Are we really going through with this?

After having gone to marriage counseling Josh still said he wanted to be with Shellie. I moved out of our home leaving all my hopes and dreams behind. I said good bye to the scent of Josh, good bye to the father of my children, and good bye to the man that I loved.

I lived in my parents backyard while I waited for an apartment to become available. I moved to my parents in October. Josh's family had me come over for Christmas that year. Josh was very angry about that. He said "if Liz goes then I'm not going". His parents told him that I would be there. His family wasn't very happy with what he was doing. I had been friends with his sisters a year before I met him and I had become very close with his mother. Right after Christmas we had a big snow storm. The whole town was shut down. The snow on the roads were 3ft. deep. You couldn't even see the cars in the driveway. My family and I stayed cozy, playing games mostly Tetris until our thumb's fell off. I remember one night walking down the middle of US 131 there was not a vehicle in site, the snow was falling in big fluffy petals that landed like hats on our heads. The world was so calm, clean, and white. That was a bitter sweet time. It was the ending to the worst time in our family history up to that point.

After the snow was plowed, my apartment was waiting and I was ready to move into my own place. For the first time in my life I was on my own. What a liberating and scary feeling. I lived in income base housing which was a great start for me and my children. Josh didn't want me to have a job when we were married, so I had little job experience. What fun I had decorating the children's rooms. Mikayla's was all Barbie and Jacob's was all 101Dalmatians. January 15, 1999 Josh filed for a divorce on our sixth anniversary. I was very confused because Josh would call and talk to me for hours. He would tell me that he loves me and that he wished this wasn't happening. He would come over and have dinner with the children and I at times. I remember he was sitting across the table from me in my dining room and we looked into each others eyes. He seemed so kind and he smelled so good. When he got up to leave he gave the children and I a hug. His embrace felt so strong and safe against my riped out bleeding heart. It felt like Josh was the only person who could make the pain go away. Josh talked about how very depressed he was. One night he was talking to me on the phone and cocking and releasing his gun. He said he wanted to die. I told him that I forgive him for what he had done and I assured him that I was willing to give it another try if he was. He just said he didn't know. He said "do you really think you will ever be able to look at me the same". I was sure that I would look at him with all the love that I felt for him. I kept hoping he would change his mind and everything would go back to normal. In February I had a surgery that I had needed and I needed to get it done before I was taken off his insurance. The procedure went well we thought but two months latter I became very ill. I had a temperature so high I passed out. My kids were home with me and Mikayla knew that something was wrong. She was five but very smart and she opened the Motrin and pushed them into my mouth. Josh's mom stopped by during her break from work and found me passed out and the house a mess. Jacob was potty training and had pooped in the corners of my room. I was rushed to Sturgis hospital and then to Borgess in Kalamazoo. I was there for a week and during that time Josh brought Shellie and the kids to see me. I was horrified that he would be so insensitive as to bring his girlfriend to my hospital room. I tried to contain my emotions so as not to scare the children and I was so glad to see them. When they left the nurses had to give me a tranquilizer to calm me down. I was so hurt. Surely being burned at the stake didn't hurt this bad. With the divorce papers came horrendous accusations against me. Like, I took the kids outside in the winter time without shoes on, I was lazy and didn't work, I spent all his money and the list goes on and on. The pain from these accusations was unbearable my bleeding heart was now being ground into hamburger. I had put all of my time and energy into being a wife and mother. Why could he not see that? Does he really believe the horrible things he is saying about me? Why didn't he tell me I wasn't a good wife, I would have tried harder. What did I do to cause all of this? I spent a lot of time soul searching trying to come up with good answers. Nothing made sense and if I couldn't figure it out, how was I going to know that this will never happen again. I would ask Josh what happened, why he left me but he would just say "I don't know, it's not your fault". We spent hours and hours at the court house in Centreville. We would sit outside the court room and he would tell me how beautiful I was and he would hold me. I felt a sense of comfort and hope. My heart would flutter with joy and I would think that maybe, just maybe this would be the day he would cancel all this nonsense. But inside the stuffy court room his lawyer said horrible things about me. I felt sick and the walls were closing in on me. I thought I must be the most evil person that ever lived. I did my best to sit silently and let my lawyer answer the accusations for me. I was shaking and my lips quivered with the restraint of the emotions I was feeling. He fought me over everything, the kids, the house, the car and about who was going to pay off all of our debt. Our life was now nothing more than a stack of "court orders". I made the big mistake of letting him have the house even though my lawyer begged me to fight for the house. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle the house payments and it was his grandparents home originally. I didn't want to take his grandparents home away from him. Nine months after the initial papers were filed everything was finally fought out and I got the kids, the car and a 15,000 dollar settlement. Most of the settlement went to pay the lawyer, doctor bills and I bought a washer and dryer. To bad I knew nothing about money and how it works or I would have made different choices. At our final hearing I told Josh publicly that I forgive him. The judge said "this is the strangest divorce I have ever done. I can tell that you two love each other but it has also been the bloodiest divorce in Centreville history". As I left the court house for what I thought was going to be the last time I looked back at the big looming building that now signified the loss of a dream and the closing of a chapter. Mikayla entered first grade and the children and I lived a fairly peaceful life at Village Manor, until our lives turned into a soap opera.