Frustrated and Throwing in the Towel

Today I sit here in my bedroom just wondering how did things get so messed up in the first place. I always envisioned when you married someone and had kids and completed those sacred marriage vows that everything would just work out OK somehow in the end.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson after failed marriage number one when he couldn't commit to staying at home, having a wife and a child without still carrying on as those he wasn't married.

Yet here I sit in yet fight number, oh who knows and I can't remember just how we got to this point. I thought I married the perfect person, the one that would give me my self esteem back and would make me a better person.

Then failures began to set in. This is the starting point for those failures I believe got us to where we are at today. I got laid off at my job of over 10 years and never found my way back to work. However it was Steve's advice that told me maybe it was my turn to stay at home and raise the family. We were certainly pulling in enough money to make that happen. So I stopped looking and settled for family life, homeschooling my kids and trying to live a Godly life.

Then Steve began hating his job. Once more he was faced to settle at beginning a new job at the low end of the scale and start at rock bottom when he clearly felt he was deserving of so much more. Don't we all?

Yet in spite of all the hunting he did, he was never able to pull himself out of the escrow crisis that would soon envelop us all that work in the real estate or banking industry.

Thankfully for him, he got injured on the job and faced a long disability to recovery. I managed to find a part time job but in the midst of this, Steve was never happy. He couldn't get better so he felt he may as well throw in the towel and get back to work before disability ran out.

My brother provided him with a way out but at the hidden expense we would come to see at a much later date. This new job gave him all that he was looking for, more than entry level, the ability to get out of a cubicle and out of an office and seek greater money and challenges ahead. He jumped.

In the end, this job has caused a tremendous tear in our marriage. It has pulled us apart farther than I thought it was possible for marriages to go. This job removed him physically from our home for 90% of the time. He would travel out of state for 4-5 weeks at a time, come home for 3 days and back to that same schedule only a different state.

I told him after seeing him miss Thanksgiving, our wedding anniversary, birthdays and other profound family holidays that this was something I knew I could never endure in a marriage. In fact, had I known what this would entail, I would have told him No! I had lived a marriage the first time around for almost 10 years of someone who was never home. That ended in an affair that would break my heart and trust for years.

Now I was seeing the same pattern repeat and I encouraged Steve to seek counseling because he couldn't see anything wrong with what was going on in our marriage even though I informed him we were at a critical point where we were both discussing divorce as an option.

He went to counseling and was told that if this cost to his marriage based on this job was too great, he needed to quit. We both agreed that it was, and so the rumor began that Steve would look for another job.

It's been over a year and a half now and he still is no further along in the job search than he was before.

His counseling sessions stopped after that one time because Steve things that worked everything out between us.

Now, enter my health issues which at this point, make me want to scream and cry because of the frustration and lack of care of doctors has simply caused this problem to go on too long. Do you think Steve cares? Yes and No! Yes he cares because he hates to anyone suffer, but No because after 4 months of dealing with this, and all the waiting that has gone into this and I, quite simply, am not the same person, I was 4 months ago. This has profoundly affected my life that much. Too view the world outside my window as some movie and yet so removed from things that life is simply passing me by. I live in a drugged out state because the pain is so severe and tests can only be scheduled so quickly.

So I sit today, hopeless, in tears in both emotional pain and physical pain, just wondering what hope is there anymore. I know deep in my heart this won't last forever, but my husband has already checked out. I see it in the things he does for us everyday. He is simply existing and hoping that one day, he will awake from this nightmare and find it's over and crossing his fingers our life will resume where it left off.

I am left alone, needing for physical help from him, which isn't there. He has taken off so much time for things like the kids birthday and wrap around days here and there, that his work has told him he is out of time.

So he leaves for work everyday, while I struggle to find sense of all of this and just wonder where is this all heading. Is there something in here I am supposed to find. How can I get help when there isn't any available and how can I get better when I have no time to get anything done?

So as you can see, I sit here in bed, pouring out my heart to all of you in this great blogging world, because I can't see past my own heartache and physical pain right now. I try daily to summon up the strength to pick my kids up from school, pick them up and do homework with them, and wait til Steve comes home, so I can run upstairs and load up on pain meds and hope that for once they will work and that pain will just never return.

I am lost and so alone right now, and every prayer I have offered up leaves me questioning, what next? Where do I go from here? If I can't depend on those I was supposed to, why are they even here? What purpose do they serve besides being a great dad and a financial provider.

Please comment and help! I am utterly lost at this point!