People thought we had a cat.

We didn't have a cat. I don't like cats. 

I used to scratch him.

Not in the sexy "I want you so badly; please be with me now" sort of way; I probably wouldn't write about that sort of scratching except perhaps in code. 

I hated it when he touched me. It was violating. He would do it when he thought I wasn't paying attention, which happened often because I was busy with a baby, work, and everything that goes with running a household.

And so I would scratch him when he tried to grab me. Long scratches that streaked down his arm, carved from elbow to wrist as he jerked his hand away, dragging his arm along my outstretched nails. 

He didn't like it; sometimes I tore ragged strips of skin from his arm. He couldn't wear short-sleeved shirts because the scratches would show and people would ask about our cat. 

That was more than ten years ago. 

Ancient history

Ex is my high-school boyfriend, the one I'd never allowed myself to break up with. 

We were best friends; I'd read many magazine articles about how you should marry your best friend. I wasn't old enough to understand what that meant, and I took it at face value. 

What can I say? I was a teenager.

Getting married was also the obvious solution to the problem we'd created by sleeping together. 

I wasn't pregnant. Just religious.

Time passed. We were still best friends. I had a baby. 

Funny thing about that. I got pregnant on the Pill. I went to the doctor for a routine checkup, and she asked what I did for birth control. I said that I wasn't having sex. She scoffed and prescribed the Pill over my concerns that the drugs that treat my chronic illness would interfere with it. (I'd gone off it a few years earlier because of that concern.) 

A month later, I was pregnant, but I didn't catch on until I was three months along because you can't get pregnant on the Pill, right? 

Our son is awesome. 

I was serious about not having sex. I never liked it; it felt violating, somehow. I was pretty sure this was because all of the anti-premarital-sex stuff I'd read as a teenager. That stuff doesn't go away; it stays for years, wrecking adult relationships and contributing to bad life choices like the ones I made in good faith.

Time passed. We were still best friends. But I started to think about leaving him. I was unhappy and it was becoming clear that we had issues that couldn't be resolved.

Eventually I got up the nerve to leave him. He begged me to stay; I refused. He begged me to go to counselling; I agreed but told the counsellor that I wanted help with the logistics of the separation, not repairing the marriage. Ex told her he wanted to repair the marriage. The two of them decided to work on the issue that was bothering me the most at the time, and eventually announced that it was all fixed. I was not sure it was fixable, but what sort of person leaves a marriage when her partner is willing to fix the problems? Certainly not a person who has spent years reading about how divorce is a great evil.

Time passed. We were still best friends. I settled into acceptance. We were essentially roommates, and it was working well. We did not fight. I would get mad at him, but we did not fight. We lived together well: he had his life and I had mine. I did the cooking and he did the banking. I stopped caring about the issue that had bothered me so much. And I never told anyone, because there was no point and it would just create drama. 

This all worked perfectly until the day it didn't. 

Complicated is very difficult. I liked simple.

A marriage that's treading water is, above all else, simple.

It's not good, but it's not bad, either. It's hard to take your foot off "not bad" when there are no guarantees you'll actually get to "good". And it took me a very long time to dare to think I would get there.

I used to think I felt guilty. But I didn't feel guilty: it was a blend of sadness and regret for hurting him and apprehensiveness about how certain other people would react.

And even that regret eventually evaporated, replaced with shock at my situation and a desperation to do whatever was necessary to cut my losses.

I was angry the day I said I wanted separate bank accounts

Really angry.

I was looking for him, and he was coy about his location. This, I thought, was odd; he often invited me to the bars where he was drinking with his friends, who I called "the drunk chicks", sometimes with the adjective "hot" when I was feeling friendly.

I've dropped "hot" in the past few months; it is one of those unnecessary words an editor should take out.

So I wandered around the downtown area, popping into his favourite bars to look for him. 

I found him by finding the car. It was outside a restaurant, one of the most expensive in town, and the one with the broadest wine selection as far as I can determine. Not that I spend much time determining such things. 

Anyway, I found him inside, having dinner with one of the drunk chicks. As my father says, Ex always orders the appetizer. 

I plunked myself down at their table and waved the server away. No, I didn't need dinner. Or a drink. Or dessert. 

It was an uncomfortable meal all around after I arrived. I have a way of ruining a party. At the end of the meal, he paid the entire bill. And I was furious. 

