… and other reasons why I am leaving him!

I had a shower this evening and went rooting around in my wardrobe for something to wear in bed. Until I officially move out of this house on the 25th, my STBX husband and I share a bed, so I HAVE to wear something for modesty’s sake – he don’t get to see THAT no more!

Anyway, I pulled out a pair of shorts, slipped them on, reached up to pull a t-shirt off the hanger, and as my fingers let go of the waistband on the shorts, they just completely fell off! It made me giggle, so I went into his study to show him how huge they were. I said “look how fat I used to be” and the expression on his face was just “oh my god they are like fucking HUGE – yeah look at how FAT you were”

I said “gee thanks, well you always did say I had a fat arse didn’t you” – he said he hadn’t meant it like that, but he didn’t bother checking if I was okay – he just turned back to his computer.

Now sensible Ness says that he doesn’t have to comment – I’m his STBX wife … but ED Ness knows full well from that expression on his face that I always WAS too fat and that’s why he ignored me, neglected me and rejected me.

It’s just another reminder to myself that leaving this man who does NOT offer me emotional support and who does NOT encourage me to feel better about myself and who does NOT help build my self esteem … well, it’s the best thing I can do – and Grrrr moving day can’t come quick enough!!

AND I ate a “proper” dinner tonight.

Fat and rejected

So it’s almost 2am UK time and I have been sat here crying my eyes out for the last hour. I feel so utterly rejected and alone… and fat and overweight and … well fill in the rest of the blanks as you feel fit!

My STBX husband and I have had sex twice since I started writing this blog just about a week ago. I only wrote about the first time – maybe I was embarrassed or something … I don’t know why I didn’t mention the second time, but BOTH were initiated by him. Funny really - it’s more than we tended to have sex while we were “married” in inverted commas.

Tonight … as we still share the same bed as it’s comfortable … I said to him that I was feeling horny… and his exact words ….

 ”umm to be honest, I don’t.”

It wouldn’t have mattered what he’d said …. see, I heard “you’re still too fat, nothing like a skinny porn model and I’m not interested.”

He claimed he has trouble separating having sex and making love … so what the fuck was it the last two times when HE was in the mood???? His FAT wife was obviously good enough for him then.

I said “Ohh, well, err ummm that’s okay” … then left it a polite few seconds before rolling over and trying to hold back the tears in my eyes.

What hurts the most is how I lay there waiting for him to fall asleep  so fucking ignorant of my feelings … then I took my pillow and snuck the top cover off the bed. He heard me just as I was about to creep downstairs and asked me what I was doing … I said I was going to the loo … then literally started bawling my eyes out as soon as the lounge door was shut …. and I have heard nothing from him. I’ve been downstairs for about an hour and a half and feel totally ignored and alone.

I’ve calmed down now … but with the volume I was sobbing earlier I am surprised I didn’t wake the entire house. It’s just fucking typical of him. It always WAS on HIS terms and when HE was in the mood. My feelings and my emotions never seem to matter. The discussion that we’d had was that it HAD been just an itch that had been scratched despite how emotional it had made me feel being so close to him like that.

If my marriage ever did have a chance, then my husband rejecting me tonight when I feel so vulnerable and in need of being held … then this would have been it.

A freak and a hypocrite

Woah what a day. A day that started at 5.30am too because on a Sunday morning I work on a market stall as part of my busines. It’s a regular market and it is held every Sunday. It is an early start and a very physical start with loading & unloading, building the stall and setting everything out. I’m also right next to one of the many mobile food vans and as a vegetarian for the past 21 years, the smell of bacon cooking will do it for me every time. It’s almost a relief not being “allowed” to eat it!! I do live vicariously through the smell of it though!!

It is always so very easy not to eat anything on a Sunday because I am usually always busy so I don’t even need to think about food, but I had my 10 year old daughter with me and she has her own body issues that I really REALLY don’t want to make worse. I actually caught her sitting on the sofa the other day prodding her belly and I can’t help but wonder how much of that has been influenced by me and I hate myself for it.

She is a perfect and healthy 10 year old with nothing but a bare whisper of perfectly normal puppy fat on her that is hardly there anyway and shrinking as she grows taller as nature intended! I want her to grow up healthy and confident but I can already see the start of ED behaviours in her (obsession with healthy diet, but love of sweets & candy, ritual staring at herself in the mirror etc) and that scares the crap out of me. I hide what I go through as much as possible and never EVER talk about being fat or overweight or anything like that in front of her. I do NOT want my daughter to go through this. She is already such a fragile and emotional thing and I do my utmost to encourage her positively and to build her self confidence. Shame I can’t do the same for myself eh!

