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.

Now What do we do

Over the next month Josh was confused. He wandered around like a mindless mummy. He wavered back and forth about what he wanted. He would tell me he loves me but that he loves her too. He tried to comfort me with "don't you think it would be easier if we got divorced." That was anything but comforting. We had many long talks. He would hold me while we talked. That made my heart hope. I repeatedly found notes from Shellie in his work jeans when I was doing his laundry. The notes were all about how much Shellie loved him and she dreams about him. She said that he needs to divorce me so they could be together. He had moved in and out of the house that we were in the process of buying. I was still trying to understand how this was happening. What did I do, I wondered. I didn't believe that he would really go through with a divorce. We had been through to much and we loved each other. I just thought he was confused and he would snap out of it and everything would be fine. I can not understand how a parent would even consider doing this to his kids. The children's behavior changed dramatically during this time. Jacob became angry and Mikayla cried about everything. They became very clingy to me. Josh kept trying to take them to meet Shellie so I was having to hide them. Now all the sudden he wants to take them places when he never had before. All during our marriage I had tried to get him more involved with the children and I. He didn't even come to their birthday parties. He was to busy hunting or fishing. After that first month of the back and forth, Josh and Shellie went to northern Michigan to our family cabin. I was devastated. That was the longest weekend of my life. The cabin was where Josh and I went for a late honeymoon. That was our special place. When they came back Josh brought me the sheets to be washed as we usually did when we came home from the cabin. However there was evidence of sexual activity on the sheets. I washed and cried and was so disappointed in Josh. I knew that they would sleep together but I did hold onto some faint hope that they wouldn't. From that point on everything about our relationship changed. Previously Josh had said " I'm such a jerk, all this is my fault, I don't know how you put up with me, ext." After he slept with Shellie he wouldn't look at me or talk to me any more. All the sudden everything became my fault. He was very angry with me. His anger was even more confusing. I tried harder to be a better wife but I was becoming exhausted. One time when he was ranting and raving about something I grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye and said " I love you Josh" he said with tears in his eyes "Lizzy I slept with her" I said " I know and I love you anyway". He yanked away from me and the rejection pierced my heart like a knife. The agony and confusion that I felt at that time was over whelming. Thoughts about "what have I done wrong, why is this happening to me, doesn't he know I love him so much" kept swirling in my head like angry bees. I turned to God in such a way I had not experienced before. He was my closest friend and he stayed by my side. I talked to him about everything I was going through. I was trying to be the best mom and wife I knew how to be. I was very confused about what that meant. The Faith Assembly teaching I was brought up with suggested that a wife does what her husband wants. Well my husband wanted a girlfriend. Every time he said something about his girlfriend it felt like a knife in the heart. Soon she started calling the house and asking for Josh. Yes, I gave him the phone. (That's what a supportive wife does.)My heart was so heavy I feared it would fall out of my chest. There is no way to describe the agony I felt. Like a beaten bloody dieing heap I went on. One day I looked out the big beautiful picture window in our living room and there was my husband and his girlfriend making out in my driveway. I watched for a moment and then took the children into my bedroom and locked the door. I held them tight and I cried. My tears felt like burning acid ripping apart my face. Shellie started coming over more often. I was doing what I was taught and keeping the peace by letting Josh do what he wanted. I had taken a job at Three Rivers hospital (grave yard shift) filing papers. Josh was no longer supporting us. I asked him to let the children sleep at home with him while I worked but he refused. I had to hire a daycare out of the money I was trying to live on. I took the kids to the daycare every night and then picked them up in the morning. I got very little sleep. One evening that I didn't have to work, Josh was out with Shellie late into the night and I had made supper for all of us. Of course I had to put his plate away in the refrigerator and the children and I went to bed. When Josh got home in the middle of the night he came to bang on my door and wanted to know where his supper was. I told him it was in the refrigerator he could heat it in the microwave. He said you want me to heat it myself? He was yelling at me to get up and heat his food for him. He said I was a worthless wife. For the first time in our marriage I refused to do what he wanted. He got very angry and started slamming things around. Then he would try a sweet approach and tell me he loved me and we were going to work this out. The next morning when he went to work the kids and I packed some clothes and went to stay with my parents. A couple of days latter my family and I went with trucks to our house while Josh was working at the Sheriffs department. When we got there we found that Shellie had already moved in. Josh and Shellie had been sleeping in my bed and Shellie's G-strings and lingerie was all mixed in with my clothes. I had to sort through Shellie's and my most intimate things. All our shoes were mixed together in the bottom of my closet. Shellie had gone out and bought shoes exactly like mine. Not just one pair like mine but four pairs like mine. I had to go through them one by one and check the size to see which were hers and which were mine. I felt like she wanted to be me. She was taking over my life. I felt like a worn out old pair of shorts just tossed to the side. Little did I know these were not even close to the worst things I would suffer over the next ten years.

