Beyond Betrayed
Oh boy. I have to write of this because I don't know if I can heal from it. I am hoping putting pen to paper (so to speak) will help me begin the healing process.
So...I have pretty much known from a very young age that I would never be able to be a mother. Sure I played with baby dolls when I was little. But once I learned where babies came from, I knew.
At nineteen years old, I was pregnant, surprisingly. Not surprisingly however, after three months I began to miscarry. Because of my situation, I had no recourse other than just grit my teeth and deal with it.
I thought it would be so much easier than it was. After a couple of months, the "spotting" became dark and foul smelling. I gritted harder. Then it became bright red and a torrent.
I spent one late night lying on the bathroom floor, alternating between vomiting, dropping clots, and fainting. At one point, I remember wishing I had the strength to pull myself into the bathtub so I could slit my wrists. It was unbearable. I knew exactly when the fetus itself was lost, the pain reached a pinnacle and then abated.
In the morning, my friend insisted I go to Emergency. The hospital performed the necessary procedure to remove any remaining tissue and I was dismissed. I admit, I did not obey all of their recommendations fully. I was unable to remain on bed rest for any length of time. But I did limit my physical activity as much as I was able.
After the miscarriage, I had some hints of possible complications. But I was young and not in a position to have any medical assistance. So I again, grit my teeth and soldiered on.
In subsequent relationships, I made it very clear that I was almost guaranteed to be infertile. That's just what you got if you wanted me. If you saw children in your future, it wasn't with me: I was not the girl for you.
My second husband, Fred convinced me that he didn't care about having kids. We knew each other for almost four years before we married. He made me believe it was all right, he only wanted me.
Oh how wrong were we? We married in 1990 and I finally divorced him in 2006 or so. The subject of children had never been a topic in our union.
Except for that one time... We had briefly separated in 1992, reconciling in 1994, not quite two years. During that time, and the reason why we split, he was shacking up with a woman named Shelly.
In late 1994, Shelly reached out to Fred. She was pregnant she said. He denied the entire thing. Everytime I asked him "What about the baby, Fred?" I was shut down with an insistent "There is NO baby!" Every scenario I presented, every possible situation even including alien conception (!), I received an increasingly adamant "There is NO baby!"
DNA said otherwise. So Fred was a dad, albeit a dead-beat one. He never acknowledged the existence of this child. Never was a part of the boy's life, never contributed.
And Fred continued to pretend he did not have a problem with my infertility. The only time it reared its head was in an argument once. I said something about him having a child while we were married. He retorted, "At least I can have kids."
It cut me to the quick and he knew it. Never apologized for it (which was a harbinger of things to come). Fred was never remorseful, never repentant.
If he did something illegal and was arrested for it, Fred would blame the local/state authorities. "It's because it's California, the most effed up state ever."
No matter what he did, Fred was never at fault. Somewhat recently he told me about rearending a vehicle at a traffic light. The light had just turned green as he was pulling up on his motorcycle. He drove right up on this car because "couldn't she see the light was green?" No matter that the car was stationary because the flow had not yet reached that point. It was somebody else's fault, not ever Fred's.
In our marriage, he was able to blame his physical abuse of me on me, or my cat. He wouldn't come home for a week because nine months earlier, I had challenged him. Of course at the time, he acted like he was over it. He stole my car more than once, taking it to see some other woman. Usually they were women with children.
I should have known. Finally the truth has come out. The irony of the situation is lost on him. Decades of him being a deadbeat dad to his only child, a son now grown, it is revealed that children were all he ever wanted. Not me.