Licking My Wounds, the Legion

This is another continuation post.  I know... it's getting old to not get the whole thing all at once.  This is the last one that is specifically part of the whole story of the Can in the Bag and all that jazz.  I highly recommend starting at the post in which I began to tell about this particular dead body and then mosy on over the the subsequent postS.

Perhaps this is the point!  Maybe my whole life I've been prepared to become Monster Girl!??  I mean, it's not been a bad thing.  Ever since I had the idea for FrankenMonster Marriage I knew I simply must be called Monster Girl here.  And I felt really quite liberated and powerful in a joyfully peaceful way.

But for weeks before knowing I needed to start this blog and become Monster Girl in my heart, I experienced pain more on than off.  And it has continued since, just not in the unmanageable and daily tearful way of the early days... before the empowerment of accepting my monsterness.  I literally cried every day for at least a week.  My poor kiddos. They tried so hard to do things to help me feel better.  They really are my gems!

It hurt so bad I wanted to hurt the outside of me to alleviate the inside pain.  I actually wanted to cut my hair off (bald) after pulling it out sufficiently.  I'm telling you what I wanted to do.  I didn't do it.  My hair is one of my few "pretty" physical attributes.  It is down to my butt, brown and is the only thing about my physical appearance that people ever compliment.  I'm really totally okay with that... it being the only thing peeps compliment... but it's also something about which I feel an attachment... I feel able to sort of hide in my hair.  And I just wanted to pull it out and cut it off to hurt me after I found my husband watching porn.

In addition to the hair pulling and cutting... I wanted to cut myself.  I've NEVER understood that behavior before.  I do now.  All I wanted to do was cut my skin and watch the blood roll down and hope that some of the pain inside would roll out of me with it.  Yes, I do realize this sorta really doesn't make any sense... but this is how I felt!!!  I didn't do, but I sure wanted to.

'Surely,' I thought and still feel, 'I'm hideous even with my hair.  Elsewise, he would not seek to view another naked woman instead of coming to me who lay a short walk down the hall.  Yes, I'm hideous.  My husband has proved it to me.  He would rather obtain an erection by watching another female than being with me.'  These and other horrible thoughts have run through my mind and tormented me as a result of finding my husband watchin porn.  Writing poetry about these feelings really helped.  I'm gunna share one next time.  I hope you like it a little.  It's raw me... not lovely, but really real.  And safe... cause I don't think cursing is helpful... it requires more energy and thought to describe in productive ways than to hurl curses regardless of the medium, in my opinion, anyway.

I still feel repulsive.  And we have had sex since all this went down.  I might, in a few moments during and/or immediately after the act, feel some bits of acceptance and attractiveness... but it goes away super fast.  I feel tremendous shame.  How could I not be enough for my man?  For surely, THAT is the problem.  I'm not enough.  I'm not pretty enough, sexy enough, smart enough, thin enough...  I'm not enough so he clicked into a movie to watch others have sex.  Never mind that I am totally available and waiting to have intercourse....

It's just too much.  There are all these thoughts and feelings and trying to express them doesn't convey the profound nature of the turmoil.  Words just fall short of capturing the essence and extent of how this has impacted my psyche.

I'll keep trying because I feel compelled to do so, but right now I need a break.  However, I do consider this the official end post to the Saga of the Cat and the Bag.  K?  I hope you feel some sense of completion herein.

REMEMBER:
If you know who I am, shhhh.  I need to live in anonymity.  Monster Girls like me prefer to hide in the dark because we are so very hideous.

Taking the Cat out of the Bag

Have you ever done it?  Taken a cat out of a bag, I mean.  Heck, have you ever got one IN a bag?

I haven't.  So, I'm just imagining what it would entail and what the consequences might be.  I do have an active and vivid imagination, though!  So, I'm thinking that one who would be so brave... or foolish as to put a cat in a bag would sustain numerous wounds regardless of the outcome of the endeavor.  IF such an one were successful, I would imagine that said person would rather let the cat stay where it was than deal with trying to get it out again.

This is where you find me.

I got the cat in the bag and have been loathe to get it out or even let it get out.  But it's coming.

Just know that I DO, in fact, KNOW that lots of other women have faced this same challenge.  I'm sure with more grace than me!  I mentioned a girl a while back... I'm going to share more about her in a while.  Anyway... She coule be my twin.  She is not, actually, but we're so similar she could be!  Anyway... she, just as one example, is dealing with the problem I'm trying to share in this post, too.  It's just difficult!  I guess a bit like stepping into the sun after a confinement in the dark and cold.  It's eventually a gift and relief to be in the sun, but it's a bit miserable and painful right at the beginning.

So,  I was trying to get rid of the internet at our house because I found my husband watching porn.  I realize there are lots of folks (guys AND girls) who would scoff or mock me for the pain this discovery has caused.  But like all doozies, this is a multi-faceted gem of darkness.

Before I explain further, I have to tell you aobut some really religious sort of spiritual stuff.  I haven't written about that part of me so much here because I don't want to "turn anybody off" to reading my story.  What I'm goint to share is absolutely pertinent to the story of my husband watching porn, finding him doing it, and all the resulting fallout for me.

For three or four months before I saw him looking at porn with my own eyes, I heard whispers to my mind that Beauty Man was doing it.  I asked him, point blank, if he was.  I even told him I heard (he KNOWS what this means) he was  and asked again if he was.  Each time he told me he was not, had not, did not... however he said it, he always said no.

Back up to the very beginning of us.  That's been long enough, now, for us to have four children with the youngest being around 1 year old.  I found him looking at porn way back in the beginning.  I was a different person back then.  It bothered me.  It hurt my feelings some.  I felt slightly mistrustful of him, but I believed him when he told me he would stop.  I asked him to stop because it hurt my feelings.

Skip forward a few years.

He promised me that when we found out we were preggie, he would quit smoking.  He did.  But then, unbeknownst to me, he started up again.  I knew it, though.  I heard the whispers (not audible, but to my mind).  I heard the Holy Spirit tell me what he was doing, but I would not believe.  I didn't want to believe my husband was lying to me.  I WAS told and warned, though.  I asked him point blank, numerous times.  He lied in reply.  Repeatedly.  And for years.

The truth didn't come out until he'd move me away from my parents and brothers.  He'd lied to me for 3 years by then!  And since?  (I hear you wonder.)  That's part of the huge problem in this FrankenMonster Marriage!  He's NEVER completely stopped lying!!!!  Not only has he lied, bu he's also stolen money from our family.  He's still more in a habit of hiding the truth than TELLING the truth.  It's very painful for me.  Remember how honest, how truthful I like being?

The story isn't complete, but I really must take a break from the telling.  I'll resume very soon.  Promise.