Post-Stroke Aphasia Piece Two

(Before reading this, you might want to partake of my Intro and my Post-Stroke Aphasia Piece One )

After a long hard haul, I've finally realized it's a good thing I'm not married anymore.

There's no way my ex-husband would be able to stand me still frequently struggling with easy little words and sometimes blurting out odd lines from my own poems. He was already tired of hearing about and dealing with my stroke after just a few weeks. A last straw happened after my first post-stroke poetry reading, when he angrily threatened me in public; telling me that I had to choose between him or my family or else he would divorce me.

I can deal with someone getting upset and strongly expressing their emotions; I sometimes express strong emotions too. But when more and more often, your husband's angry emotional expressions involved calling you a baby, a bitch, an asshole, a cunt, and frequently blurting out the word divorce, it becomes increasingly more difficult to deal with that. I don't think I deserved such repeated negative lashing out at me - and I don't think that kind of repeated negative lashing out at someone else is a good way to express emotion.

Mind you, I'm not the type of person who thinks that swear words are inherently wrong, but I don't want to frequently be called negative words by a man who I thought really loved, liked, and respected me, because those kinds of words seem hurtful and disrespectful. I know everyone makes mistakes (I do to) and I gave him second chances, third chances, fourth chances, fifth chances, lots of chances, but it just kept getting worse. I didn't feel like sucking up his more & more frequent lashing out for the rest of my life.

For several months after my stroke, I really did suck it up - his frequent lash outs, his ongoing complaints about the bill paying, his telling me I was a baby and needed to get a job soon or he wouldn't be able to stand it anymore, his telling me he was tired of hearing about my stroke and my poetry. As soon as I suffered from a stroke and could no longer drink with him and pay half the bills, he really seemed to love me less and that hurt.

I did suck it up for a long time, in spite of feeling terribly upset most days. But after he lashed out in public, unexpectedly, it was finally a last straw for me. I moved out of our home together, deciding to temporarily live with my parents. Part of me was thinking that he & I could take a break, but continue to communicate with each other, working on making our relationship good again. I wrote him lots of journal entries about my thoughts and feelings and we talked on the phone quite a bit too. For many months, I missed him deeply. I cried in bed many nights and often cried when I got up in the morning. I really missed the good parts of our relationship.

He didn't write back in regards to any of my journal entries. When we talked on the phone, one evening he might tell me he missed me; the next evening, he might tell me his life was less stressful without me there. Then we had a phone call where he told me that someone had given him a great deal of money and he wanted us to go on vacation. When I asked him who had given him that money, he said that was none of my business and got mad. He told me that 99% of women would have been happy to be asked on vacation and would not have asked the man where he got the money. Then he repeatedly called me an asshole and a cunt. He said he would still go on vacation and have a good time and I could just have an awful time the rest of my life. He said I was condescending; he had tried and tried and couldn't stand it anymore. He said, "You are a fucking asshole. Have fun in Valley City all summer" and then hung up on me.

The only thing I had asked him was why someone would suddenly give him a large amount of money unless they wanted to help him pay bills during a difficult time in our lives. As soon as I even suggested that, he began his lashing out. Despite that lashing out, it was still hard for me to fathom that one adult would give another adult money during a challenging time in he and his wife's life so that money could be used to go on vacation. Lots of people can't afford frequent vacations anyway, let alone people who are having a difficult time. If they are receiving some assistance from another adult to help them get through that time, I don't think that means they should use that assistance for vacationing.

In any case, I was not about to go on vacation using money given by an unknown source. But having a different opinion than him and saying it out loud made me an asshole and a cunt by his standards. Personally, I do not think cunt is necessarily a bad word - but I do think that he meant it very negatively. After all, he had also informed me that I was part of a 'too much vagina family' as though that was a bad thing, but since when are vaginas bad? Are women not supposed to have their own body parts, personalities, or forms of expression? Screw that. If a woman who has her own opinion and tries to express it equals some sort of insane condescending vagina by his standards, then he is not the kind of man I want at this time in my life.

He did go on vacation by himself, numerous vacations - and then he told me we needed to file for bankruptcy and move on. We had not been living together for many months; I did not know the details of his monetary situation (and that was none of my business), so I was not about to file for bankruptcy with him. Instead I filed for divorce. Shortly after our divorce happened, he did file for bankruptcy, leaving our unpaid mortgage and home equity loans solely in my name. He recently told me that the reason he had to do so was because of my stroke. I imagine he might also be telling others that; perhaps he has even managed to convince himself of that. But it is not true.

The whole eight years I knew him, he always used his credit card way too much, spending much more money than he earned. His parents paid it off for him several times, but it would swiftly go back up. For quite some time, I paid more than half of our joint mortgage, so that he could use more money towards his credit card payments. I then made the major mistake of placing that home equity loan in my name for him (because I had good credit and he did not), so that he could use much of that to pay down his credit card, hoping that after he did so, he would then make a substantial effort to use his credit card much less. Unfortunately, that attempt to help him failed and now my credit is ruined too. I guess moving away from his bad credit and leaving the mortgage and home equity loan in his past wife's name was his way of moving on.

