I thought we'd get back together. James would come over for dinner, I was getting help, etc. It soon became clear that it wasn't working. James would claim he was getting sick from the food even though David and I never did.
Eventually I stopped. I went my own direction and James his. We would see each other sometimes for him to pick up or drop off David. We still played D&D together (with James DMing) but that was becoming less and less fun. Every bad thing would go after me. After missing a week to go to dinner with my family, I found out that the following week my step-sister-in-law (who I don't like) had given birth. Everyone was going to meet the baby on D&D night. I told James that I would be late and we got into a fight that seemed to indicate that D&D was more important then family. I never went back.
Of course it wasn't all fights. Most of the time we got along. He would take David if he could when I was sick and I lived close enough that it was doable. He saw David at least 3x a week.
I decided I couldn't keep working my shitty job forever. I decided to go back to school. James was livid. Long ago we had made the agreement that any degree I wanted past my bacholors had to wait for James to finish his bacholors. Since we weren't living together anymore, that made the agreement null and void. I think he was pissed because I had to borrow his car to get to school.
I found a program I was interasted in, but with one major hiccup. The closest program was 40 minutes away. I decided that if I needed to go 40 minutes away, I wanted to be by people who would help me. So I decided to move back to Chicago. The store I was working in didn't have a store in Chicago so I had to quit. With my mom and Stepdad's permission David and I moved in with them.
I moved away after Christmas, 2010. James was not happy but he was understanding. He agreed that it would be best for David.
In April our divorce was mostly finalized. James told me in May that he was moving to St. Louis to live with his girlfriend who is a burlesque dancer after he got fired from Officemax.
And that is where things are today. David and I live in Chicago with my mom and stepdad. I am set to start my program for Respiratory Therapy in three weeks.
James lives in St. Louis and is unemployeed and not paying me a dime. Everytime I have asked for him to see David, he bitches about money. He does keep up with David via Skype...when he feels like it.
Hopefully this will help me work through everything. This might just be a grab bag of posts, some on David, some on school and some on everything else.
Bye for now.
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