August 10, 2003

My husband’s journal….it just buggered the crap out of me as to what it all meant. Now, I know… maybe. It appears CC was jealous of my past….how he found the names, I’m not sure….was it from my journals I’d kept for years? Nothing explicit in those journals, only my reactions and observations and the events of my poor boring little life! Did he go through my pictures in the storage room? That wouldn’t have given him names, or did he find my letters and cards I’ve kept for a million years?….or did he thoroughly rummage though my entire “estate,” which would have filled a small closet, looking for clues to who I used to be?

What he didn’t know was all he had to do is ask me about these individuals and I’d have given him an accounting of who they were…….BUT!…..if he had asked me, I’d have know he’d violated my privacy, my past, without permission. Now I understand why he was so hateful to me early in the marriage….my past to him felt like the present. In his mind, I was committing infidelities. He accused me of lying to him about these people….not true! He didn’t refer to these “Past People” by name nor by events, so how could I give him a straight answer? Vague questions produce vague answers and I’m too stupid to read between the lines sometimes. And, like I said, all of us are entitled to our private moments, private events and are under no obligation to share them with our current lovers, spouses or whoever would be so nosey. It’s our remembrances to hold private if we wish. Keep it in the past, don’t let it affect your present or future, and it’s all yours. No harm, just remembrances.

CC sure had a lot of remembrances himself and he left them lying around the house and went so far as to take me to the places of remembrance for him. Did he want me to know about his past? Was he secretly attempting to “get even” with me because I’d had a former life? If I’d been nosey enough or so “eaten up” by his past, I could have found it in a heartbeat. Pictures in the nightstand, papers in the attic, address books, anniversary cards he and his wife shared, a poem I’m sure was about M. , furniture, coffee cups, scraps of paper in this dresser drawer….and I was too stupid, or was I just too sane, to go searching for his past. I had no idea his past was determining my present time with him.

However, he is a dog….one of his lady friends, I’ll call her “Frilly,” was quite important to him while we were dating . He went on and on about her to the point I finally asked him if they’d had a romantic relationship. Of course he denied it, but their correspondence and his calls to her stopped suddenly. I didn’t know at the time what it was about, but now I do. He talked about her incessantly, and I am sure he did it to aggravate me, or maybe he really did fantasize about Frilly and himself having a life together….who knows! I told him I didn’t want to hear another word about Frilly and he’d better get his priorities straight regarding his women, or I’d have to adjust his life accordingly, by leaving his dumb butt. He was knee-deep into my past and it messed with him so badly he had to sting me back….I was just clueless at that time. I finally told him I didn’t want to hear about this woman again and if there was something going on, it’d better come to a screeching halt! And it did….but not by his design. Frilly stopped him cold in his tracks!

I spoke with Frilly myself after CC and I split. Straightforwardly I asked what was their relationship….she laughed and said they had been just friends of sorts. He was the most miserable, lonely person she’d met in her entire life. They had dinner together on each other’s birthdays and she’d played racket ball with him and his former wife once. However, he really freaked her out by giving her a picture of himself in his little military uniform, (he’d given me one at the same time). He sent her an email telling her he had to make a decision, a choice, between her or me. He wanted to be married. She said it was weird! She stopped communicating with him. I thought it was awful, because he gave her first dibs on the marriage thing…damn! Wouldn’t it have been great for me if she’d taken him up on this offer of marriage?!!! She said she was so freaked out by his “email offer” and she laughed saying CC just wasn’t her type at all. He was short and always so rigid in his demeanor. He was so shy and so “pure as the driven snow,” but she said, she thought he was a “powder keg ready to explode.” He didn’t hear from Lace for a long, long time… it was a year or more after we were married. She seems to be a really nice lady and invited me to dinner some time….I might take her up on it!

So, while my past made CC crazy, he was still carrying a torch for Frilly and hoping she’d end his loneliness at the same time he and I were living together. Apparently, I wasn’t the “fix” for his lonely, miserable life. Hee! Hee! The Dog! He must have been pining for the former wife as well, as I found email he’d sent her and it wasn’t appropriate for a married man to write a note like that. And I was his last resort, his last remedy to kill the loneliness. I am just thoroughly put out with that! Ha! Ha! Reckon he just couldn’t trust me, because he was untrustworthy, himself. We do tend to judge others by our own characteristics, our shortcomings. He couldn’t leave my past alone even though I left it where it belonged…in the past. Those guys were forgotten…they were “outta there!” However, he dragged his past into our house, into our lives and tried to rub my nose in it……I just didn’t know it! I didn’t understand him. He couldn’t hurt me, because I didn’t know what he was doing! It appeared to me he was a moody old woman at times. What a joke! It’s no wonder CC and I can’t live together…his too many secrets, his wanting for the past, his not moving forward and living a good life…it’s too bad. If he’d let go, accepted me, the person I am now, we may have had a chance. But he hated my past life, saw it as a present infidelity, and he couldn’t live with that. He hated who I am. That’s just sad!

It has taken seven years to figure this person out to a small degree…I’m sure there will be other revelations as time passes. I’m so very glad I am moving on and my life is good.