5/30/2004 10:05:02 PM|||Amy|||So, as I was feeding my baby daughter this evening and gazing into her sweet, beautiful blue eyes, I thought, "Good God, what I am thinking?" I'm acting as if I haven't been trying for years to get this man out of my life. He has used me, taken me for granted, used my family, abused us all. He screams at our children and is a little neglectful of them. He screams at me, and at my parents. He refuses to help around the house. He can't hold a job. He is the most selfish person I have ever met, and one of the laziest.

So, really, what am I mourning exactly? I am grieving over the end of my marriage and over the loss of the hope and optimism I thought our future together held. I get along really well with him when there is no stress or pressure in our lives, but introduce stress and pressure and everything falls apart.

What I can't get over right now are the lies he's told. He even took things I told him and presented them as his own. This woman was looking for a musical only version of Let It Be, and he told her about my thing about that song - but as if it were his own. He's told her that he slaves away here while I work - what he didn't tell her is that any housework that he does is work that I have to beg him for days to do. He told her he'd been working in the yard - to my recollection the only yard work he's done in years had to do with picking up the things the dog had strewn over the backyard. And again, I had to ask him to do it. Does that count as yardwork?

I am by no means perfect. That's probably most evident here. However, I put the kids before myself, and he never did. He just never really cared enough about himself or me or our children or anybody else to do the necessary things to keep our family together. By necessary, I mean basic things such as earning an income to provide for his family, taking care of the children consistent with the level of responsibility a father should feel for his kids, helping out - even minimally - with the household chores.

When I was pregnant with Winston and he was living in the apartment and I was living with my parents, he could have (and he knew this) at any time made it possible for all of us to live together in the apartment. All he had to do was clean it up. And yet, he never bothered. He was getting unemployment money and only helped pay a bill if I asked him specifically for money. He let me think that he was diligently trying to pay his own bills, and I didn't discover until it was too late that wasn't the case. I bought tickets for him and Bear to go to Ireland, and he came home with a $600 digital camera he bought in the duty-free.

In the end I've realized that I've never really been angry about these things, but I have been flabbergasted and resentful. How could he ignore his responsibilities with such ease? I still don't understand this, and probably never will, but the end is here and divorce is a legal issue that will happen sooner, and not later.

For months I've been saying that I need a lot of time to save up the money, and I also need time to resolve our financial issues before filing for divorce. But, I don't have any real reason to drag my feet any longer. Yes, our financial issues have to be resolved first but I am hoping that will be done by summer's end. By that time, I will hopefully have saved enough for the retainer for the divorce lawyer and at that point it will just be a matter of working out the rest.

Divorce is going to be hard on our children, but they are young and hopefully, they are not going to be affected by this for the rest of their lives. They are beautiful and bright little people - I am resolved to do my very best to help them through this.|||108597340670922825|||One Day