After singing 'Happy Birthday', I helped my nine year old daughter Nikki blow out the candles on her pink and white iced cake. Her younger sister Michelle giggled delightedly as I began cutting the cake. Yet again, my husband Mike had called to say that he would be working late and that he wouldn't be able to make it to another of the children's birthday parties.
I didn't think it was natural that the kids were learning to function and grow without their father's presence. One of the reasons I had originally stayed with him was for the sake of our children growing up with him in their lives. Now it seemed the exact opposite was happening. After 10 years of marriage, I knew that there was someone else. I had even confronted him with it. Of course, he denied it, but lipstick that wasn't mine and the smell of another woman's cloying perfume didn't lie. I don't think that love for him was even an issue anymore. Fear of the unknown, not knowing if I could ever be happy with anyone else or trust any other man around my precious children, my daughters, kept me from even thinking about moving on and trying to find love and happiness.
I had taken my mother-in-law's advice about birth control. As soon as Michelle was born, I decided that at least I had control over my own body. It's not that I didn't want more children, I just didn't want more immediately. I wanted to be able to offer the 2 I already had the very best I had to offer. Lately, I'd started to think about being able to provide for them if the worst happened. To me that meant Mike leaving me. After being without a job for so long, how would I be able to provide for the kids and myself? His name was on everything...where would we live?
Sex was a thing of the past for me. Since Mike was getting his needs met elsewhere, I couldn't bring myself to let him touch me. I was thankful that he didn't try to force me on the rare occasions he actually wanted it, but he would also use my reluctance as an excuse to continue doing what he was doing. After a while, I just didn't care anymore. We lived separate lives most of the time...almost like roommates. He paid the bills, I took care of the house and the kids.
It hurt to see the gap growing between us. The man that I had loved so deeply was becoming a stranger to me. I didn't know how much longer we could keep the farce of our marriage up. Well, I was about to find out.
One day Mike came in with some papers in his hands.
"Dawn, we need to talk."
From the serious look in his eyes, I knew it couldn't be anything I really wanted to hear. I tried to stall him for a moment.
"I'm cooking right now, can't it wait?"
He sighed. "No it can't. It's already waited long enough. Now come have a seat."
I tried to calm the butterflies in my stomach as I joined him at the dining room table. "What is it?"
He laid the paper that he had been carrying on the table in front of me. I looked down at them. I didn't feel surprise when I saw that they were divorce papers. What I felt was dread and the worst sort of betrayal.
"I want you to sign these. Things haven't been right between us for a while now and I don't see any need in going on pretending."
While I recognized I didn't love him anymore, my mind flew back over every opportunity he could have put forth some kind of effort to help keep us from reaching the point we'd come to. I could feel anger beginning to simmer within me.
"Why now?" I asked him with a calmness I really didn't feel at the moment.
He looked down at the papers before answering. "Is it really necessary to get into all this?"
"If you want me to sign these damned papers, you'd better start talking. I've devoted my life to you and our children for the last 6 years. I think you owe me this much. Talk."
Any other day, when he became belligerent, I would back down. Of course, he tried it.
He raised his voice slightly, saying, "I don't owe you a damned thing. I pay the bills around here..." And that was as far as he got.
Still simmering on the inside, I stood up, walked around the table and slapped the hell out of him. I heard the loud, satisfying crack as my hand made contact with his face and I watched dispassionately as his head snapped back. I turned and walked back to my chair.
Once seated again, I told him, "You will not raise your voice to me again. I'll sign the papers when, and only when, you answer my question."
Rubbing his cheek and staring at me as if I was someone he'd never seen before, he asked, "What the hell has gotten into you?"
"For the moment I'm your wife, asshole. So tell me why you've decided to ask for a divorce now."
I could feel nothing but coldness within me. Amazingly, not the cold rage one would expect after thinking about all that I had missed and had been denied. What I felt was a mixture of peace and the desire to see him squirm. Which after a moment, he had begun to do.
Shifting in his seat and still unable to meet my eyes, he began speaking. "I don't know where to start..."
I tilted my head a little to the left, watching him closely. "Hmmm. I did everything you asked me to do. Even putting my career on hold to raise the children the way you wanted. I've been the one raising them-me and me alone. You have been doing the same thing you were doing before we met. So it can't be the burden of having to help raise the kids. I've never denied you in any way at all. So what is it?"
He cleared his throat. "I don't know. I guess I just miss being single..."
I felt one of my brows raise. "Oh really?"
He just looked at me, clearly expecting an outburst after my previous display of temper.
I smiled and asked him, "Then why didn't you just say so?"
If ever a man resembled an owl, it was Mike at that moment. Then his eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What do you mean? Are you seeing someone else?"
Nope but I should have thought about that earlier.
Avoiding the question, I told him, "This is about you and what you want...as usual. You want a divorce, you gave me half of what I wanted to know. Now tell me the rest. Who and when?"
"If you're going to give me what I want, I see no harm in telling you the rest. I met Alicia six months after we got married at Darren's birthday party. She's fun, she keeps me interested and we want to get married."
Okay.
He wanted to marry a bitch he had been screwing since our sixth month of marriage.
So much for peace.
Unfortunately for him, he took my silence as acceptance, so he continued. "We have a little boy a month younger than Nikki."
Now he was telling me that he had another child outside our marriage. Humph.
I would cry later. At the moment, I was eyeing his golf clubs sitting so neatly in their bag only 3 feet away with relish.
He glance down at his hands and I reached for the nearest club with lightening speed. Before he realized what was happening, I had already struck him twice in the shoulder (though I recall aiming for his head).
"WHAT THE FUCK...YOU CRAZY BITCH!!!!!"
The more he tried to grab the club and keep his balance in the chair, the harder I would swing. Finally, the chair tipped over and he managed to roll away and up to his feet, still retreating, trying to avoid my swing.
I could hear my own harsh breathing, feel the tears sting my eyes, as I chased him to the door. He ran out but I didn't bother to try to follow him. Instead, I dropped the club, closed the door and locked it.
As I slid to the floor, all the tears I'd held inside for years began to flow.
Chapter 2
At first I thought the hardest part about our breakup would be the knowledge that my husband was openly seeing another woman. I thought that the humiliation of it would kill me. In the beginning, I went through a period of pitying myself and mourning the loss of the years wasted with him, then eventually got over that. But none of that bothered me as much as the question our oldest child put to me. The day she asked me why Daddy didn't want us anymore was the toughest thing I've ever had to endure. I didn't care whether the bastard wanted me or not, but the thought of him playing house with another woman and child the way he never did with us was a more than I could bear. And the hurt in her eyes was enough to make me want to kick him in the balls until I got tired.
Somehow, as much as I hated him, I couldn't destroy the image his daughter had of him. Nor did I want to hurt her any more than she had already been hurt. I sat her down and did my best to explain to her why mommies and daddy's separate sometimes.
The months leading up to and after the divorce went by quickly. My days were full of trying to find a job and take care of the kids. The terms of the divorce kept the kids and I from really needing anything, much to Michael's dismay, but I needed something that I had been denied for too long. Something that belonged to me and my daughters. I never really liked the house to begin with because it was too big and I had no say so when Michael bought it.
After putting the kids to bed that night, I got a call from my mother-in-law. Since Mike and I separated, she called me every night..
"Hello, Dawn. Are you and the kids okay?" she asked in a soft voice.
