Truth

I guess I’m back. I will be honest – I am completely unmotivated. I have been completely unmotivated to do anything. It is not like I am sitting at home depressed. I just have no motivation. If I plan to do something, then I look forward to it and will do it with everything I have. But lately, I don’t look forward to much and I don’t plan much.

I am aggravated easily.

Something bad happened a couple days ago. Not bad like Chris using again. But bad, like I got the truth when I don’t really know if I wanted it. I do that a lot. I ask question of him: “Where did you do it? Did you do it in my car? Did you smoke with other girls? Did you do it everyday? How many times a day? Did you do it on our wedding day?” Etc., etc., etc. The list can go on.

With my new job, I find myself driving around the city to visits and wondering if he did it here, or there. If he was in this dangerous place or that one. And so my curiosity finally got the best of me. We went on walk the other day and I asked him. I asked him everything I could think of. The questions come up a lot. They don’t ever stop. I could simply be singing away in my car, minding my own business, and BAM. A question. Something I need to know.

So on this particular day, I got a bunch of things answered. I found out where he did it – the specific streets. Streets I travel on. I found out that he lied, again. Ever since the truth came out, and I say that because I will not say “ever since he came clean” because he didn’t. He did not come clean with me. He did not willingly say to me that he was a crackhead. No, he was arrested. He was caught and that is how it came out.

So I will say again, ever since the truth came out, I lived with that. I lived with what I knew. I had my own image of what he did on a daily, nightly, weekly basis. But after all my questions poured out of me like vomit, I found out that not only was he doing crack on those days, he was also going to the casino two or three times a week with our money. OUR money. Apparently it wasn’t enough that he was buying crack to shove into his lungs, he also needed to waste our money at a fucking casino.

After he came out, and he had the one friend I approved of left over, they wanted to go to the casino. I figured that this was a relatively safe, fun, un-drug-using activity. I’m not a moron though. I know it’s addicting behavior and he has an addictive personality. But I didn’t want to restrict him on everything. And this kid was decent.

So off he went to be an addict. Off he went to gamble away our money. So when he told me that he used to go to the casino all the time when he was doing drugs, I cannot even tell you how that made me feel.

The fact that here I was, thinking I was being nice, thinking I was letting him rarely, sometimes go to the casino, when all along he had been going dozens of times, stealing my money, and enjoying himself made me sick. It made me so mad, infuriated. I could not even comprehend the anger I felt. If I had known, if I had had ONE little inkling, I never in a million years would have let him go to the casino when he had been going there all along.

I felt horrified. I felt betrayed. And what I can name now – taken advantage of. My kindness after EVERYTHING he had put me, us, our marriage through, and he had been doing it all along, was undeserved. I would have GLADLY taken away that privilege if I had known that that is another place all of our money went to. Just writing about it now makes me so unbelievably mad. Does it make sense? Does anyone else understand what I am saying?

The simple fact that I thought I was being nice. I thought I was being NICE. And he was just taking more of our money to a place I never knew he went to THREE TIMES a week. I would have banned that place from him. It hurts.

Do I really want to know all these little truths that may mean nothing to him but sting me down to my bone? Do I really want them to keep coming out over the years? Or is ignorance bliss.

Bad news

Well I didn't come back to anything good that's for sure. I come home to find out my computer crashed. A huge monstrous crash, and nothing is working to fix it, and like a typical moron, I didn't save anything to a disk. I have thousands upon thousands of things written in that computer that could be gone forever. I have pictures on there and just ugh. So much stuff. I won't speak too soon because my dad is taking it to his computer guy today, but in the meanwhile, I am just thinking of how I am going to have to pay to fix it, if it's fixable, and that leads me to my second bad thing.

I just checked out our money situation. Lately we have been doing so good - saving so much money and paying all of our bills on time and being good adults. But I see that our bank account has dwindled down to practically nothing. And that is mainly because we missed a week of work when we went to Florida. I know I should just calm down and take it as it comes. I mean, Chris gets paid tomorrow and so do I and we will be right back up to where we should be, but in the meantime, I wanted to get my hair cut for my new job. We need groceries. I think we have an automatic bill payment tomorrow and what if we haven't deposited our checks yet!?

I need to take a deep breath. This is how we lived the entire first half of our marriage yet. Paycheck to paycheck, wracking up the credit card bills. If worse comes to worst, we will simply have to use those credit cards again. After all, it's only one day. Tomorrow is when we get paid. We'll be okay after tomorrow. I still don't know how often I get paid at my new job though, and I don't know if there is a waiting period for new employees and I don't know if we'll be able to make it until I get paid there and on and on and on. I want to go get my hair cut just so I can feel good about myself. But then I think I might regret spending money. We will get through this.

Tomorrow we get paid. And if they try to process a payment from our account, doesn't it take a bit to process anyways? So that gives us time? Ugh. I'm freaking out. I hate this. I need to settle down. It's only till tomorrow.

Budgeting

We sat down after I got off work last night and discussed our finances. We layed out a budget, which has been too long in coming. Then he called credit card companies to see what he could do about setting up a payment plan. It was a huge blessing - combined, two credit card companies dropped over $1500 for us. Not like we are special, but they dropped the late payments and overcharges and interest. I feel like we are not so deep in debt now.

We are still deep, but now it is beyond reasonable. We can pay things off a lot quicker than before. I feel so much better. It was also really nice to sit down and discuss things and handle things like adults. To figure out how much we are taking in and how much we can put out.

The next step is rebuilding our credit and I think that will be much easier than this. We do not plan on using our credit cards unless for emergencies, and now I can't wait to buy a house. My friend's sister has her realtor's license so I was able to look at houses we could afford. It is so exciting even though it is so far away. I can't wait to build that dream - to have our own house, and have our animals there, and get a puppy.

It is so exciting. Even though I do need a new car. Either way, I am so satisfied and happy that we finally got what was looming over my head settled. Now we just have to keep track of when bills are due and how much of it is due.

One baby step though - a giant leap for mankind.

Money Problems

The world without the internet is a sad thing, isn't it? I am at my parents house, on my sister's computer, wishing I could do this at home, on my own computer.

We had a fight this morning. Over something that should not have blown up so huge. I'm sure the neighbors think we are sorrily married.

He went to the casino on Friday. With my permission, not blessings. He told me he was only taking out $30, perhaps $40. However, I asked today what he took out and we were coming back from a bike ride, such good athletes, and he was silent. I knew what that meant. That he knew I'd be mad. He told me he took out $80. He needed gas, he needed money for gambling.

I was upset. I didn't quite blow up, but I said he didn't say $80. He said he told me he was taking fifty out for the casino and twenty for gas. Shocker. I never heard such a thing.

It's not like I think he's buying crack with it, but it is the principal. Can you not tell the truth for one second in your life? Stop giving excuses. You were wrong. It is not your money to throw away. We need to save, we need to pay our bills, we need to eat.

It escalated miserably. I slammed the house door as hard as possible and he rammed my mom's bike across the grass until it hurtled to the ground. The anger went up and he called me names and said fuck you, and I told him I wanted a divorce and I meant it.

It went on for at least twenty minutes, till I managed to get in the shower. I got a new tattoo the night before, and did my best to keep it from getting pounded as I leaned against the tile, crying incessantly. It was a loud crying, one of those where you can't keep the noises that come with it inside.

All because he took out too much money.