Granted, after my stroke, I was not able to pay my half of our mortgage or all the other bills I used to. I used to pay half the mortgage, gas bill, electric bill, water bill, cell phone bill, and help with groceries - and he paid half the mortgage, our cable and internet bill, car payments, helped with groceries plus his credit card bill. After my stroke, I could only afford to pay our cell phone bill and sometimes the gas and electric (even when I had moved out of our house together), in addition to my substantial new variety of hospital, doctor, and therapist bills (none of which he ever helped with).

Granted, he paid our whole mortgage for a number of months, but he was given a very substantial amount of money by others to help us. He wanted to use much of that money to pay down his credit card yet again - and it's not as if that credit card had gone up because of my stroke; his credit card was always up.

Once I moved out of our house, I don't know exactly how much more money he received from others nor exactly how he spent it (since that was none of my business), but I do know he suddenly bought himself a $300 plus pair of sunglasses and a new ipod cell phone, among other things. I also know he went on several long vacations before he stopped paying bills and applied for bankruptcy - thus leaving the unpaid bills solely in my name, even though I had not been living in our home together for many months and he still was.

If he claims he applied for bankruptcy because of my stroke, I guess that means he used my stroke as an EXCUSE for something he would have done at some point anyway. One thing I've become more aware of about my ex-husband within this last year is how much of a tendency he has to blame other people for things that go wrong in his life. He blames society for the fact that you doesn't have a steady job (even if he is not applying for jobs or trying to get one); he blames his own family members for things; he repeatedly blamed and complained to others about an ex-girlfriend making his credit go downhill (but now he has ruined my credit and seems to think I am focusing on that fact too much). For many months he has been blaming my family for things and blaming my stroke for things (even suggesting that it changed my personality - even though he is the only person who seems to think that) - and now he is blaming my stroke for his bankruptcy
.

I recently wrote him a note telling him that was not true; all he wrote back was, "I feel sorry for you".

Those are the last words I have heard from him.

Maybe I should have just ignored it; but I will admit it really bothered me.

It is not easy to hear someone who I thought used to really love me now just say he feels sorry for me.

Granted, he is the type of person who often says he is sorry and doesn't really mean it, so maybe he didn't really mean his "I feel sorry for you" comment either. I am not inside his head, so I am not sure what he did or didn't mean, but part of me felt that he might have been making fun of me (for being a 38 year old woman who is temporarily living with my parents, among other things).

Part of me felt that he doesn't really feel sorry for me at all as much as he feels sorry for himself (and wants other people to feel like he's gone through a lot and maybe even give him more money to help him).

Part of me can't help but wonder if it would have been easier for him if I would have died. Maybe he feels sorry I am still alive.

Whatever he meant, it made me feel badly, because I do not want others to feel sorry for me. I do not feel sorry for myself. I feel lucky to be alive, happy to have my own personality and passion, and delighted by a wonderfully giving and caring assortment of supportive family members and creative friends. Unfortunately, my husband was not one of those giving, caring, supportive, loving individuals during the most difficult time in my life - and even though that was very hard to deal with, I am glad I found out before I got old.

If he wants to attempt to convince others that he tried his best and then I suddenly moved out and divorced him, then that is up to him, but I know for a fact that is not true. It seems to me that the only way he really tried was when giving other people a certain perspective about our unfortunate situation, hoping that those others would then give him money - and then he would be able to use that money how he saw fit and it was none of anyone else's business - and then when he ran out of it, he would file for bankruptcy, blame that on my stroke, and then leave that for me to deal with as he moved on.

I thought this man was the love of my life when we got married. Unfortunately, I am now brimming with mixed feelings about my taste in men, relationships, lifestyle choices, and more.

***

Juliet's very first small article about her Stroke - "Post-Stroke Survival and Sad Little Blues" - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2807396/poststroke_survival_and_sad_little.html?cat=70

Juliet's second article about her Stroke and also about her Poetry - "Full Length Dissection" - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5602556/full_length_dissection.html?cat=70

Juliet's third article about her Stroke and Poetry, posted on her own blog & linked to by Big Tent Poetry - "Doll Injection Mold Disaster" - http://bigtentpoetry.org/2010/08/sideshow-finding-the-words/

Juliet's fourth article about her Stroke and her Divorce - "A Round Thing that Starts with the Wrong Letter" - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6187208/a_round_thing_that_starts_with_the_pg5.html?cat=5

Juliet's new POST - STROKE poetry chapbook - http://www.etsy.com/listing/68443790/post-stroke-by-juliet-cook