Standing at a Crossroads

Standing at a Crossroads

By: Dawn Colclasure


It seems that where I am right now in life is filled with questions inquiring minds want to know. On one side is my soon-to-be ex-husband asking, “Why didn’t you try to get a divorce sooner?” On another is my mom asking, “Why in the world did you go to Oregon with HIM?” And, finally, I have my child waking up each morning, asking, “Where’s Daddy?”

Of course there are other questions in my head right now. What on Earth am I going to DO with myself? Will I be spending the rest of my life alone? Where the heck am I going to live? Where will I finally belong? Will my writing EVER lift off? Etc., etc.

The first three questions above, though, have a real significance for me. They have a significance because they each signify major changes taking place in my life.

So WHY didn’t I try to divorce him sooner? Why, when he put me through hell for over a year, didn’t I just throw up my arms and scream, “ENOUGH!”? One reason: I was afraid. The emotional abuse he put me through changed me into a vulnerable person. I would cry myself to sleep so many times, get drunk, whisper little prayers here and there, but NEVER did it get into my head to walk into a courthouse and ask for divorce papers because I was afraid of losing my child. My daughter means the WORLD to me and, because I made less than her dad, I was afraid the courts would favor HIM or that his family would go after custody instead of letting me keep her. Then one day, a friend of mine said something in an email, and even though he was talking about something else, I took his words and saw them differently. He said that I deserve better. Reading those words, it was like “snapping out of it” and realizing that applied not only to my writing life but to my personal life, too. It didn’t matter if he tried to take my baby from me; did I really want to spend the rest of my life “walking on eggshells” around him, being isolated from my family, being ignored, blown up at anytime I spoke and, ahem, being nothing but his plaything in bed? Did I really want this to be the future I would have? I knew right away I didn’t. Even if he tried to obtain custody from me, I had to TRY to fight him. I had to FIGHT, period. I couldn’t let this continue. It made me sink so low that I just didn’t want to live anymore, so I knew I HAD to get out if I wanted to stay alive.

That email changed me. I immediately contacted a bunch of my friends about this. I soon learned that two of them went through the same thing – and one of them finally found the courage to get away. She was getting a divorce and kept me updated on the struggles she was going through in trying to break free of her husband’s abuse. My friends immediately surrounded me with their support and even offered advice on the steps I could take in getting away from him. There was only one problem: My spouse. Part of his behavior is trying to control me and he wasn’t going to let a divorce happen right away. He refused a divorce and I felt stuck. At the time, I didn’t realize I could get a divorce without his consent and it just didn’t click with me to go to a women’s shelter for help.

Then one evening I turned to see something: My husband angrily shaking my daughter. Since I endured physical abuse as a child, I spent a half-minute seeing my past but the next I used to jump up and yell at him about it. I just cracked and blew up. That night, I had a nightmare about him that scared me so bad, I woke up shaking, crying and unable to breathe. Since he was gone, I called my sister and asked her to come and get me. I immediately started packing my child’s and my things. My sister got us (we even took the dog) and we went to my mom’s house. I told her the whole story and she said that we could stay with her. My other sister was at work but when my mom told her on the phone what had happened, she was steamed. She later went to my house, after she got off work, and told my daughter’s dad off. He hadn’t realized that we left so he went to my mom’s. The first words out of my mouth when I saw him were, “I want a divorce.” (At this point, I was ready to BEG for one!!) My other sister, her husband and their kids showed up. My brother-in-law was angry and kept asking if I was okay. He also kept listening in as we talked outside and my sister came outside to hang around. As we talked outside, I kept telling him how I just wasn’t happy anymore and how his treatment towards me was just wrong. That it got me to where I didn’t want to live anymore and that I couldn’t keep giving him anymore chances. I also mentioned the shaking and said that I didn’t want him to treat my daughter that way if she was bad. That was abusive, too. He kept going on and on about how much he loved me and that he was TRYING to make things better. I told him, “If you really love me, you will let me go.” Eventually, we agreed that he would stay at his dad’s house and I would go back home with my daughter. He still wouldn’t allow the divorce but I had managed one step up: We were living apart from each other. I went back into my mother’s house, went into my sister’s arms and cried. The whole thing was such a huge battle and I felt like I would never be free.

