So I just discovered that my soon to be ex husband left the house half full of perfectly nice & usable furniture & the garage fool of garden tools (not surprised there, he never did anything in the garden or the garage). I want to sell as much of it as possible. If for nothing else, to slightly offset the cause of the engineer & new floor joists we need bc the husband refused in his gaslighting way to do anything about what I was sure were termites.
But the house. It was my absolute dream house. A rebuilt 200 year old farm house on a high ridge (important around here where it’s hilly & floody af), on an acre. I worked so hard on the inside, painstakingly painting walls (I can’t abide taupe), putting up temporary wallpaper (forking amazing stuff), looked for & filled the house with second hand but lovely pieces that only brought the beauty of the house out. I loved that house like a person. Certainly more than my husband ever loved me.
If you’ve read The Shining (& if you haven’t you should it’s one of my favorite Stephen King books), you know the premise is that memories of people, events, can stay in a place – haunt it. And that’s what I feel when I go there. All the nights I cried myself to sleep bc I couldn’t understand why my husband seemed to genuinely dislike me. I remember him screaming at me that I’m worthless trash. The feeling towards the end when his verbal abuse was…very bad, I knew he’d never try to hit me, bc we’re the same height & I’m a trained fighter & an Irish woman. He’s seen me back down a lot of men who assumed they’d be able to kick my ass. He squared up to me once, & I just let the sparkle show in my eyes, how much I love a fight, how much I’d love an excuse to exorcise my rage at having 10 years of my stolen on a lie, by a man who now scream confirming that he did indeed, always really dislike me – & as they always do, he backed down.
But although he was too smart to physically try to put a hand on me, he was completely unhinged. A completely different person. Not get all Phil Collins on you, but I could feel it in the air. Menace & malice. He’s calmed down in the year since I left but back then? I absolutely believe he could’ve killed me. I slept in the barricaded bedroom, with a bat next to bed & a hammer under my pillow. I showered with a butcher knife. I know dangerous men, I know who never to turn your back on, & that’s who he became when he realized he’d lost control of me.
And I’m afraid all of that is going to hit me like a ton of bricks when I go there to clean up the mess he left. I guess I’ll just try to steer clear of Room 217. And try not to become the haint in that bathtub.
Wow…I’m glad you finally got away from him. The aftermath of the mental abuse is tougher than the physical.
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