So anyway, when the bacon smells hit her little nostrills and her eyes lit up this morning …. I bought her a bacon bap and I bought myself a cheese & onion toasted sandwich too (NOTE ONION … THAT’S A VEGETABLE – THAT’S A WHOLE FOOD GROUP!) and I made sure that she saw me eating it and I was making all kinds of noises about how hungry I’d felt and how it was SO good to have something to eat, and how tasty it was … all a pile of crap and nonsense of course … it felt rough and dry going down my throat. I was full and bloated after a couple of bites and even an entire bottle of water didn’t help wash it down.

BUT my daughter saw me eating.

I had to eat in front of her at dinner as well … although my husband and I are in the process of separating it is still amicable and knowing I work out on the market all day with our daughter, he had cooked dinner. I usually feed the children early on a week night and then tell them I have my dinner when they are in bed. Anyway, he’d made spaghetti bolognaise for the family and he’d made me a huge portion of penne pasta with some mushrooms, grated parmesan cheese and a few slices of garlic bread.

My husband doesn’t understand my eating disorder. He does know I blame him for a lot of it but he just tells me I look fine and rolls his eyes when I barely eat a mouthful. Did I ever mention I HATE to eat in front of people??? I ate the mushrooms that were mixed with the pasta and I tried to count how many pieces of the penne I ate but with conversation over the meal (a great way to hide the fact you aren’t eating much – talk LOTS) … well I lost count.

I feel like such a hypocrite. How do I carry on my quest to be thin without screwing up my daughter?!?! My husband and I currently agree that after we separate, they will live with me … but if I go too far, how can I argue that I am the best for my kids? How do you know when too far is too far when you have been fat, ugly and overweight for so long?

Trade on the market wasn’t so good today and I wondered how much of it was me? See, when you are out there all day in the public eye – you get to see all sorts of people from all walks of life. You see the uber skinny and the hugely fat. You see weird shaped people and people who look okay from the back until they turn around and you see that it’s actually a woman not a bloke and her tits are drooping down to her knees.

Men notice me – a lot more. I’ve definitely picked up on that. I don’t wear half as much make-up as I used to either, so it must be from the weight loss. I used to hide behind a lot of eye make-up and rarely ventured out without lipstick. Since I’ve lost weight, I barely slap on a little mascara and some lip gloss! I had so many more men than usual come up to my stall, and I swear it was just to engage me in conversation. It didn’t make me feel good because I knew they weren’t going to buy anything.

I sell mainly to women. My “target” customer is 18-55 FEMALE. I sell around 10% to men. I noticed today a lot more “skinny” women come up to my stall now … and the more overweight ones walk past. Do the fat ones see me as a threat because I have lost weight? Do the skinny ones potentially see me as not just another fat person anymore?

This isn’t good for trade when the majority of the public is overweight!! I wrote a post just a couple of days ago about how I suddenly felt more judgemental about the way I looked at people … and I spotted then how people were looking at ME differently. Today being out there in the public all day, I REALLY noticed it.

I wore my new jeans today … the first time in a scary number of years that I have been as small as a size 12… a “perfect” size 12 too apparently even though I NEED to be a size 8. Funny, I always feel the need to quantify that as a UK size 12 – I believe that is actually a USA 8. I love how US sizes are smaller … I also now feel a need to book a flight and go shopping for size 8 clothes! hehee!

It was actually a beautiful day today and the sun was shining. I had a vest style top on under my zip up sweater, and it was actually WARM and when I walked the length of the market up to the toilet block, I took my sweater OFF. Okay that may sound weird, but when you are wearing new “tight” jeans that fit you perfectly, and a slim fitting top with no wrap or cover-up … you feel VERY VERY exposed!!

I had a smile on my face (it was a nice day!!) and almost felt confident as I felt the warmth of the sun on my back and the cute guys looking at me and smiling back.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Why can’t I be happy with that? Why can’t I be happy with being technically textbook perfect weight for my height? Why is it the more positive feedback I get the more I want to lose. Ugh it works the other way too when my friends say that I look great but probably shouldn’t lose more … WHY not? What’s wrong with not wanting to be average? What’s so wrong about enjoying the fact that although I have lost weight … I’m still fat (yeah ok in my eyes, but size 12 isn’t exactly skinny either) I want to lose more. I have a goal in mind and that’s where I’m heading.

On the upside … I posted yesterday that my weight hadn’t changed in 3 days. I did NOT weigh myself at 5.30am … fuck ok that’s a lie … I weighed myself at 5.30am when I got up, and was horrified by the gain of a pound, but quickly justified I’d drank a fair amount of alcohol before going to bed and hadn’t been to the toilet since I’d woken up. I weighed myself tonight and I was the same tonight as I was in the morning before … so that should mean a LOSS of at least one little tiny pound by tomorrow morning. Phew … I worried that I had hit a wall there!

Sex never IS just sex.

I should NOT have had sex with him last night.