While we lived apart, I did sleep better at night. I felt more secure and happier about things, like I had a new sense of direction in life. I even went shopping for things to make the house more MINE than something I shared with someone. All this would’ve gone well and good except for one thing: My daughter. Despite the shaking incident, she was still so attached to her daddy. She would sit at the window practically all day, get teary-eyed then turn to me, shake her head and go, “Daddy isn’t here yet.” This just broke my heart. I started to question whose interests I was really putting at the top of the list: My daughter’s or mine. Was I being selfish? Would she grow up hating me for this? Was there a chance things could change?

These are the questions that I struggled with during the separation. Even though he came to see her each night and leave after she went to bed, she would still watch for him every day, hoping he’d appear any second now.

At first I tried to figure out a way to explain to her we were living apart now and that someday she would understand but then it just broke my confidence and I let her father move back in. (At this point, I wasn’t even calling him my “husband” anymore and I even took info about him off of my Web site and stopped using his last name.) At first things went okay and he promised to get counseling for the abusive behavior. I sent my friend an email asking her if living together was a good idea at that time and she wrote back saying that it wasn’t, that as long as he wasn’t receiving counseling, living together was a BAD idea because it would just start all over again. I never wrote her back, though, mainly because I was too ashamed. She had been right. It wasn’t long before he started acting all controlling, short-tempered, critical and aloof all over again. If he wasn’t ignoring me, he was stepping in to discipline our daughter because I was doing it “wrong” or I was cooking something “wrong” or I wasn’t keeping the house “clean enough” even though I worked my butt off cleaning it every day. (And I think I should stop right there. There are just SO MANY grievances I had to put up with.)

As I tried to figure out what I was going to do now, something happened: He got a job offer in Oregon. Deep inside, I was elated. If he got this job he would move away and THEN I could be free of him. I still had the matter of getting divorced because I knew THAT had to get taken care of if I ever really wanted to be free from him. But I hoped, prayed, he would get the job because the main thing I had to do was live apart. Even though my mom, who is a traditionalist when it comes to marriage, wanted me to try to work things out with him, I knew that it was over. He had crossed a line with me in inflicting abuse. That is just one thing I WILL NOT TAKE from someone who is supposed to love me. Add to this that I no longer felt any love for him. I hadn’t loved him for over four months and had, in fact, fallen in love with a friend I’d known for over a year. (That didn’t work out but we remain friends.) But on the other, I had this BURNING DESIRE to get out of California. I just didn’t want to live in that state anymore. It was time to move on. But the biggest variable I had to contend with was the same one it will always be: My child. I knew I would once again have to cope with my daughter constantly asking “where’s Daddy?” and how she’d cry for him. Still, I knew that I would just have to find a way to deal with this. And I thought it would be okay for me to choose to stay behind but, of course, he didn’t feel that way. The minute I told him “I don’t want to go to Oregon with you,” it started off two weeks of him begging and pressuring me to go. It was always “why don’t you want to go to Oregon with me?” or “our daughter will be happier in Oregon.” He would also make promises like “you can get your own apartment; it’s cheaper to live there” and “I won’t bother you and you can do whatever you want.” And no matter how many times I would tell him that I just didn’t want to go, he would keep at it and keep at it. Finally, I just gave up. I was tired of trying to defend my reason for staying (well, I didn’t really HAVE a reason to stay, but no reason to go, either). I was just exhausted from his constant pressuring. I told him, “Okay, I’ll go with you to Oregon.”

I knew, however, that if I went with him to Oregon, it would be to divorce him.

