No reason to stay

His passivity about his abusive behaviors, and his self-pity are driving me crazy.  Really.  Like I want to shout to the world just everything.  Every gritty, ugly, and humiliating detail.  Let the chips fall and the cookies crumble.  And I said as much to him.

Last night I told him that I didn’t think I could take much more of this pain, and that I just want to find a way to stop it. I told him that one option could be my moving out, but that I’d be taking our daughters with me wherever I went. (Seriously?  I have no idea of how I’d do this, but I felt like a trapped animal ready to chew off a leg to escape a trap.)

This means he’d be living here with sons.
One is battling some kind of illness since being deployed.
One is in a slow recovery from a bad accident and head injury.
One graduated from high school last year and just found his first decent job (albeit low paying).
One other son is an actor/musician, in rehearsals for a scholarship paid choral junket abroad.  He’s also bonded closely to the brother who has the TBI.
Three of them work for their father.  All are vulnerable in some way, and deserve stability and the ability to plan for change.

When I said, “I don’t know what to do.  I can’t keep hurting like this.”
He just gave me a sad-woe-is-me face.

When I said, “I could move out, but I’m taking the girls with me if I do,” he replied,
“If you do that, I’ll just go.  I’d have no reason to stay.”

I said, “No reason?  What are you saying?  Do you mean that?  Please think before you answer.”

He looked irritated, wary, and resentful and started and stopped in his reply, “No… yes…I hate it when you do this!  Yes I’d leave. Why would I stay?  You’re the only reason I’d stay here.  Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.  This place would be too much to keep up financially and I wouldn’t have any reason to be here.”

I didn’t ask him … what about our sons?

Something deep inside of me cringes, backs away, turns away, like seeing something that would be unbearable, so I can’t look at it.  He must care.  He must just be stupidly angry, foolishly petty.

I just said, “Okay, if that’s how you feel, then we can start to discuss what it would take to sell this place.”

As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t much left to say at that point.  I actually felt some relief mixed into the pain.  A possible dreadful sensible solution.  Sell the home that I’ve wanted to stay and grow old in.  This place that I love, that nourishes my soul every time I look out a window, or step outside and soak in the beauty of its setting. Sell the home that my baby was born in, but process that it may be the only sane solution in the days to come.

I started to feel strangely relieved in the pain that there could be any solution, and began to get sleepy.  I could feel and hear him stirring in an agitated way near me.  He said, “Would it make any difference to you at all if I said I was sorry?”

I replied, “Would it mean you’d stop hurting me?”

Then I did fall asleep, but silently wishing so hard that he would miraculously really care.