C’mon I’m a girl … albeit a 33 year old one, but a girl nonetheless and emotions always get in the way. Sex never can be just sex, especially when it is with a person you have known for twelve years and even more so when it is your husband you are in the process of separating from! What WAS I thinking!!

I spent the morning in a complete and utter state of confusion about everything. Part of me kept remembering how warm, safe and familiar it felt in my husband’s arms. I thought about the good times we’d had, imagined putting all of this crap behind us and moving on, but I knew it would just never work. We’ve been there and done that too many times now. It wasn’t as if the sex didn’t FEEL good … but as the day went on I also remembered how much built up animosity and frustration there has been between us and why we’d decided to separate and get divorced in the first place.

It’s been a weird day because I also saw my ex affair partner (AP) today and it was an interesting “meeting” to say the least. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in at least a few days (the last contact was by text) I’d gone over to his place briefly because he’d been redecorating and found some of my CDs I’d lent him aaaaages ago – I’d forgotten and been looking for them, so went to pick them up. I didn’t stay longer than was “polite” (i.e. a little more than 5 minutes but decidely less than 10!) and as I was sat there on his sofa making polite small talk, I was reminded about all of the reasons why it ended and why I never ever could go there again. AP is very physically attractive, but today it just all made sense and it was all so clear to me… but the details of that realisation are for another post.

The mental clarity is enormous. The weight that has been lifted is huge.

Stress bubbles

I woke up feeling VERY panicked and anxious this morning and I don’t want to go into work. I don’t have huge amounts to do, but I do have enough to be getting on with, plus I need to make a start on packing it all up ready to move it to my mother’s. I just feel like I can’t face it right now. I’ve been back on my “happy pills” (anti depressant) for about a week, so hopefully they will kick in soon.

Stress for me involves very physical and very real symptoms. The best way to describe it is like those butterflies you get in the pit of your stomach when you are apprehensive about something. I call them my stress bubbles as that is just what it feels like. I feel them inside my stomach rising up from the bottom all the way up to the top, and I physically shake as well. Emotionally it is almost like a feeling of impending doom. It isn’t good. When it happens I just want to shut the world out – I don’t want to answer the phone or the doorbell

I am just full of apprehension and anxiety about the future and how I will cope and where I will get the emotional strength from. I KNOW I will cope because I will have to and I won’t have any choice, but the longer this is dragging out and we are having to live here in this house together … it is just getting worse. We are pretty much avoiding each other as best as we can.

On the upside, we did have a discussion about furniture etc and he apologised for being bitter and said I should take what I needed as long as I didn’t strip the house bare! I said I never intended to … I already have a sofa, cupboards, shelves & storage in my office at work that I’ll take … so all I really want from the house is the double bed, the dining table & chairs, the TV from upstairs and the stuff from the kids’ rooms plus my own personal posessions! The rest is just stuff.

As long as I have everything the kids will need, plus somewhere for me to sit and somewhere to lay my head – I’ll be fine.

Okay with that positive thought in mind, I AM going to go into work and start packing it up. At least if I do a couple of hours of clearing out and boxing up, then it will boost my mood later on as I will have achieved something.

Ohhh and another positive thought is that I am 9 stone 12lbs (138) today so that’s another pound gone. The scales were waivering between 137 and 138, but I picked the top number because tomorrow it may be flat on the bottom number :-) There we go … closing on a positive thought.

Taking me for a fool?

I have definitely reached a stage of “acceptance” as far as my marriage is concerned. My husband and I are both beyond yelling, screaming and shouting at each other and are just trying to get on as human beings until “the situation” can change.

The current plan is that as soon as the tax credits award comes through (anywhere up to 5 weeks time), I will move out of the house with the children into rented accomodation as I will be entitled to Housing Benefit … and financially a better option than for my husband to move out. My husband will stay in the house and redecorate it – then it will go on the market and basically he’ll be sitting here waiting for it to sell in a nice comfortable house.

A friend of mine pointed out today that my husband will have a very cushy life while I will be struggling on a fixed income as a single mother and not able to dedicate the time to re-establishing my business because of the childcare issues. My husband will gets to stay in the “Marital Home” and he has already mentioned that he feels I should pay for half of the decorating costs … PLUS husband wants to keep pretty much all of the furniture because “the house will sell better” that way.

I don’t know … maybe I am just a little bitter about it all and part of me wants that fresh start in a completely new place … but as my friend pointed out, if my husband is expecting me to move out so he gets to carry on living here … as well as being weird over furniture … AND expect me to contribute towards decorating costs … isn’t it reasonable of me to expect him to at least make sure the house his children is living in is basically furnished!!! One thing is for sure – we can’t keep living together until it is sold. With the way the housing market is … that could take at LEAST months if not longer… and it just isn’t an option.