I felt that we had very little money, certainly not enough to spend the way he was spending it. I asked for and got separate bank accounts. I asked for and got a list of the household expenses. I set up autotransfers to pay my share. I didn't think about it much; my main concern was that MY money not be spent on premium gin. 

About a month later, I got a banking app for my phone. I immediately noticed two things: our lines of credit, which we'd paid off a year earlier, seemed to be showing up as awfully odd limits when I thought the limits were round numbers; and I somehow had $1500 in my account left over after the household bills were paid. 

And that was the first sign that something was wrong. 

I woke up and all was quiet

I do not recommend this for your first Christmas after getting separated. 

"I AM A PRIVATE PERSON!" (shouted, of course)

This has been my mantra in the last few weeks. I have been frustrated.

I am not sure why it is so easy to leap from "I don't know much about you" to "I will make negative assumptions about you". And for the life of me, I don't know why it is necessary to know all of the gory details of somone's life to be supportive of that person. 

Or not even supportive. Leave it at "not actively hostile" and I'd be content. When I don't know someone, I stay out of their business except to be as kind as I can be under the circumstances. I don't call them and say I'll never support them. And I don't demand to know why they don't tell me their secrets. 

Not that I am bitter.

Shouting about being a private person has helped, a bit. For years, my mother has gotten very upset from time to time and demanded to know why I was shutting her out. I wasn't shutting her out; I just wasn't telling her the same things I wasn't telling other people. I can't tell if those demands have stopped. I really just know that I can't handle any more requests for my personal information. 

I am an extrovert; I am very chatty. About the people I am talking to. And about things that don't really matter. Rarely about myself, and almost never about things that are very personal.

I suppose the exception is that I like codes. Plain sight is the only place to hide. 

Someone told me last night that the news took her by surprise because I am always so cheerful. I suppose the typical cliche is of a person who mopes around town sobbing openly in the presence of strangers, pouring her heart out to anyone who will listen. Wait. That's not the typical cliche at all. 

Not that I am bitter. 

I have thought many times about whether this process would have been easier if I had been more open in years past. I don't think it would have been. Sure, there would have been a measure of understanding this summer when I finally told my family I was leaving him, but before that happened I would have endured years of questions about how things were and why I was staying. It would have come up at every family gathering. It would have been discussed behind my back. People would have tried to counsel away problems that were unfixable. And when I finally told them it was over, I would have had to explain what was suddenly different, and no explanation would have been satisfactory. Especially not the truth. 

The word "apology" has a modern meaning, you know.

In 2007, I made up my mind to leave.

This was an agonising process filled with a lot of self-doubt. But through all of the doubt, I was pretty sure it was the right decision and that it would end well. 

He was not. But that is a story for a different post.

One day, I was talking to my mother on IM. This was far preferable to talking on the phone, which I always hated. But that day, I said something to her about how I was leaving him. And that she wouldn't really notice a difference: we didn't hate each other and would probably still travel together, etc., etc., etc.

The phone rang. 

I don't remember the details of the conversation; they were too terrible to retain in my memory. All I really know is that when I hung up the phone, I believed that leaving him was the worst thing I could do. Nobody would ever love me. Our son's life would be ruined. There would be no benefits, only misery for the rest of my life.

At the time I most needed her support, she played on my worst fears and greatest insecurities. And I did what she wanted me to do. I stayed. 

I've long since forgiven her.

Well, maybe "forgiven" is the wrong word. I've come to terms with what she did.

I stayed. I believed nobody would ever love me. 

Today I yelled at her. She was explaining that she did the right thing that day, that her role was to support my marriage and I'd hidden or lied about what was really happening. She has explained this several times in the last few months. I have yelled every time. This upsets her; she wants to be sure that I know she loves me and was only trying to do what she thought was best. She is desperate to discuss it. I see no real point and would like to move on. 

I can put up with a lot. I can put up with the knowledge that she convinced me to stay. But I can't put up with her pretending with the benefit of hindsight that she did the right thing. And I am infuriated that anyone in my family would think I would just cast my marriage casually aside.

This was a theme this summer from several of my family members: that I was making a huge mistake on a whim, that nobody would ever love me, that I would see the light and be unable to reverse my actions. And that nobody will drive me to the hospital when I die. 

I am spending Christmas without the family. I'm relieved. I can't deal with them.

I can forgive them for what they did in the past. But only if they stop making me re-live it and claiming that they'd do the same thing again if given the chance.