Unfortunately, that’s not EXACTLY how things have worked out so far, now 3 months after we got here. We ended up staying at a motel for 11 days after we got here and even though I fell in love with this little, two-story blue house, money was too tight to wait until it would become available. Money was too tight, period: We ended up having to get an apartment together. This was only the beginning. My daughter’s dad took this as a sign that maybe I would have a change of heart. That maybe, in some small way. I still LOVED him and that things would work out. I thought this might happen, too, but I just didn’t FEEL anything for him. When I tried being with him one night, I felt cheap and used. I knew I didn’t want to feel that way again. He still tried to make things better: He would constantly say he was a changed man, buy me gifts and do little favors around the apartment. But it didn’t do any good and he finally realized that things weren’t going to go his way. I didn’t love him and didn’t want a future with him. He finally had that look of realization in his eyes and he asked, “You mean you have NO interest in the relationship at all?” I told him, “None.”

On the surface, this might appear to be a positive turning point. Perhaps now he would finally realize that it’s just not going to work out. So we started looking into getting divorced. Unfortunately, we learned we would have to wait six months before we could even FILE for a divorce, since we weren’t OFFICIALLY residents yet. Even if we had filed in California, it would still be six months and one day before it would be legal. The good news is, we could request a waiver be assigned to our case so we wouldn’t have to wait the standard 90 days before our divorce would be legal. So even after waiting until we met the 6-month residency requirement, we could finally obtain a legal divorce.

At first, I had no problem with waiting. I thought, “OK. We’ll just wait three more months.” But then two things happened: I fell in love. And, he started acting his old self again.

The first thing ended up falling apart (and I fell apart right with it). The second thing, though, had me once again stuck. What would I do now that he was once again acting controlling and short-tempered? I didn’t have my mother to go to or even someplace I was familiar with. I DID still have my friends, who were an email away, but there’s only so much that can be done through email. My daughter’s dad had promised he would move out but it was always some excuse keeping him from doing this. “I don’t have enough money.” “I have to pay the bills.” “I can’t find anything.”

But something even bigger than that started happening, too. Even though I came here with him for my daughter’s sake, I realized this had been a bad idea because it wasn’t long before she started picking up on his behavior. She would repeat things he’d say to me and turn to him instead of me. It was like I wasn’t even there! I don’t know if this still would happen if he was living apart from us but I think about how he is with her and wonder if him having her on the weekends would even work out. I watch how he is with her – how he tells her “leave me alone” when he’s on the computer and she wants to tell him something, how he loses his temper with her so fast, sends her to her room simply because she was marching around the living room, how he’ll freak out over every little thing she does – and just wonder if I should even be out here with her at all.

A title from an unpublished article I wrote keeps hanging in my mind: “Whose Sake is at Stake?” And that article happens to be about families just like this. At the end of my article, I wrote in my concluding statements that it was best that the parents live apart and not stay together for their children’s sake, because all of that negative behavior just really rubs off on them. It shapes their attitudes towards adults and how a husband and wife should treat each other. I know that staying here, while he just throws at me one excuse after another, would only keep that kind of “rubbing off” up. If I REALLY wanted to do what was best for my child, I would put her in a HAPPY home environment, where she doesn’t have to walk on any eggshells around ANYONE.

For this reason, I am once again preparing to leave. If my daughter starts crying and asking “where’s Daddy,” I can’t explain to her everything right now because she is too young to understand, but what I will do is just tell her Daddy is living someplace else now. And I won’t feel guilty about it, either. I learned my lesson. He can take all the time he wants to in finding a new place; I am taking my daughter with me to California to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I’m not even sure I want to stay in Oregon. It’s nice but not exactly “home” for me. But I don’t know if I want to move back to California, either. I just don’t know what to do, I’m at a crossroads, and so I am going into retreat to figure things out. Fortunately, my getting a LEGAL divorce from him won’t be harmed if I take this trip. He will still be here and the residency requirement stipulates that at least ONE party must be living here for 6 months. I know I’ll have to come back in 3 months to file the paperwork and everything, but at least it will FINALLY be in the system. If we’re lucky, it will all be over with then and there.

I can only hope. I can only pray. And, eventually, when it’s over with, I can only finally move on.