Thankful I started blogging when I did

Ha, I thought this was going to be a blog about infertility. I thought it was going to be a place where I work out my conflicts about our choice to stop trying for now. I thought it was going to be a lot more than it has suddenly turned into. Well, what it will turn into very shortly, the beginnings of the change being thrust on me last night.

I never wanted this to be a place for me to bitch about R, I never wanted this to be where I go when I'm mad at him or the place where everybody takes my side. I never wanted to let this part of my personal life dictate my blog. But then last night happened. And I do refuse to talk to people IRL. I won't talk to my mom and have her upset at R over it, I don't talk to my dad period so this is no different, I won't talk to my friends about it because me going downstate this weekend has been planned for a month and I refuse to let it be negatively affected by last night. So, I'm going against my original plan, and blogging about my brush with divorce. (the following is nowhere near chronological order, so don't expect to be able to follow it)

Black holes suck! And when your husband doesn't understand them and just expects you to come out as soon as he wants you to, they suck more. And when he doesn't trust you to not drown his son in the tub because of one, he becomes the one that sucks. OK, so he didn't get into any details about why he's "nervous" to have Little H up here, just that "what if" I get in a black hole. "What if he needs me" "what if something happens and R isn't around" "what if I can't handle things." I was in that hole for over a week before R realized it, because I maintained life around here as we knew it, no matter how I felt inside. And now he doesn't trust that I could do that.

And the whole God thing. DH is newly saved, all fired up about God. I don't know what I am, but the Pentecostal church does not hold it for me. Nearly every "Christian" I have met around here is hipocritical and self-serving. They all (and I mean ALL) speak in tongues (at the same time, competing in volume) and then babble on about how it means they are truly devout and God spoke through them. Now, I've never been to a pentecostal church before, but my grandpa was raised in one and my grandma started going when they got married. So, I asked Grandma. Turns out, every pentecostal church she has ever been in has only had 1 person speaking in tongues at a time, and always with an interpreter (unless it was a very rare, very profound moment and no interpreter was around). 25 people did not yell to have their tongues heard over everybody else, and it never happened during the sermon (I think it might have been a decent sermon, if I had been able to hear any of it). Just walking in the doors of the church made me nauseous, as if I could feel the judgement and competition inside, the overwhelming need to prove who was the most Christ-like. And I hated it, I still do. I refuse to go back, and I want to throw up every time I see somebody I met at that church.

Why does that matter? Because R is bestest friends with a family from there. They now attend a different church, but they still act a whole lot like the people from there. He wants me to be BFF with the wife. She's in her late 40's, her kids are driving themselves around, I have nothing in common with her (oh, and the constant "I have to serve the Lord and witness to you" is getting kind of old, badgering me every 10 minutes with the same "Jesus died so you could be absolved of your sins" story isn't going to get me to "come to God" with you. If/when I feel the need to change the relationship I have with God, it will be on my terms and in my heart. Nobody can force it on me, and the constant attack on my faith just puts me on the defensive and makes me resent any God that would instruct his followers to do it *point of fact- I know God didn't instruct her to attack my faith, but she thinks he did, and it really puts me off*). So, if I can't be BFF with the wife, why not the daughters? Ummm, because they are 14/16 years old and still in high school. I'm 24 and it's been 3 1/2 years since I graduated COLLEGE. I don't care about black nail polish, trying to con my parents (who never say no) into doing whatever I want, or getting boys to like me because of my Christian Rock band. They can have the lives they choose, the ones their parents don't make much effort to control (the 14 year old is trying to make plans with some guy she met in a chat room, and the parents believe that she will "make the right decision" before that time comes, no punishment, no supervision while online, just absolute trust and no effort made to help direct her to the right decision), but that's not who I chose to be friends with.

