Ending it all and getting total freedom

The upcoming All Saints Day got me to thinking deeper. I am still in the support group. Staying there keeps me from putting the JB nightmare behind me.

I have two date goals in mind. The first is Halloween/All Saints day. The second is the one year anniversary of her death.

I was a member of the support group before they moved to their current server. I originally joined under a different user name, but changes in my status and being afraid that my user name would make me get caught there made me decide to change my user name.

Many people on the board had cut off their in-laws and were in counseling. I did want to do counseling. But I was afraid to cut off the in-laws. JB and EJ (her evil husband) were taking advantage of hubbie. That would have been no big deal if it only affected him. However, it affected me to. I felt that accompanying him whenever he was around them was a two fold advantage. First, it gave me knowledge of what was going on. Second, perhaps there would be less happen when I was there to "protect" hubbie. I really hated going there. I hated two Mother's days in a row spent there. I hated every Christmas Eve. The place was full of negative energy and totally dirty. I did not eat there, I did not want food poisioning. I filled myself up with Cheese Doodles and KK's at the gas station we stopped at on the way to their house. I also used the restroom as the bath at MIL's was also pretty disgusting.

Then when eating time came, I tried to find the lowest risk dishes and eat as little of them as possible. I also carried snacks and drinks and had them in the car.

That was only one small bit of what was bad about being there.

Then Halloween 2002 came.

Halloween 2002 can only be described as a wonderful terrible day. The night before Halloween, DH was on the telephone with his parents. He left a dinner with guests to go to his office and talk to her, not just in private, but in secret. When I asked him what was going on, he said "Nothing.". So the next day, I got nosey. I did find out what he was up to, which was upsetting. It was a big deal. It was later that I found out what was really going on that day. I also found more than that. I learned that there was a deep scheme going on, that the ILs were going to extraordinary measures to get their way with DH and were succeeding. I have never posted the particular thing that I found, and likely never will. But it was so disturbing that I felt like I was living with a stranger. I was unable to concentrate at work and could not stop crying in a friend's office -- I don't cry in front of people easily. I even started looking into what my rights were in the case of divorce.

There was some good that came of this. First, I realized that no matter what I did, JB and EJ were going to get whatever she wanted from my hubbie. I was immediately free to cut her out of my life, to never have to see her again. All of those painful trips had been to supposedly protect my and hubbie's interests. But if they were going to go around me anyway, I was not succeeding. I decided that day never to see her again. I did not tell hubbie. He was not communicating with me, he was going to extreme measures to not communicate with me. I finally looked after myself. Hubbie did not get his first inkling until December 23. I was getting ready to go to my sister's house for the day. In years previous, I had taken vacation and spent Dec. 23 with my sister. He had picked me up at her house to take me to the craptaculars at the ILs, then after that, we drove to my parent's to sleep and for Christmas morning with them and my sister. Then home. So when I was getting ready to leave that day, he asked what time he could pick me up and where. I said no time, I wasn't going, I'd just meet him at my parents. Of course, he hit the ceiling. He did not go to my parents, but went home and then back to my sister's Christmas morning. (5 extra hours of driving for him to do this, as our families now happen to live close together, but a good distance from us.) We did not have a good Christmas together, but I still had a good one with my sister's family and with my parents.

So that's a lot of background. But Halloween is an anniversary of sorts. I have somewhat gotten over the pain of the day. The day is the anniversary of me being freed from seeing the ILs. FIL died about six months later. I did see JB at FIL EJ's funeral, but it was the last time I saw her alive. I started counseling the following January (a year and a half later). So Halloween was the beginning of my freedom. I will now make it the end of the nightmare as well. I do not feel like lighting a candle to her on All Saint's Day. Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve is the night before All Saint's Day. The day to chase away all evil spirits. I will light a candle that night. Not a candle to her evil spirit. But a candle to the end of the pain and baggage that I carry around because of her.

I will be around the board a lot less after that, but will be around some until just after the year anniversary of her death. I suspect that the holidays will be odd this year, and the anniversary will be strange, but I am looking at this time as the beginning of the end of my pain and tehe beginning of my healing. I may need some hugs when DH starts acting out on his grief and through some of the other stuff.

I will continue to post on my blogs.

Also, if any of my support group friends are ever in my area, I would love to meet them at a restaurant somewhere for lunch! PM's are forwarded to my Yahoo mail account, so just shoot me a message and we'll find a good safe place to meet.