Decisions, the end of school and another new job
After the birth of my second son, things remained largely the same. He loved pretending he was ‘Dad’ but any kind of noise made him angry. Any kind of mess made him irritated. Any kind of need from anyone, big or small, was a terrible inconvenience. I did my best to shield the kids from his outbursts, knowing when to take them out to drive around or walk the mall or visit my parents. Working extra hard to keep things cleaned up and quiet…it was exhausting.
Classes were coming to a close for me, all I had left to do was a 12 week unpaid internship! Man, to have finished something! I was excited! I came home with the new baby, I’d been taking him to classes with me rather than paying daycare, it was only a few hours a day, excited to tell him we’d toured some agencies and I needed to call them to set up an internship. He asked “how long?” I said “12 weeks”. He said “NO WAY! THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN AFFORD TO HAVE YOU NOT WORKING!” I responded with a reasonable “but, if I dont do this, I wont graduate” he said that was too bad, but I needed to find a job. Right now.
I started looking for a job and found an office job about 45 mniutes away. I was happy with it. But he was constantly trying to get me to negotiate for more money.
In March of 2001, 3 weeks before his scheduled vascectomy, I found out I was pregnant again. I was devestated. Things were so bad, I was so alone. I was raising my two kids on my own as it was, he didnt love me, or them. He seemed to hate all of us…but the idea of losing us wasnt an option. He needed us to complete his look: married, kids, career…I tried to talk to him about it. Can we afford another baby? daycare for two kids was already killing us. Can you help out more? Im doing the majority of work on my own. Do you want another baby? You seem to be bothered by the kids we have most of the time. What do we do? He wouldnt even say if he wanted another child or not. He REFUSED to speak to me. His standard response was “this isnt my decision to make”. I cornered him at least 6 times and every time the conversation would steer to us taking a vacation.
I made up my mind. I wasnt bringing another child into this mess. He couldn’t even join me in the decision making process, why did I think having another baby would be any different than the other two? Another child to raise on my own. I made an appointment at a clinic. He reluctantly went with me, when my name was called he refused to come in wiht me saying “I’m just here to drive you home”.
That was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and not something I shouldn’t have had to do on my own.
After the divorce papers were filed he told me that was the worst decsion I’d ever made. He DID want another child, I was wrong and terrible for making that choice without even talking to him about it.
Looking Forward 