Shit my ex-husband said.

When Katie was a month old and we'd just got past the, "Your daughter could be blind" news from the ophthalmologist, we were driving to a friend's house.  All three kids were in the car,Katie a month old, my middle daughter would have been nineteen months old and my son was eight years old.  My husband turns to me and says, "I only ever wanted two kids."

One night many years later I was sitting at my computer in the family room trying really hard to not pay attention to my very drunk husband, he staggered over to me and leans over me to say, "The only reason I drink this much is because I can't stand being here!"

There was more and apparently it still bothers me.  February is when things finally hit rock bottom for our us.  February is when both of my parents died.  This past February is when we kept taking Katie to emergency.  I feel drained right now between memories and the dregs of flu still plugging my sinuses.  I imagine little dead viruses scattered throughout my sinuses, eaten by white cells, waiting to be flushed, sneezed and coughed out by me.  Maybe that's how it is with memories too, waiting there inside my brain to be flushed out. 

Not all of our marriage was bad, although the end was.  Neither one of us are bad people but I ended up labeled as the bad one, by him at least, because I left;  I asked for a divorce.  I don't think he ever thought I would leave.  He convinced me that I was crazy, that I couldn't manage money, that I couldn't manage without him. 

A good friend of mine died in 2009.  She was a nurse that I worked with.  She was diagnosed with cancer and dead within three months.  She was also only a few years older than me.  It was a huge shock and I realized then that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life, however long that was, with someone who didn't like me.  It was the end for me. 

I was a chronic disappointment to my husband.  It's hard living like that, feeling that weight on you everyday.  It broke me and sadly those feelings linger on to this day, although they usually only bother me when I'm feeling down.  Many years ago, I was nineteen I think, I fainted and bashed my face quite badly.  I have a scar in my eyebrow from that faint.  For years it bothered me and then less and less.  Sometimes though I can still feel it, usually when I'm tired, a faint ache in my right eyebrow, a reminder of an old wound. 

And that's how it is with my ex-husband and my marriage.  A wound that still aches at times, mostly when I'm tired or run down, less and less each year.