He doesn't think I should drink anymore, he resents me for doing it. The family from church doesn't drink, when R started hanging out with them he decided not to drink either. I drink once a month, if that often, when I am downstate with friends. Usually it's half a rum & coke when I go out with his uncle, sometimes it's 3 beers when I play beer pong with my brothers & cousin. And I did get pretty drunk last time I was downstate, I played beer pong and then went out to a bar with friends of my cousin (and they bought me a drink there, but I only drank half, then sobered up for the next 3 hours so I could drive them home- they had no plans for a DD) and then we drank back at the house afterwards while we sat around and talked. I didn't do anything stupid, I didn't dance with the wrong guys at the bar or get so drunk I couldn't stand (when I say drunk, I really only mean buzzed most of the time, I hate to be without complete control of myself and I refuse to lose any control unless I 100% trust who I am with), I didn't smile the wrong way at the guys who stared at me, I didn't accidentally flirt with even the bouncer. But, R hates that I did it. Alcohol is now evil to him.

More of what I do that upsets him: on Friday I am posing for nude photographs. Not porn, not for dirty money, nothing like that. The photographer is an artist, the nudes he's done that I've seen are more than just something to look at. I felt the photos I saw (not in any creepy, pet-the-picture kind of way, but something inside me caught when I looked at the photos and I was drawn to them), beautiful photos of the curve of a hip against a scarlet background, or hazy edges on the black velvet backdrop of a smooth behind, or a breast barely visible and very underlit developed in sienna shades. They are fantastic, and I am awed that he could see such art in my body (not that I don't think my body is freaking awesome, but for somebody who can make something already perfect somehow better, I didn't expect my body to get a second look from him). R was very for the idea when I proposed it to him, but now it's such a sin that he can't allow me to do it (he knows he can't stop me, but he doesn't abide by it) and he needs to witness to me about the Lord so that I can see the evil of my ways. Hey, look at that, it's back to my relationship with God and how R doesn't think I have one.

Before R was saved, he thought nothing of spending $100 at the bar in one night (on drinks for himself only, I have always been the DD and embraced my sobriety in our marriage). He'd jump at the opportunity to show me off (not like I'm a prize, but he enjoyed when I dressed for the bar and he got to be the one with his arm around me). He accepted it when I chose to strip at amateur night, and encouraged me to do it as often as I wanted. And now all of his beliefs are the exact opposite. He doesn't want me to choose to indulge in and experience life in this world, because he wants to ensure that I am "with him in the next." Yeah, I've done things that are regrettable, that others wouldn't approve of, but I don't regret them because they have made me who I am. If I hadn't stripped I wouldn't feel empowered just by being myself, if I hadn't been married to my X I wouldn't know that I have the strength to walk away from abuse, if I hadn't gotten drunk a month ago I wouldn't know I haven't become a shell of who I was and that I can still let go and just dance to the beat. I truly know myself, and I don't want absolution for how that came to be. I don't want God to forgive me and make it as though I never did anything bad, because if He takes that memory from Himself and absolves me of whatever I've done, I feel like I'd lose part of myself. I don't regret it and I don't feel guilty.

All that about why he doesn't know if he should stay married to me. And my side of it: he told me he never wants children. Oh, that might change in 10 years, but right now he never wants children and really never did. He was doing things and saying things to appease me, but he hated every conversation we ever had about children. And he thinks I'm petty because "I don't want J to have a baby." Completely lost the point there. I want J to have a baby, I want her to be happy and have the belly. But I want to know that I'm going to be there someday and for a long time I've doubted that R was willing to do what it will take. He's one of those fanaticals that repeats over and over that "it's in God's hands" no matter how much I tell him that hurts, no matter how I run away from him and cry when he shows so little respect for me that he'd repeat it again after I told him I don't want to hear it. He's beyond Christian, he's fucking brainwashed and he wants to drag me with him. God gave us doctors, He gave them the knowledge to identify and treat the problem, maybe that's the fucking answered prayer, not "give up, God wants you barren."

I think it actually still is over, even if we both want to stay together. I don't think counseling will help. He refuses to see a "secular" counselor because they're "full of crap and don't instruct couples according to God's word." And just having another person tell me that my relationship with God has to be stronger isn't going to fix our marriage. I've asked a thousand times for R to not equate fertility with God's plan, and his immediate response is to break out a dozen quotes from scripture (all of which were spoon fed to him by somebody). I can't be happy being directly defied and attacked like that. I quit talking to him about infertility, I hadn't said the word "baby" in this house in 2 months, but since I was sad about J he has gone back on his tirade about God not wanting me to have children. At least I'll have time to pack more carefully this way.