Forgive But Never Forget

It's been almost a month now since the shit hit the fan. I managed to lose my husband, home an job in one night. Not sure many people can make that statement. He was diagnosed with bipolar years before I even met him and didn't want to take medication, which I did support his decision. We hadn't spoken about this since meeting in 2012 when we were in the stages of getting to know one another and he told me so many terrible things about himself but I thought "look how real and loyal I am" so I stayed. I didn't flinch when he told me things about his past. The weeks leading up to that night he had become really manic. Waking at 4:30am, not really eating, becoming more and more hostile. Our marriage had began to deteriorate extremely slowly. He was losing patience with me, cutting me off when I spoke, not answering when I spoke to him but I figured it was maybe a rough patch and things would right themselves. In the eight months of consuming weed he had quickly become obssessed with it. If he wasn't smoking from the bong, he had the vaporizor tube stuck in his mouth, removing it only to eat dinner and then promptly reinserting it until bedtime. It was like he couldn't get high enough. It made me sad to watch. I felt like I could literally see his brain malfunctioning, trying so hard to get higher and higher, but looking for a high that thc couldn't provide. A few times I nagged him and told him to slow down or chill out but that would only make him stop for an hour and then he'd be right back to it. I don't know how long this realistically could've lasted because I think in May when he took his first hit it was the beginning of the end, all over again. I guess what I learned from this is that an addict is an addict, whether it's alcohol or weed or anything that gets you to another level. We were so careful that we didn't even use mouthwash with alcohol in it, only for it all to go to shit with weed. He made a friend that gave him shrooms one of the first times they met which I thought was weird but did remind me of the time when we were dating during part 1 that one of his co-workers told me he had been asking him for coke. I confronted him and of course he said it was for someone else and I dropped it. The thing about me is that I forgive but I never forget. I have the capacity to forgive almost anything. Sometimes it takes me many months and even years to forgive but I do forgive. Forgetting, well that's not part of my self-preservation. So when he showed up with shrooms after just meeting this guy, I knew that he steered the conversation to drugs. I knew it and it hurt like hell to know that he had really slipped beyond my reach at that point. We ate the shrooms on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas let's get fucked up and open presents. I didn't smoke that night, honestly he had turned me off of smoking at that point. Just like he turned me off of alcohol in part 1, part 2 ruined weed for me. To watch someone consume so much of it with the desparation that he did, it was gross. I went to bed, not feeling anything becuase I think I ate too much dinner and didn't eat many of the shrooms. He smoked, a lot and when I kissed him goodnight his blue eyes were black with his pupils dialated to the full extent. But I went to bed and slept and looked forward to having the next day off. That weekend he was the most manic I had ever seen him. He was on the phone with customer service people for three hours. One minute he'd be tearing her down and then the next minute he'd be making small talk. The atmosphere in the house was so crazy that I just sat outside as long as I could. It was making me feel crazy listening to him. I felt like I physically could not be near him. I felt my anxiety was at it's peak due to his unpredictablity at this point. I was so mad at him that he had me feeling like I couldn't even be in the house. When he got done yelling at the customer service people, he turned the music up as loud as he could and proceeded to clean and do anything except interact with me. It was a terrible day. That was the last Sunday in December. Monday seemed ok, I went to work and when I got home we ate, took showers and had plans to hang out and then something snapped inside of him. He began breaking everything in the house. Shattering the vases that houseplants were in, throwing them on the floor, opening the front door and chucking them outside. Tearing down the blinds in the kitchen, ripping out items from the entertainment system all while yelling at me, eyes bulging with hatred. It was so scary and so surreal and so out of left field, that I didn't even know how to handle it. He had never physically intimidated like he was on this night. I was shaking but staying quiet. I knew by the way he was acting that me saying anything he didn't like was going to end even more badly than the night was already going to. I agreed with everything he said, hand washed all the dishes he threw into the dishwasher and then said I was going to bed. Well, the night was not over for him or for me either. I'm skipping a lot of terrible details because frankly, I'm shaking just writing this much about what happened. He screamed a lot of things at me and was making less and less sense as the night went on. When I was in bed hearing him continue to break more things upstairs, I decided that when I left for work the next morning I was going to drive straight to the airport and buy a one way ticket to Florida. I was going to leave with my purse and the clothes on my back and get the hell away from him. It made me cry to think about petting my dog one last time but I didn't see any way out. That seemed like the best plan until he started yelling about me quitting my job and making me say, "yes, I quit my job. I will not go in tomorrow". That was at around 3:30 in the morning. At 4 he began to come downstairs and yell at me and break things in the room. One of the times he went upstairs I locked the door and called 911. I had enough time to tell them my address and why I was calling before he was threatening to break down the locked door. I hid the phone under the covers and kept 911 on the call. He began to flip the breaker switch, leaving the room in total darkness and also began trying to remove my glasses. One of the times he went around the corner to flip the breaker again I made a run for it. I ran out through the sliding glass door and my dog followed. I ran up the driveway across the lot up to the street and down the street. I crawled up and into an embankment on the side of the road. By this time is was 5am. I laid there with my face pressed against the dirt, shivering from the cold and terror with the realization that if he were to find me that I think he was going to kill me. My dog laid there with me, shivering as well with his face pressed against my arm an he dared not even make a wimper. He was terrified and dammit we were in this together. I think it took almost 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. I saw the lights flashing and heard yelling and then silence. I was half expecting to hear gunshots because he was so out of control. Once it was quiet for a few minutes, I walked down the road and back to the house. He laid there with the taser prongs still attached to his body and wouldn't you know it, he was still yelling at me. What a mindfuck. They took him away and I got to packing. This time I packed more than I did the first time around. I packed some jewelery and sunglasses and shoes and of course my dog. I went back to the house once to get more of my belongings but the owners had let him come back so a lot of my things were gone. A watch my mom gave me when I was a teenager was gone and I'm still kicking myself for not packing it when I left that day. He had packed all of my clothes into tubs. Well, not all of my clothes. He picked and chose what to throw away and what to pack. Even then, he was still exerting some sort of control. Just pissed me off and made me shake my head about it all. I took all the clothes that he packed and gave away a few garbage bags worth to Goodwill. A lot of my shoes that were still there only had one foot. Did he really take the time to throw one foot away from each pair of shoes? Yes, yes he did. I wouldv'e been okay never going back to that house and I didn't think I coul do it but then a few nights before I was thinking, "fuck him for making me so afraid that I can't even go back to a house". I've been staying with friends for the four weeks and am planning on moving back to Florida. He was served with divorce papers and a restraning order last week, so when that is finalized then I'm out of here. I'll make sure to flip this state the bird when I leave. Valentines day is coming up in a couple of weeks and honestly I feel so damn bitter. I don't think I'll every marry again. I just think the idea of marriage is outdated. I'm about to turn 40 and have two divorces now under my belt. I think I'm tapping out of the marriage game. I'm all set with that. I've been wanting to keep a journal and I thought why not unbury this gem and make this my journal. I'm sure many fucked up things are still on the horizon for me. I'm not all gloom and doom. I'm excited to go back home. Ten years is a long time to be aways and most of my friends I haven't seen in all the years I've been gone living all over the U.S. I'm ready for the next chapter and I'm optomistic about life in terms of work and just hanging out with friends and family. Love, I don't want to hear that dirty four lettered word muttered around me, at least not for a while.