Excusing my language, but love is a really f**ked up and useless emotion. I have a lot on my chest that has been festering away for a while, so now I figure what the hell, I'll get it off my chest and share it with the big wide impersonal world.
Nearly one year ago I married a man because I loved him. There were things that he said that I didn't believe, that didn't add up, but because I loved him I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and trusted him. Silly, stupid me. This is the same man that, on the night before our wedding, "postponed" it. That should have been the final straw. But nooooo, because of "love", I gave him yet another chance.
He ran out of chances in July this year.
Because of him my brother lost nearly everything. Because of him my brother quit his safe, solid, very well-paying job, on the promise from this man of employment, wage, and a home. This man promised that these things would begin at the start of January. By July none had appeared. No home, no job, no money. My brother had to sell his house to stop it being sold by the bank. His credit history is shot to shit. I nearly bankrupted myself to try and keep him afloat.
If that was not bad enough, there's the stuff this man did to me. I bought leave, took two months off work at the end of last year to go on a honeymoon, part of which would be meeting his family in Italy. I told him up front that I'd have to do the leave on half-pay, and wouldn't be able to meet my mortgage payments during that time. He promised he would take care of that. He did not. I didn't realise this until the bank sent me a very nasty letter (thankfully I'd been ahead in my payments by a fair amount, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been). But by this time I was far enough behind that they were talking about selling my house. Again, he said he'd take care of it. Again, he did not. The only reason I kept my house was I went to the bank, met with the manager, swallowed my pride and cried, and worked out a solution with him.
Let's not forget his constant jealousies. Never, at any stage of the "marriage", did we live together. I refused to live in an empty house, which I think is fair enough. He kept promising that "soon" we'd be moving into his "other" house, which of course never happened. Strangely enough, I took a drive past it once, quite by chance, and noticed that it had a sign out the front saying it was being auctioned the next weekend. When I asked him about it he said "yeah, it's something I have to do to try and get rid of this woman who's trying to get money out of me, but it won't really be sold". Ummm....... Anyway, he then said after the auction that it had been sold back to him. Aside from that being illegal, it just didn't ring true. But again, you "love" someone, you want to trust them, so you continue on.
Then of course there was the time he forced himself on me. I don't know why I didn't leave him then. Then, a few days later, I was feeling quick sick but once again he didn't believe me. Funny, he never believed a word I said. It wasn't until we got to mum's for him to dump me there and continue driving back to Melbourne, and mum took one look at me, checked my temperature and sent me to bed, that he believed I was sick.
Oh, and we can't forget the final clincher. Early July I went to his house while he was at work. I walked in the front door and... there were potplants. And furniture. The house was nearly completed furnished. Odd. I went into his room. It had additional furniture in it. And handbags. And high-heeled shoes. And women's clothing in the walk-in-robe. Next to all his stuff. I thought I handled it relatively well... I took pictures of everything, left his car and house keys beside the bed, and walked out.
When he called me later that evening I asked him who was living in his house. His response? "What do you mean?" Now, I thought it was a fairly simple question. He refused to answer it. So I hung up. He called me again later, and when I asked him again, this time he said "That's nothing for you to be concerned with." I asked him again. He said "It doesn't concern you". I may have yelled some abuse at him at that point. I'd have to check the recordings I took of the phone calls. He left me alone for a couple of weeks, then wanted to know if we could meet and talk. Meh, I gave in. He then tells me, at the meeting, that the stuff belongs to his sister, she had left her husband and was living there, but he'd been too embarrassed to tell me. Uh-huh. Yep, that's right, that's what he said. I have it recorded. Anyone else's bullshit-o-meter going right off the scale?
Everything was always all about him, until the time when it WAS all about him, and he was convinced it was all about someone else. No. The reason our marriage ended was that I got sick of trying to believe the things he said, and I got tired of waiting for just one thing he promised to come true.
Basically, everything this man promised never got delivered. Not to me, not to my brother. As we approach the one-year anniversary of when he did actually marry me, I find that the confusion, bitterness, and heartbreak is not getting better at the rate at which I would prefer. I know that, eventually, I'll get over this. I know that, eventually, I'll be able to move on, hopefully feel something for a man again, maybe even trust one enough to attempt another relationship. Unfortunately, knowing all of this doesn't seem to help speed up the recovery. I was played for a fool. How do you come back from something like that? In one way I am ashamed to tell you all about it - FFS, how f**king stupid must you think I am? But in another, if I don't get this out I feel as though it'll eat me alive, from the inside out, and I'll never get rid of the bitterness in my heart.
I finally trusted a man enough to have a long and serious relationship, I thought for the rest of our lives. You all don't know my history, so you perhaps don't appreciate what a gigantic leap that was for me. But I took it. And it tastes like shit in my mouth. The worst part is that, despite what he's done, the repercussions of everything that's happened, I still care about him. F**ked up, eh? The sooner I move on, the better. I've no doubt he has. There is almost nothing in my life that I truly regret. This, though, is something I wish I had never done, it had never happened. Even though my life, and my brother's, seem to be getting ever so slowly back on track, I wish I could rewind time - go back one year and do it differently.
So hard to believe how many volumes there are in this room. They have everything in them.
I got into trouble trying to take this picture! I just wanted this shot, with no-one in it, but the guide wouldn’t leave me alone for the 3 seconds it would take to do it (because she couldn’t leave people unsupervised or somesuch). I did eventually manage it, however she gave me the frowning of my life. The irony is that, once the tour was over, I went to the toilet... and could have wandered right into this room unsupervised. Go figure. I just wanted the picture.
Just one of these chandeliers would go a nice way to paying off a good chunk of my mortgage. I can’t remember all the details around them, but I think all up they cost, or are worth, nearly $300k.
The library. It’s not open to the public. I love the old vs. new feel of it. See the old staircase and the bookshelves? See the mouse in the bottom right corner? We weren’t allowed to move from a tiny area in the middle of the room, which is a shame as I’d love to explore it more fully. Sadly, I think the only way I could do that is to join Victorian politics, and frankly I’m too honest and nice for that!
