When your insides are screaming

There are some upsides and some downsides to your ex-husband's secret girlfriend being a pseudo public figure. Upside: You found out your ex-husband HAS a girlfriend AND that she lives in the house you own together. Upside: You learn a lot about your now very secretive and uncommunicative ex-husband's financial choices, including said girlfriend living rent-free in that home, feeling very lucky that her "partner" is financially established (even though he's really not because he's borrowing money and paying the mortgage late) so that she has a free house to live in, the constant traveling that costs money, and that she is an unemployed stay-at-home...runner? that he apparently now supports (while telling me he cannot meet his financial obligations to his children). 

There are some downsides too though, like Downside: learning your ex-husband moved his girlfriend into your co-owned home 7 months before you found out on Instagram. Downside: Getting to watch your ex-husband replay the beginning of your relationship over again with someone new, handing them your entire former life and fawning all over his new love like he did when you were new. The repeating patterns are fascinating and nauseating. I see how this ends and, no doubt, I will be able to watch it end. Downside: Having to explain to your kids how their dad travels almost every weekend, but probably won't make it for a visit before Thanksgiving, despite what he says. 

And the most recent downside, listening to your ex-husband's cat's-out-of-the-bag girlfriend talk and post about selling your house, a house you never wanted to leave but were given no choice when you told your ex you couldn't do this anymore, asked him to find someplace to stay so you didn't have to move your struggling kids AGAIN, and he just said "I'm not doing that." Listening to her talk about sanding and staining my deck, painting my walls, doing projects in my home that I love makes my insides scream. She's not in possession of a 50 year old house that "they're" trying to sell. She has no right and yet, he has given her everything that was mine in practice anyway.  

This is why I insisted he sell the house. I let him have it until the kids graduated so they had some place left there with him. But he fucked that up good and they don't want to visit him (because she's there and he takes no accountability for the betrayal they feel over this secret relationship that has taken over his life and the part of it that was still theirs), so he doesn't get to keep that big house for his shiny new life that has nothing to do with his kids anymore. 

I would love to understand what she thinks she knows about the things she speaks of so casually. I wonder what she thinks the circumstances are surrounding her "partner's" past and who is he is as a human being to everyone before her. I wonder what she thinks she knows about how he has virtually disappeared from the lives of his children and his former families. I wonder what she thinks she knows about why he is selling that house. I wonder if she knows that every piece of furniture in that house, aside from his office, was poured over, picked out, and purchased by me...That my children slept in the bed she now shares with their dad. That his daughter aches every day that he ignored this family so completely that we broke but is proving he always had the capacity to love and just didn't bother with us in the end. That his son has asked me to stop asking how he's feeling about things with his dad because, for him, he isn't worth talking about anymore. 

Downside: I won't get answers to my questions because despite the commentary about my house, that only comes up because it gets in the way of the travel every weekend, running above all else, lifestyle they live. Nobody gets answers to the hard questions about how my kids are doing, whether they'll get through this with a dad or not, how long it will hurt, and how can I possibly protect them from more pain. Upside: Eventually I'm sure I'll hear where he decides to move them because he sure as hell doesn't tell me anything when he's ignoring my texts for weeks at a time. I'm gonna guess that he's considering his kids' feelings and needs as much as he did when he had a girlfriend living in their house for 7 months before mentioning it. 

I don't know how to make my insides stop screaming. So I write. 

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