I've spent all day cooped up in my home office since I've been fighting with my wife all day. When I'm done here, I'm going to go play in the big room with the dirty floor and overhead light that only works 12-16 hours per day (depending on geographic location) and remind myself why it's nice to live in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Today I FedEx'ed the paperwork back to a new part time job that will finally push us over the financial edge back into the black. I've been in the red for so long now I'm amazed we managed even to pay rent. I cannot adequately express the surprise I experience in my mind that we got approved for, and succeeded in actually obtaining, two mortgages to purchase this house.
Still, with this, the hardest hurdle, out of the way, I now have to turn (eventually) to more "internal" matters. Like my wife.
My shoulder is still sore from the repeated poundings it took from her yesterday. It's during arguments with this woman that I truly loathe being male in the United States. She is permitted to hit me just about as much as she wants, but if I even put a scratch on her in response, the police will nearly automatically believe her when she brews up the tale of how I slapped her then she beat the living shit out of me in response to protect herself.
Last night, she interrupted me while I was working, as usual, and I expressed a more than usual level of frustration at this. You try juggling a dozen source files, a web browser, and a very hands-on boss who's talking to you on ICQ all at the same time, and try not to lose your train of thought tracking down a nasty bug that's been there for months while someone walks up to you in the physical realm and starts talking to you.
Instead of, oh, apologizing for screwing up my work, she yelled at me for saying anything about it. She then twisted reality (she's great at this) in her mind to change it so that I prompted her to interrupt me; she didn't start talking out of the blue.
When I decided to just leave the living room to head to the office upstairs to work in peace, she followed me.
First she tried to physically stop me from going up the stairs. This is always funny to witness, mostly because I'm stronger than she and I weigh more. Oh, and she only pulled my by the shirt. I'm officially impressed by this cotton shirt for the weight it held yesterday as I just dragged her upstairs with me just by walking.
Frustrated that she couldn't prevent me from going upstairs, she pushed her way into my office before I could close and lock the door (this wouldn't have stopped her; it's a hollow core door, and she has previous punched holes through these -- I lost $70 of my deposit from my last apartment because of her demonstrating this ability; also, the door lock is one of those "stick a push pin through to force the lock open" types anyway, but she'd have just beaten the door down). I think I must have said "get out" and "go away" and "leave me alone" and "I need to work, stop bothering me" about fifty times each before I finally gave up and just stopped acknowledging her at all.
I had resumed working the moment I got into the room and realized I couldn't get rid of her by any means that wouldn't put me in jail. She left over two hours later.
During that two hour period, she talked non-stop. I honestly believe in her mind I was answering her, because she held a perfectly insane conversation with nobody for two hours. She would periodically punch my shoulder, try to swing me around forcibly in my chair, switch off my computer's monitor to stall or provoke me, poke me in various spots, kick me, and eventually throw things at me. Oh, she sat on my desk too, nearly collapsing it under the weight (it's not meant to hold more than about a hundred pounds). Then she threatened to break my notebook if I didn't answer her.
I never said a word after telling her to leave in the first few minutes of her two hour intrusion.
She said more hateful things to and about me in those two hours than I've ever heard before, and this time it's too much. She revealed how truly selfish she is, and how little anything else in the world apart from her matters. She complained about how I hadn't done certain things around the house (not chores, but things she could do herself but doesn't want to). She complained about how if I were to buy another computer sometime for our gaming needs, I'd do "something stupid" like "putting Linux on it" ... "whoopty shit."
She spent the last hour and a half of the intrustion constructing (in her mind) an absolutely perfect picture of how I am the source of all her misery and the cause of all her problems. She even rationalized her behavior -- part of her rant was that I'd encouraged her to talk to me then gotten angry when she did, then got angrier still when she left me alone (does your brain hurt yet?); yet she said things like "If you don't want me talking to you, you shouldn't talk to me first. Are you stupid? Don't you understand that, you fucking moron? Of course, right now it doesn't count anymore, because I'm mad, and you're stupid. I'm not going away no matter how much you ignore me." It was hard not to laugh at that part. In her mind, absolutely none of her lot is her doing, whatsoever. I am now, completely and irrefutably, 100% in the wrong in her mind. That will never change. I know it never will. I know better now than to ever try to fix it.
When the divorce decree is issued in the coming months, I no longer wonder how she'll react. I now know what she'll think. She'll believe I've convinced the whole wide world to go along with me in my neverending mission to punish her. She'll honestly believe the judge, her attorney, mine, everybody, is just out to get her. She will believe I'm divorcing her not to protect myself from her abusive nature, but just to get even with her for something she's done that I "just won't tell her about" because I'm "too stupid to understand how to communicate."
Not that any of them read Everything2, but I still owe my friends online and off many thanks for the many years of listening to me rattle and whine and moan about this woman without ever doing anything about it. They've always been there to listen to me, offer help they knew I wouldn't accept, and advice they knew I wouldn't take. I appreciate that more than they can ever know.
The hardest part of all this is that I will probably still miss her. If I could find the part of me that loves her despite this immense, unstoppable eruption of insanity, hatred, rage, and anger she constantly hits me with, I would kill it. That part of me is as bad for me as she is.
Sadly, even if a divorce granted me 100% of my assets and debts, and awarded her nothing (this seems unlikely; we've been married since 1998, and although she's completely and documentably insane and has only ever earned $3,000 in her entire lifetime, I'm sure our fucked up court system will claim I will still be responsible for caring for her even if I can legally get away from her in the marriage department), I'm still just as fucked financially. At least the new job will help me dig out of that hole. Without her around to keep burying us deeper and deeper in debt, I can probably get out of debt entirely within a few years.
If a divorce actually ends up costing me anything apart from the attorney's fees and court costs, it won't be worth it. At least I get sex now sometimes (although, I doubt I'll be getting that anymore either).
Shrug. Where are some cyanide pills and some privacy when I need them?