There’s a saying that you make plans, and the gods laugh. That certainly was true for me this last week. Either settle in with a cup of coffee or skip to the end. This is another roller coaster ride that I didn’t need to be on.
One of the things that our MC suggested was that my FWH needed to make more male friends. A concept that I agreed and still agree with. So with much pre-discussion about me needing him to send me photos a couple of times during the night, how late, giving me a call, etc., last fall he went out with a (married) buddy, T, for dinner, a couple of drinks, and conversation. He failed. Spectacularly. He sent me nothing. He didn’t call. He stayed out until after 1am. I could not get in touch with him via phone. I booted him out of our bedroom by a note hammered onto the door and spent the night crying in my bed. The next morning he said that his phone had run out of charge and he just “didn’t think” to borrow the phone from T to check in with me. His tracker verified that he was in the area he should have been, however his inability to follow through set me back a very long way.
So, this leads up to Friday, the 17th. We had discussed him going out with T again. Same scenario. Figured that it was time to trust him with having a night out with his friend. And I do want to encourage him having more male friends. So off he went, straight from work, so I said goodbye to him at 8am Friday the 17th, and didn’t see him after work.
Stayed up until 10pm Friday night, no communication. Went to sleep until midnight and woke up, no communication. Phone was by my bed. At 12:15 I took a screen shot of the clock in my room and sent it to him as a hint. Nothing. I called at 1 am, no answer. I called at 2 am, no answer. I sent a text at 2:30 saying call me immediately or be prepared for all hell to break loose. No answer. Tracker says that he is around the area that he is supposed to be. At 2:45, I throw on clothing, get in my truck, and drive to where they are supposed to be. Of course all is closed up for the night, the tracker says that he is somewhere in an industrial area, and I cannot find him. I pull over and call and say, I’m in NAMEOFTOWN looking for you, where the hell are you? No answer. I finally give up, drive back home, and at 3:30 am text him, I hope the whore was worth losing your marriage over. If I had T’s phone number, I would have called, but all I had was an email address. I open his closet to get ready to hefty bag his shit to the curb, and then the fear REALLY hits. I started to get a list of hospitals in the area, and a wild thought hits. I google “How to find an inmate in NAMEOFTOWN.” And there he is. FWH, jail, DUI.
1 year – 13 days ago, I hit the ground, screaming and sobbing in pain. Feeling like my world had just imploded during DDay. 9 days ago, exactly 1 year and 7 days since he had fucked another woman, I fell to the floor, screaming and crying. In utter disbelief. That he could hurt me badly again. That because he could not be bothered to do One Fucking Thing that I asked for, for that night, he was in jail. That because he could not give me One Fucking Call so I could come and pick him up, he was in jail. That after almost one year of healing from his ONS, we were facing legal consequences that would last for a minimum of 3 years. And at this time, I had no idea if he was hurt, if the car was totaled, if some other family was sitting a death-watch over someone that he had hurt. My world came apart again.
I pulled myself together, called a bail bond company, arranged for bail for him when he was eligible. They said maybe about 10 am Saturday morning. I called the PD that had caught him to ask where the car was and luckily, it was not towed and they gave me the cross streets where it had been left. And then I sat up for the rest of the night, crying softly, staring at the computer screen with his name on it or wandering aimlessly around and around the house.
I didn’t get him out until and home until 11 pm Saturday night. During that very long day, I had a contractor friend in my house all day long working on my bathroom. Luckily his wife was a lawyer and she gave me a referral for a good DUI lawyer. I had to take public transportation to where his car was and found, thankfully, not a scratch on it and it legally parked in a parking lot. I finally got a call from him at 9 am, where he told me that he was in the drunk tank. I then informed him that bail was setup for him and all he had to do was to finish processing so they could come bail him out, I had the car, and I had found out where he was by going online to the inmate’s website. We had to cut the call short others were waiting. He took my phone call to mean that he didn’t have to do anything, so when the cops asked for anyone who was going to try to make bail to step forward, he didn’t, thus putting himself into the “go to jail” group, which is WHY it took so long for him to get out. When he finally figured that out, they had miss-placed his paperwork, had to re-find it, and then finish processing. Meanwhile, I was sitting at the computer for about 90% of that time, refreshing the screen every 30 minutes when they updated status so I could see when he was bail-eligible, and alternatively cursing him, crying, and trying to hide my emotions from the contractor friend. I made a “buddy” of one of the jail operators and she finally called booking up for me, to see if she could push them along. An hour after that, he was finally booked, then bailed out. I picked him up, we talked a bit, then went to bed. Got up early the next morning to talk again, because we had to pick up my mother from the airport at 11am, who was coming in to stay a week with us.
Last week was a blur. We told Mom what was happening Sunday afternoon because there was no way we could pretend for a week. I had several intense conversations with her. We had a couple of whispered shouting matches in our bedroom where I expressed very clearly my unhappiness. He tried to withdraw emotionally, and we had more heated discussions about that. We saw the lawyer and were reassured that he would take care of the important stuff and found out what our lives were going to look like for the next year. Two years, five years. We made up and started leaning on each other again and expressing our feelings. And now, today, alone at last, we’ll be taking a mental day off before the realities of next week hit, with him having to register for a mandated class, I have to research new car insurance, etc.
Is there a point to this post? I don’t really know. The first 2-3 days were bad. God-awful bad. I was triggering wildly, he was withdrawing, but we did keep talking. We did keep going back until we could become more rational. We kept reaching out for each other and yes, we have a lot more to talk about, and a lot more that’s going to batter at us because we’re only beginning this journey. But at the end of the day, we’re still holding each other and still loving each other. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe.
