image source: Flaming Text

Monday, July 14, 2014

Yes, All My Kids Belong to Him!


image source: By David Castillo Dominici, published on 08 February 2012
Stock Photo - image ID: 10072071

I'm going to start this post out with an explanation of who I am.  Whether it intimidates you or makes you think less of me for whatever reason, I've spent most of my life as what most people would refer to as a "goody two shoes."  I've let others make most of my decisions in life and I've worked hard to please others.  Over the last year, I've decided that I am going to live my life the way I want to and I'm no longer listening to what other people want me to be.  This in no way means I've gone wild unless you consider being more independent and riding my bike bicycle  a little more to be wild.  I still lead a pretty innocent life.  I live in my house with my four kids and my husband visiting for some of the week.

I have to say that it really hurt yesterday, upon telling a relative about K and I living separately, when a relative asked me if all of my kids were K's kids.  Really???  I know some people have children before they are married and that's fine.  Some even go so far as to have children with one person while they are married to another. But this is not me.  Honestly?  I'm not sure I'd know what to do with another man if there was one!  Yes, I'm that inexperienced and innocent.  I still am. Living under a separate roof does not make me any less of a person.

I think I could get a divorce and people might be supportive.  They would be especially supportive if I could say there was another woman.  There may be a different group of people who would be supportive if I could claim I was beaten and sported bruises around everywhere.  Does it matter to these people that our lifestyles are not compatible to the point where my sanity was hanging by a thread for years?  No one worked harder than I did to adapt to a lifestyle that was never mentioned to me before marriage. We met in college where I already had lots of close friends.  I had no idea that marriage to him was going to mean living in the middle of nowhere in a place where people were down right hateful and judgmental of women.  In a place where people didn't bother to get to know me because I was an "outsider".  I had no idea, it meant having to give up my favorite activities or that my kids would either be home schooled or sent to a school system  that was built as favors to the adults rather than geared towards education for kids.

If you'd judged me or told me I'm going to Hell for living apart from my husband, then I'm going to tell you something about yourself.  I'm not going to change your mind.  It's made up. Lucky for me, YOU don't get to make the decision.  It seems to me that most of you seem to believe that a woman isn't her own person with her own interests.  It seems that you think the woman should give up every part of herself so that her husband can be happy.  Some of you believe that the woman should be at home regardless of what the woman needs for herself rather than working.  If a woman stands up for herself and her needs, she is disrespecting her husband.  If she reaches out for help, she is running his name down.  You believe that when a woman gets married, she signed up for that life even if it is unexpected.  You  believe that the woman should keep quiet and express only quietly her displeasure with this life to her husband. You don't care if the husband listens.   You believe that it's the woman's job if she chooses to work full time and especially if her basic needs aren't being met by his income, to also take full responsibility of the children without any help.  What if the stress of this life makes her sick?  It's no concern to you. SHE chose that life.

After 13 years of living without emotional support and having little human interaction, I had the courage to move.  I moved to a place where I found a way to participate in my sport again.  I moved to a place where my kids have opportunities and where I no longer feel oppressed.  I chose to keep things peaceful within our family and the courts out.  I chose to allow the kids father to see them when he wants to rather than when there is a court order.  I chose to give our marriage a chance in separate spaces where we each feel freed from the way the other needs to live.  If K asked for a divorce because he didn't like this lifestyle, I'd gladly grant it, especially if it meant I had to go back and live where I moved from.

Sometimes I tell people here about the location where I used to live. About the judgement and being oppressed.  Their eyes open wide in disbelief that people still believe those things.  Most of them question how attitudes like that could still exist.  I don't know what to tell them except that I've seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears.

So to answer the question, K is the father to all four of our kids.  To even ask that question hurts me deeply.  Every time someone tells me that they think I'm going to hell for saving myself from misery, it also hurts.  So just don't do it.



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