So my class got canceled this morning which is why I am home. The past few days have been very hard on me though I don't think anyone has really noticed much. I was sitting in my car at a stop light and just started crying for no real reason. As I look over at the other people sitting there going about their days I found myself wondering what is going on in their life. I wondered who just lost someone, who just got arrested, who is going to pass away today. I also wonder who is going through the exact same thing as I am.
Most of my friends and family have only heard bad stories about my ex husband, and the honest truth is there wasn't much good about him. I hated him for a very long time, I'm not going to lie. It was always hard for me to see similarities in my children and him. But there are some and some of those make my skin crawl because I can remember my marriage with him so amazingly well. I guess that is what happens when you go through a domestic violence situation. But my children are my children, they are not him, or even me they are unique, they are themselves and I cannot see life without them. Even though I hated him, I never stopped caring about him because whatever he did affected my children. I never wanted them hurt so I tolerated him for their sake. I just could not be married to him so we split for good in 2007 when my youngest was only 3 months old.
On August 31, 2012 he put himself through a windshield. He was drunk, out partying with some friends, jumped in his car, missed a stop sign, and t-boned a SUV going about 60mph. Both him and his passenger were thrown from the car. His passenger survived and is doing well, my ex husband however is a vegetable. He is still alive but there is nothing left of his mind. He is not brain dead or even considered in a coma because his eyes are open, but there is no higher function of his mind. Think of it this way everything your body does involuntarily like the beating of your heart, breathing, waking up after falling sleep, and normal bodily functions, he can do all of those things. But everything that makes us, well us is not there. He cannot speak, hear, smell, walk or communicate in anyway shape or form,. They say that death is more welcomed than becoming a vegetable.
There is nothing to pull, he breaths and his heart is just fine, they need no help to continue, the only thing is that because he cannot do is feed himself, he has a feeding tube. If that was to be pulled out he would starve to death. That seems a bit cruel, to me anyway. I tell you all of that to tell you this, I miss him yes even if he was this horrible person to me, I miss him. There isn't a moment in any day where my mind doesn't drift to him, not because I love him or even really cared about him but because he mattered so much to my kids. He was there dad, how can I be happy having my children all of the time when I got them this way. My kids are without their biological dad, they are without a part of themselves.
I remember when this first happened my current husband and my brother were sitting in the garage, I was crying, they both looked at me and said "why, he was this horrible person who got what he deserved" but do we ever actually get what deserved. If that was the way things were I would have died a horrible, tragic death by now. Even though a part of me is happy about it because, after all the kids are home with me where they belong, I feel cheated out of a victory. I mean victory by this, everything was a competition with him. Our current spouses, our homes, cars or just living life, everything he did was to try and put one up on the me, that is how it was with him. That is how he played the game, I won at a lot of those things which I was proud of myself in doing so. For me it wasn't about being better than he it was because everything I ended up doing benefited my life and my children's life. It became this way, he was there to screw up, I held him as the example of what not to do. Now that is gone I can't help but feel a little lost, what do I do now? I am the only one the kids are looking at, so does that mean I try to become perfect to set their only example of a parent as a great one? Or do I just keep doing what I always did? perhaps I should show them that I am flawed, that I am not perfect, that I make mistakes too, but I don't know if that is the right thing to do.
I was OK with being the "good" parent and him being the "bad" one. That's how this worked, even the kids seemed to OK with the way things were set up but now the "bad" one is gone, and it makes the "good" feel cheap. I used to say "you can't have good without the bad", but now that the bad is gone then were does that leave the good. I think that is what I mean by I miss him. I could always count on him to screw things up, and I would fix the mess, that was my normal for so long so what do I do now? My normal is gone and for my kids life will never be the same, it will always be the could of, would of life. We cannot say he would have stayed the "bad" parent their entire life, because none of us have anyway of knowing that. I am just at a crossroads in life I guess, do I just keep going the way I was going when he was still around, knowing that my children's life has now changed drastically? Or am I supposed to change drastically along with them because the way I was before August 31, 2012 just doesn't make since anymore.
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