Many times in life we stumble and fall. It is not that easy to get up again and start over. In my own life, I have started over too many times to count. Each time was difficult and a task I swore I would never endure again. One time in particular the pain was excruciating. I remember thinking I was flawed. I was someone nobody wanted or loved, except my immediate family. Why did I let another person make me feel this way? I thought and thought about why and how I came to this point in my life. I felt so bad and depressed and the person in question kept trying to give me Valium. I took it, but it did not take the pain away. My thought is that he was thinking I would just sleep my way through this period and forget what he did. Instead I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. Now maybe back in those days, the psychiatrists didn't freely prescribe drugs to ease your pain. They helped you by talking to you and listening to you. He did indeed, help me. I only went a few times. Then the person causing my pain made an appointment with MY psychiatrist, because he did not like what the doctor was telling me to do.
The truth is that I was completely controlled by a man I trusted and was married to. He not only controlled me, but many other people too. Even his clients, since he was an accountant and handled their finances. The night he told me he wanted a divorce, his lawyer came to our home and they coerced me into signing a separation agreement. The next day he moved out and he made me go to a movie with our son while he did so. Yes, he did make me do this!
I still was doing what he told me to do. Yes, he still had control of me. Through out our marriage I was a stay at home wife and mother. The only time I worked was during his busy tax season when I worked as the receptionist in his office, so his secretary could assist him in doing the tax returns. It was always a very busy season for him as he was very successful. He paid me for it and that was the only time I worked during our marriage.
One important thing he stressed to me, as did his lawyer too, that if I went to my own lawyer about this, I would lose the generous alimony he had stipulated in the separation agreement. There was no provisions at all for our son who was eighteen and had just graduated from high school that year. He was developmentally disabled and not really eighteen mentally. No support at all in his interest. I think if I had gone to my own lawyer, he may have alerted me to this fact. I found out later that no matter what, the separation agreement after we signed it, would never have been void just because I went to a lawyer. Oh how naive I was back then! Never let anyone, husband, wife, child, siblings or anyone at all take control of your life! It is just too hard to gain it back and figure out what to do next. So our divorce was handled by the same lawyer, who was in my husband's pocket of course. Stupid Kathy!
When he left, I did not even know what bills we paid or how much. I had no claim on his business which made a lot of money. Our bank accounts were separate and I just wrote checks and would tell him how much to deposit in my account. Every now and then he'd take all my credit card bills and pay them off in full. Hey, we lived the good life. Vacations, several a year. Nice cars. I had it all or so I thought. A beautiful house in an area of really nice homes. All cut off almost immediately. Though yes, I did get a very generous amount of alimony. He would eventually keep paying it for the two years of the agreement, even after I remarried. He pushed me into my second marriage to get me out of his hair and not feel so guilty about his leaving me for a topless dancer. He had no regrets apparently as the week-end he left me, him and his new girlfriend (who I might add was a pretty good friend of mine as well as his) went on a vacation to Mexico. I was heartbroken.
What I learned in this episode of my life is to never give up your life to someone else. Though in my second brief marriage to a bad alcoholic, I did not do so. He was good to me even though drunk through out the whole two years of marriage. I just could not tolerate that lifestyle. I did eventually give up my control again.
Copyright © 2018 Kathleen G. Lupole
All Photographs Copyright © 2018 Kathleen G.
Lupole