Where it started

This is a very sad story and all of it is from my actual life.
I married the star football player of Centreville Michigan right out of high school. I was home schooled and had missed all the high school drama. I was in awe of him. He was so tough and a bit of a rebel. He smoked, drank and had used marijuana. He said lots of words I had never heard of before. There is something exciting about those bad boys. We dated and Josh told me about sex, movies, music and kissing just to name a few. (I had grown up very sheltered.)
At the time I thought we had a decent marriage. I loved him so much. I spent my time making sure that he was happy. Mean while I cried myself to sleep most nights. We eventually had two beautiful children, Mikayla and Jacob. Mikayla was a bouncy, giggly, smiley and fun little girl. She was such an easy baby and toddler. She was always so happy. Jacob was so independant. He wanted to use tools ever since he could sit up. He was so sweet and cuddly. He always looks out for other people and helps when ever he can. He would sit in your lap for hours if you let him.
I was brought up to believe that a good wife does what ever her husband asks even at the expense of her dignity. My husband Josh watched a lot of pornography. I didn't think it bothered me so I went a long with it because that's what he wanted. He convinced me that it makes our marriage more exciting. He even asked me to join a wife swapping ring in Centreville. Luckly I did the rebelous wife thing and said "no". Josh worked at a trailer factory in Mottville Michigan and he was a reserve deputy at the sheriffs department. During our marriage Josh per sued his dreams and I supported him as a good wife should. I made sure I was home keeping dinner hot. I helped him get dressed in the morning. I went out to start his truck every morning so it would be warm when he got in it. He was very faithful about going to work every day and providing for the financial needs of the family. I greatly appreciate that. He did not however help with the kids in any way. All of their needs I took care of. He had rarely been there for me and my emotional needs and he rarely went anywhere with the children and I. He did not want to "baby sit" while I went to get groceries. He did not want me to work outside the home or per sue any of my dreams. But over the years things had started to get better. Josh did a few things with the kids and I that year and he was more in tuned to my needs. He still didn't help with the children thou. I was falling in love with him all over again. Five years into our marriage on a hot Sunday in August Josh called me home from my parents house because he wanted to 'talk'. I was so excited that he wanted to talk to me. Him wanting to talk didn't happen very often. I rushed home with my heart thumping and my cheeks blushing with excitement. When I got home I happily sat next to him on the couch. He grabbed me and hugged me and said Lizzy, I have feelings for someone else and I don't know what to do. My world came crashing down. A ball of lead formed in my stomach. My throat was choking me. I wanted to cry but there were no tears, just shock. I felt like I had been hit. I sat calmly and stared at him. I said what do you mean you don't know what to do? You need to put it out of your mind because it is not an option. He told me it was Shellie Bacon. I had heard of her before because she and one other girl were the only two females that worked at the factory. Josh had mentioned having some conversations with her on break along with the other girl and a bunch of Josh's friends. I had asked one night when Josh and I were snuggling if she was cute. He said "oh God no"! "Not near as cute as you and he tapped me on the nose. You have nothing to worry about". Several months later he is telling me that he has feelings for her. (to be continued)