Going to hell in a handbasket

I've done this blog thing before. I have a family blog about my 2 year old daughter, but am so lacking on posts there. Time deficient is what I am. I need a place to write, a place to vent. I'm tired of keeping it all bottled up inside, because that's when I'll explode and do something I really regret.

I should have known better. I knew the warning signs. I met my soon to be ex-husband in January 2001. We both worked at Target, he had long hair, and honestly, I wasn't even attracted to him. One night he and another guy invited me back to his place. Let's call him the asshole, or AH for short. The other guy, Jason, drove him home which I thought nothing of at the time, but it turned out he couldn't drive, as he had 2 DUI's. Right there is where I want to kick myself in the ass. Warning sign anyone? Anyway, we hooked up that night (just kissing, as I was still "pure"), and I vividly remember him coming towards me and his lips were huge and puffy and a turnoff. Why I still kissed him? Who the hell knows. His apartment was really weird, halloween stuff everywhere, shitty furniture, dark. I assumed it was just a typical bachelor pad. He had also been divorced before. He said they grew apart. Next week, we didn't talk and I wasn't that interested. Super bowl was that Sunday and he and Jason called and basically begged me to come over. So I went. And AH and I were a couple. This is where I kick myself. All he did was drink and smoke and not drive and sit in his dark and nasty apartment, except for the times his mom came over and drove him to and from work. He was 25. But, we got along really really well. We could talk forever, laugh forever, and that's something you don't find in everyone. But still. He was the first person I slept with. It was not great. I was scared and he didn't really seem to care.

Fast forward to August of 2001. AH had to serve 11 days in jail for his DUI's. This really bothered me, and I was having huge doubts about our relationship. While he was in jail, I went to a party and met this cute guy named Jared. We ended up hooking up in the back seat of his car. No sex, just making out, but he ended up leaving hickies all over my neck. The next day I was going to see AH in jail and was scrambling to find a turtle neckAH later. I did see that guy some more afterwards, going to his house and fooling around. Maybe TMI, but he is the only guy ever who's given me an orgasm with his finger. That's not sex, right?

So AH gets out of jail, he knows I cheated, and somewhere in my mind it's a relief, we can break up. Instead, he begs me to stay with him. For some dumbass reason I did. Let me kick myself again. Harder.

Fast forward to the next year. By this time I had met (and fallen in love with) his family. It was just so natural. I had convinced him to cut his hair and get rid of some really ugly clothes. I graduated from BYU (I'll get into the Mormon crap later) and was moving to Poland to teach English for a year. Right after I graduated, he proposed. It was in front of his entire family, and I said yes. I really think I did want to marry him. He had stopped drinking and smoking (for the most part) and our relationship was doing well. I had moved in and we'd totally made over the apartment. We got engaged in June, and I left for Poland in August.

Poland was amazing. Oh wait, I forgot the part about me going to Hungary for a month to teach English. And met many cute European boys. And kissed many cute boys. So back to Poland, it was really hard at first, I was pretty homesick. After about 3 months, I met this gorgeous guy name Darek. Oh he was beautiful. And we became a couple. I was so in love with him. I'd go to his apartment all the time, his mom cooked me dinner every night. He lived with his mom, which is completely normal there. He even asked me casually to marry him, written on a piece of paper on a train to Krakow. As with any relationship, it had it's ups and downs. He was very dedicated to his job, and needed to learn English to get a better position. He was always studying, or sleeping. AH knew I had this friend, but I convinced him that Darek was just a friend, although I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me. After a few months, AH decided he wanted to come live with me in Poland. His parents offered to pay for it. I said no way. This was my thing, he didn't need to come ruin it. Plus, I had Darek. When it was time for me to leave Poland, Darek and I weren't in a great place, but he was going to try to get a visa to come to the States, but it was denied. I wasn't too upset about it. One day our cat came out carrying a little piece of paper in her mouth. It was the little note that Darek wrote to me about marrying him. That should have been a sign if there ever was one! Now I'm slapping myself on the face. AH flipped out and kicked me out. I was fine with that. As I was walking out the door, he changed his mind and begged me to stay. Seeing as I really had no where to go, I stayed. What was I thinking??? So we tried and made things better, and planned a wedding for the next August (2004). I'm not sure, but something in my mind wasn't completely excited, but I thought that that was normal, that no relationship is perfect. This is where we get back to the alcohol. I had been trying and trying to get him to stop drinking, and asked him not to drink at our reception. The first thing he does? Goes and gets a huge beer. By 2am he's wasted, and needless to say we did not have sex.

For about 6 months things are okay. We had a weekly poker night where he got wasted, but besides that he didn't drink. I got pregnant in January, which was planned, then we decided to move to KS so that he could go to school and eventually get into the vet program. Our town has an entire street devoted to bars, and AH loved that. Loved it so much that he drank everyday. To the point where he wouldn't come home at night, or came home at 3 in the morning. He very rarely saw our daughter, and when he did, all he did was lay on the couch. And I put up with it because he promised to change. Then he got another DUI. The KS system didn't find his 2 priors, and so he was only charged with first offense. This is where I wish I had a time machine. I would go back to that point and inform the police about his priors, send him to jail, and get the hell out of Dodge.

Instead, I waited. Way too long. I finally kicked him out last August after finding him drunk in a bar way too often. Best move I've every made. Our divorce will hopefully be final on April 15th, but the part that sucks about it is that he is fighting for partial custody. This is the man that didn't see his daughter for 6 months more or less, went a whole month in December without seeing her. Never called to see how she was or talk to her. We had a huge ice storm that knocked out power for 4 days, he never called to make sure she was okay.

Those are the main points. I need to get back to work, plus I can only think of these topics for so long before I want to throw up.