Maybe “limbo” is my “forever home” (a reference to something I saw on HGTV for someone looking for a home to spend the rest of their life in.)
1 year ago tomorrow I got a phone call in the am from someone saying WH and DD were in a very serious auto accident. DD got on the phone, hysterical and screaming that WH was dead and that I needed to get down there right away. I threw the younger siblings in the car and raced to the scene of the accident with the same tunnel vision that I had experienced on d-day and the days following.
When I got there I saw our vehicle, totaled. His belongings (that were still stored in the vehicle from 2011 when I kicked him out) were strewn across the intersection, all across the intersection. Streetlights and traffic signals were knocked down. Part of a business building was collapsed over the other car responsible for causing the accident. DD was screaming and crying and fighting the paramedics. I left the youngers in the car and tried to help. Where was WH? I helped the paras get DD on a back board and into the ambulance, but couldn’t ride with her because I had the 2 youngers. EVERYONE there was looking at me funny. Oh, and there was blood all over what I could see on the inside of WH’s decimated car. I was told that WH was rushed immediately to the hospital and that DD would be going to a different one. The person responsible for causing the accident was unscathed and couldn’t even bother to apologize for driving recklessly. I didn’t think much of it at the time, my mind was elsewhere. But to this day, still nothing-no sign of remorse whatsoever.
At the hospital I got the whole “you may want to sit down for this” and “there is a very good chance that your H will not survive the surgeries/ night”…..
He slowly got better, thank goodness. His recovery was deemed “miraculous”. I will skip all the details, besides I think I’ve posted about that before here.
Fast forward and sum up some of the notable thoughts that have been circulating my brain in the last 24 hours.
I will try to bullet point this because I tend to get off track with every single post I make here. Maybe bulleting it will keep my thoughts more in line.
Post accident notables:
1. When WH came out of his coma weeks later he was certain that he had caused the accident because of the things that he had done to us-his family (infidelities, secret life, crappy behavior, selfishness). This kind of thinking drives me crazy because there is no logic to it. There was zero relevance between his selfish person and some jerk mowing him and my daughter down with a truck. Ugh!!!!!
2. WH finished his explanation letter (explaining to the best of his ability his “whys”). And, everything that he added to this letter post-accident was colored differently than that which was written pre-accident. Let me tell you that it appeared to be a whole different person who wrote the colored parts.
3. WH appears to intend to look into the more serious behavioral (?) issues that he has, via counseling more after the accident. His last therapist had to quit due to health problems.
4. HOWEVER, and you will all think I’m a jerk with no compassion, his sh!tty behaviors still come up! He has WORSE anger management now (from what I understand his frontal lobe was damaged in the crash) because of the accident. When there aren’t anger management issues, there’s a LOT of timid behavior (which is a personal irritation of mine) and if it isn’t that then there is a lot of pity party (which, for the accident part, I am ok with, but when it comes to the choices he made in his life that involved hurting other people I feel that he doesn’t get to pity himself for the choices he made. If he does feel the need to pity himself for his choices of hurting others, I would rather he not do it in front of me.)
5. He is NOT the same person. I see all these interviews with spouses who survived tragedies and recovered and they all say “Oh, he/she’s the same person as before!” Not so, for me. I think there *might* be more remorse about his “A”s and secret life because he faced his own mortality square in the face???-But, now there’s this other added component. And I have to add, that the anger crap WAS there before. His sh!tty ways of “coping” with things WAS always there (thanks, WH FOO), but he seemed to be getting a grip on it. At least on a tolerable level. For the most part. I don’t know where I’m going with this at all.
I don’t know what I even want from him anymore. I, as a person, have evolved from all of this. I, as a person, have also regressed from all this. I was never dependent on him. He certainly never provided any emotional support. In hindsight, maybe we were always roommates with benefits [though in the reality of hindsight, there were far more costs than benefits]. The only difference is that I was under the impression (because it was stated to me over and over again) that we were in a voluntarily, (and legally!) monogamous relationship and that we loved each other. I know now that that was never true on his part, despite the fact that he keeps saying that he always loved only me.
I know I still need a non-science fiction version of the basic truth about the first 10 years of our marriage. He has been working on that and says that this time it will be the last one. I agree. I can’t remember what version we are on now, but it is in the high teens. I don’t want another one after this. This is the last one I will be accepting. And, I’m scared. But, I keep telling myself that I don’t have to be. If the accident really has bonked some real remorse into him, then I will be learning of new (to me as the last one was supposedly in 2008) As, new people, new horrors that he partook in before d-day. If I could show you all the previous full disclosures you would understand: they are so utterly insulting to a betrayed spouse in a “you seriously expect me to believe that shit” kind of way. So, I expect that to happen….soon-ish.
The contents of that paper, I expect, to change nothing except my own personal attitude towards our living situation-and maybe not even that. It’s really the difference between avalanche truth and trickle truth. Since he has been lying so consistently since d-day, I have 2 and a half years of empirical evidence that he will continue to do the same with this last disclosure. But, if there is new information (which, in the realm of the “REAL” truth-which is what I really want to know that he is capable of being a willing participant in this marriage) it’s better to have than to have not.
See, I went off on a tangent again that was not even related to what I started with! This is what I’m talking about. I can’t think clearly anymore.
I need to stop now. I might have to delete the first part of this post or put it on my journal here because it might be TMI. Thanks for listening to my drivel. I understand 100% if it was too muddled to understand. I don’t even think I understand it myself.
