I think back to last year and the year before. My ex, he told me I was wrong for not wanting to put a tree up. I know I have kids, but my mom had been dead for three months. Three months, like grief just disappears in that time. My mom was my best friend, my lifeline to sanity and the world. I had gotten rid of everything in her house and PCS'd to Colorado. My whole childhood and every good and ugly memory in that house, summed up in a few days. All to keep our family supposedly whole. Like a tornado hadn't ripped through my life and stolen the foundation on which I stood.
I took care of my mom and my 3 kids all by myself. My mom was on hospice and end of life care was a slavemaster demanding the last of my strength. It was so hard to ask my 13 year old to watch her while I went to the store or whatever other errand I had. It got to the point that I wasn't even comfortable not being awake while she slept. I cleaned her bedsores. I changed and sponged bathed her. I held her hand until her last breath. And after all of that I was supposed to have the heart to put up a plastic tree, in good spirits.
What kind of husband denies your grief and puts his needs of a holiday first. Yes, he was leaving for Kuwait, but I had been there through dangerous deployments. Too many, to his second home, Iraq. I've really needed him to the point I couldn't function on my own twice. When I was pregnant with the twins and when my mother was dying. Both times he let me down.
The first time he was having an affair with a woman which he had an illegitimate child. The second he was knee deep in his military career. I never professed to be the perfect wife, but I was there when he felt all else forsook him. I was there even when he ignored me and found comfort in the bottle and women. I fought to get him help, to save his career; hell, to save himself. All I got in return was a request for pillows and a blanket in the sand. Left alone to raise 3 kids alone in a new place. How dare I ask for him to miss this deployment to Kuwait.
I had asked to separate so many times. My resolve wavering. I can't tell you how many soldiers wished their wife took the time to understand their plight. They dreamed of a home that missed and longed for them. Mine, he decided burying himself in a married soldier would fill the void. Funny how that works. Soldiers complain about wives cheating, wives complain about soldiers cheating. Maybe the Army is full of ungrateful asses. Or maybe ungrateful asses fill the ranks of soldiers.
Then again according to others I should just be glad my husband provided. I shouldn't expect emotional or other support from him. How do I know these people again?
So my fun ex has a new chick, again. I'm happy for him. Truly I am, I just want him to know that I will never feel sorry for him once this broad takes him for what he has left. He didn't learn from the woman who admitted to taking a condom out the garbage. He didn't learn from the married woman who's husband was in his old unit. He will never learn. And I'm glad as hell I don't have to be attached to such a person anymore.
My ex isn't a bad person, he's a lost person. One that I can't help, nor is it my job. Even after all this heartbreak, I know this is not the person he wanted to be. It was the person he accepted and became. Someone who asked his grieving wife to put up a Christmas tree. When she didn't have the emotional wherewithal was told shame on you.
Well guess what the father of my children, my ex best friend from before we could drink legally... I salute you with a high flying bird. One that craps on your head and reminds you how life will be once you no longer have cover from the rain. Yes, even if it is raining bird shit.
