Sunday, April 20, 2008

Lessons Learned



I wanted to post this pic of myself, Clancy, Koko, and Pooh. I was sick at the time, and all three of them kept me company in bed. I don't have any of them anymore. Clancy and Koko are dead, and my ex-husband took the dogs with him when he moved away. Pooh was my dog. He followed me all over the house and laid on me all of the time. I was crazy about him.

My divorce didn't go well. I moved out in March, and in August the divorce became final. I went to my old house to pick up the paperwork, walked into the house, and was greeted by no dogs. I asked the asshat where the dogs were, and he said they were in Pennsylvania. I completely lost my mind. I screamed at him that I hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye, and I then ran around the house grabbing things saying, "This is mine, this is mine, this is mine." I even went into the back yard and dug up my wormwood plant. I also took one of our dogs' tennis balls. I loaded everything into the car and drove to the nearest ABC store and bought a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of scotch. I went home and proceeded to drink shots of bourbon until I was completely plastered.

I had put off college while I was married to allow the Ex to go to school. I wasted 5 years when I could have been studying for an actual career. When we divorced I asked for no alimony, and got none of our furniture and almost none of our belongings. All I asked for was text book fees to allow me to go to school. The asshat refused.

So I ended up stuck in dead end jobs with little salary and little opportunity for advancement. This is how my mom ended up giving me an allowance every two weeks at the age of 30. How freaking embarrassing is that? I wasn't making enough money to live, and on my salary alone I would never even have been able to make my rent. It was quite depressing. 

I guess the point of all of this is to say that I should have taken better care of myself in that relationship. I should have actually maybe not put myself first, but made sure I could be financially independent. The irony is that at this point in my life it's almost impossible to do so, being a stay at home mom and not having had a job for almost 2 years now. I'm sure I could find another dead end job somewhere, but I still don't have the ability to actually get an education.

It's a damn good thing that I actually trust this marriage to last.




7 comments:

Nina said...

Your ex-husband is an asshole. But we have already talked about that. What we haven't talked about that might be worth a talk is that a certain local college offers every single one of their courses online. All of them. Want to talk about that some?

Dagny said...

Yeah, asshole is too kind a word by the sounds of it.

And online courses sounds like a great idea Nina! Julie, you guys should chat about that. :)

xoxo

Anonymous said...

Can't add anything here, Ex=Asshole.
Online classes=Good :-).
Sorry about your pets!

Cyn said...

I have not seen you with long hair before! You look different, like one of my mom's friend's daughter. Not that it matters to you but hey you do have twin out there.

Your ex took the dogs without letting you say goodbye? What a fucking bastard! Now I want to hit him. Grrrr that was just plain mean.

Em said...

I can relate to being married to an ass-hole... I'm glad you are no longer. Nina has a great idea there...

Anonymous said...

I'll bet if you put up a Julie's Online Class Fund button on your blog, you'll see some donations there. You just have to give public grade reports all the time. :) We can even tutor you if needed. Except for math, I'm pretty okay at most subjects.

GO FOR IT.

Michele said...

There's a special hell for pet stealing ex's.

Do the online classes. I am. One freaking class at a time. I haven't started yet, but I'm going to do it. I am starting with computer classes, because every company uses computers.