Dear friends of GREAT strength,
Happy New Year!! 2015 is going to be OUR year! I can just feel it. I hope that as I take you on this journey, you will find a renewed strength as I have found a renewed strength in YOU.
I continue with my story.... Remember that I had that baby? We were living in an apartment at the time and just trying to figure things out, once again. Kinda like when we first got married. Now we were trying to figure out how to do the family thing. Mom. Dad. Baby. I stayed home with Baby while my husband worked full time and tried to fit school in. Sometimes school was just too hard to squeeze in the schedule, so he just worked. Things were kind of fuzzy in my brain. I had just had a baby, couldn't nurse Baby that good, still had those images in my mind that my husband was viewing and was trying to put a smile on my face through it all. BIG mistake. I plastered on a smile, sweeping my sadness and problems under the rug, along with cheerios and binkies, and went on my merry way. I didn't want anyone to know that anything was wrong. Everyone around me was perfect....having perfect children, getting to church perfectly on time, and smiling at their perfect spouses. I was too embarrassed to admit that my husband got mad at me. I stressed him out. That he looked at those images. Because I wouldn't have sex with him enough. Now he was mad because I wasn't paying enough attention to him. It was my fault and I was embarrassed. To hide my embarrassment, I smiled. Pretended that everything was perfect. Told no one.
But I will share with you this. I am an optimist. I believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe that it's good for the body, mind and spirit. I'm kinda like Pollyanna. I like the Glad Game. And I played it a lot in my marriage. Husband would get mad at me. But then he would eventually apologize to me. I was glad for that. I know now, that my positivity and overall cheerful demeanor is what saved my life. Because in EVERY day, there is always something good. We just have to look for it, cling to it, and let it help us get through that day.
We soon decided to buy our first house. We thought it would be a good investment, it had a downstairs basement apartment that we could rent out. Made perfect sense to our "perfect" lives. I became involved in my church with the young girls. Oh, how I adored them. Glad game. When husband would get angry with me, I would think of those girls. So glad. We didn't have a lot of money. I used to call my husband Bob Cratchit. He was overworked and underpaid. He worked about 90 hour weeks (sometimes more). We had a hard time paying our mortgage, even with renters. I continued to stay at home, but felt like I needed to help with money. So I started donating plasma. Glad game? I got to lay down and rest while my plasma was being taken out of my body. But note to Plasma Centers: you probably shouldn't show "Saving Private Ryan" while all of us are laying there, watching our blood leave our body and then soldiers' blood leaving theirs. Too much blood....;)
The money was helpful, but not enough. I remember one day, I didn't have enough money for groceries, so I used our credit card. I spent about $35. That didn't go over too well. I "couldn't manage money at all" and our debt increased.
So what does a couple do when the money is tight and the wife isn't treated the way she should be? Well, of COURSE a couple adds another baby to the mix. That's exactly what we did. Baby #2 came along. My brain got fuzzier. Because I still wasn't quite over the images, the anger and now raising two babies. But my babies loved each other. Glad game. And I really can't remember why my husband would get mad. Usually over the same thing, but my memories were fuzzy. I'm kind of glad about that. But I remember how I felt. I felt pretty miserable. And alone. Because I couldn't pinpoint why I was deeply down sad. I knew that I was "on the surface" happy, but deep deep down, sad. And then my husband started becoming sad. Depressed. Sleeping a lot. Telling me that I didn't deserve him. That he should just die. Kill himself. I remember one night, while having a rendezvous with my pillow and tears, I thought to myself, "my husband is out sleeping on the couch, angry, depressed, suicidal at times, never home and addicted to images." God, what more could I handle?? Around this time, my mom came to visit. She recalls that her heart broke when she saw our bare fridge, my sad eyes, yet perfect smile. She couldn't pinpoint anything at the time, either. But she later told me that she cried all the way home. Because she couldn't help her baby. Her baby couldn't even help herself or her situation.
Yet I was determined to be happy! Be glad! Glappy (glad/happy) during the day, secret silent tears during the night. My babies made me happy. My church girls made me happy. My friends made me happy.
I remember one time it got bad. Really bad. My husband, again, was yelling at me for something. Then became quickly depressed, saying that he was going to go out to the garage and kill himself. That I deserved better. He went into the garage. I panicked. I called my clergyman in the middle of the day, not knowing what to do. He left work and came over to our house. Took my husband in his car for a ride. I have no idea what they talked about. But he calmed down. He got the medical attention and medication needed to treat his depression. One night, my clergyman called me into his church office so he could visit with me. He apologized for everything that I had been going through. Then he said something I will never forget. He suggested that I divorce my husband. "NO!" I immediately responded. We are taught to endure our eternal marriages, right? Right??? I told him that I couldn't even imagine being a single mom with two little babies. I could handle this, it's what we're supposed to do, right? So I told him that I would not divorce my husband. We could work it out. And so we spent the next 11-ish years trying to do just that. Well, more like me sweeping a lot of my problems and feelings and sadness under the rug and plastering a perfect happy smile on my face. That rug was getting pretty bumpy. But I was glad we at least had a rug to hide our problems. Glad game.
So here we are on our journey, my friends. And this is where I issue another challenge to you:
If you have some of the above described deep down sad feelings because your spouse/lover/partner is mistreating you, do not fear. I know how you feel. I don't want you to sweep any of those feelings or emotions under any rug. Scoop those feeling up. Look at them. Analyze them. Show them to your spouse/lover/partner, if he or she is willing to look at them. Ask if you might need to have a third party take a look at those. Perhaps a counselor or clergyman. If your spouse/lover/partner will have nothing to with any of that, or you fear the response, skip that and go directly to a third party. They will help you. And get those feelings into the garbage as soon as you can. Because you're worth it. You deserve to walk on a smooth unlumpy carpet. And that, my friends, is the Glad Game at its finest.
You are amazing.
Strengthly yours,
aMOMynous
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