From the beginning- Bad to worse

As you know bad marriages do't start out that way. I believed in the white picket fence around the victorian house just like other women. This was not to happen. Without boring you with the details of a tastless marriage based on lies and pipe dreams. I'll take you to right before he left me. Our three kids were 3 and 1 yrs old (twins). After convincing my Dad we could make something out of my 'charming' husband he helped invest in a restaurant for us. Dingbat (that's what we will call him for the sake of not giving his name and not calling him a bad word) had worked in a deli, been a dishwasher and in the process learned how to cook so he would be the partner that cooked. There were two other partners. One was the bartender where he previously worked and one managed and did the bookeeping. The women were silent partners, I decided this was his baby and he needed to fly with it. Besides nursing twins, chasing after another in diapers, and two more from a previous marriage was a full job it itself. There were many long nights of costruction work as I waited patiently at home with the kids convincing myself that this was going to be worth it once it opened. I wasn't anticipating him staying longer nights with 'Trish' the waitress when it opened. He left shortly after meeting this waitress- it was actually three days before the twins first birthday. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember him saying 'what did you want me to do, wait until three days after?' I was thinking, 'why leave at all' but I forgot, he had to go..his girlfriend was waiting for him as I lay on the floor sobbing. How could he do this? I don't know. For days I went up to the restaurant and begged him to come home. I think the day I stopped going up was when he told me I was old, fat, ugly and stupid and I'd never get laid again. It was real smack in the face, and to look in on the pretty restaurant that was built on my credit card and Dad's cash made it worse. Everyday felt like an eternity, looking out the window as headlights lit up the street as the cars passed by, hoping that one of those cars would be him. I grew some balls one day and finally put his clothes out for the garbage as I promised him I would if he didn't come for them. I remember the day he came back for them. He actually tried to open the door as if he still lived there. Did he think he could come and go like his Dad did all the time with his mother? (That always annoyed me how he would be gone a week and as soon as he walked through the door, he was greeted with a hot meal.) I changed the locks and he would have to knock just like evrybody else. After all, he made his choice to be with Trish instead of me and the kids. Time went on, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months with no sign of him but new credit card bills furnishing his and Trishes new apartment and a couple hundred dollars of clothes charged to my name. In my despair I hadn't cancelled him as an authorized user of my credit cards. Some money orders came to the house for $75 here, $100 there- not enough to keep food on the table for the kids. There were days I thanked God that I was still nursing the twins or they would have probably been as hungry as we were. There was no public assistance for a woman who had just put thousands of dollars into a restaurant only months before. My only choice was local food pantries, friends and occasionally asking my parents for money. I saved that for last because it was always a humbling experience. I told you so was usually thrown into the mix as I cried my eyes out about being by myself and not having help with the kids. At one point I had gotten so physically ill I wound up with IV's in my arm from dehydration. What ever I ate came up, if I was lucky enough to hold it in my stomach it would leave just as fast. My neighbor and friend Charlene had befriended me and convinced me to go to a singles support group before I wasted away..and then the kids would have nobody. The thought of wasting away and not having to deal with my life anymore didn't measure up to the neauseating feeling I had thinking that if I died, Trish would be raising MY kids with MY husband! It was time to make a change for me and my kids!