Fear - and a little loathing.

I have been a bit off for the past couple of weeks. I haven't felt good - and I am not sleeping soundly. You know all those bodily aches you get when you carry too much on your shoulders - I know better, but I have those now. It is time to fess up. A part of me is still afraid - and I hate that. Fear is the abscence of faith - and I don't know how much more faithful God could be to us - short of striking Dan the Ogre down with a stray lightening bolt. I want to be stronger than that - I want to just get over it - but it lurks in the back of my mind - the feeling that I should continue to watch my back. And that feeling invades my thoughts in that place where life stops and dreams begin.

I posted this on the "other" site when we got back from Indiana - and I am reposting it as much for myself as for you all. If you are one of my kids - stop reading now


--seriously - and if you read it anyway -

I will put mushy comments all over your MySpace -

just sayin' .


Fear...
Over the weekend I ran into Kim. Kim who started dating Dan the Ogre before I was even notified that I was getting divorced. Kim whose mother called me a tramp when I tried to retrieve my van. Kim who dismissed our friendship and ignored my call to warn her - and broke the girl code by calling him back to tell him we were in the house. Kim who called the police on my kids who were trying to get their things from their home after the Ogre changed all the locks.
Kim - who went to the Women's Shelter and reported the very real threat that Dan the Ogre wanted to kill us - and probably saved our lives. We were walking through W*lm*rt and we passed her. I was filled with all those negative feelings - she made our lives hell for three months because she thoroughly believed the Ogre was right in dealings - and that his occasional comments of "I have to think of a way to kill my wife without getting caught" were just angry divorce ramblings. I pointed her out to my husband and said something uncomplimentary.

Then she came back around, after registering that it was me - and grabbed me in this big bear hug. She said she was so glad to see me alive. Geez - what thing.

She related bits and peices of the story that I didn't know already. But the most haunting thing was the last purchase the Ogre made, right before we moved away. The Ogre had been advised by his lawyer to move away since he couldn't be trusted to leave me alone in spite of asking for the no contact order. He had been living at a house Kim owned and she came by to pick up some things. He told her that he had gotten in late because he had bought a backhoe and lime to use at his house.

yea - that scared the shit out of me too.

You don't buy lime and a backhoe unless you have a lot of things to bury- like a family of four.

And when you are a money-pinching, cheating, adultering, tax-evading fool - you don't spend that kind of money unless you have determined that burying your wife is cheaper than divorcing her.

Kim said that during that same week, her son was working for Dan, he located the shotgun, the one I supposedly stole, up in the attic and that Dan was delighted to have found it. This was two days before he bought the backhoe. These two incidents happened the same week as the papers were finalized - and when she confronted him about it, the night before the final signing, he pushed her, demanded that she leave (it was her house) and she called the police. The next day she went to the women's shelter and that is how I ended up here - a stranger far from home and the people and places I have loved since I was little.

People don't think it can happen to them - they ignore the signs, things that don't add up, words just get uglier and uglier and then one day you are faced with the spectre of the demon before you - who used to be the man you loved. I couldn't sleep well on Saturday night, though usually the lake house brings me a solice I cannot explain - a part of me still wondered if she was full of shit and might have been in league with him. Every sound seemed to be some nefarious sign that he was just outside the window, lurking, waiting. But he never showed up and we came home safe, so maybe, just maybe, she finally understood the warnings were real.