The Dark Side of My Mind_eBook

The Dark Side of My Mind

Hope – The Dark Side of My Mind 2
2
Table Of Contents 2
4
Hope 4
     The Email 4
     What Was Happening 5
The Next Day 5
     The Email 5
     What Was Happening 6
Fear Begins to Settle In 6
     The Email 6
     What Was Happening
Do You Think We Can Talk?
     The Email
     What Was Happening

Page 1

Hope – The Dark Side of My Mind

Hope

The Email

I want to write because I do get in my own way when I open my mouth.  

I love you, Robert. We have worked through so much together and I have imagined the day you reconnected
with the girls and never thought I would respond this way, and I am truly sorry.  

If you need to go to your mother’s I will support you and love you and wait for you to come home, and while
doing so I will work on my issues and hope to become stronger and stable. My heart and my fears do not
align and I know that, and I am sorry. 

I hope that something in this energy shifts and you decide to stay home and that we can continue to grow
together. I am creating a self ful lling prophecy by allowing my fear to keep rising to the surface, I do know
that, I don’t want to. I want to love you and our family and everyone in it. Mostly, I want to give you this time
and it be about you, not my insecurities. 

I will always love you, no matter what comes. 

~ me

What Was Happening

During this time He had just reunited with his twin daughters (whom he had not had contact with for seven
years). We had often discussed this day, we hoped for it, I hoped for it. Of course I wanted him to reunite with
his daughters and have a healthy relationship with them. I did convince him not to reach out to them the year
before, they were graduating from high school and I had kept somewhat of an anonymous eye on them via
social media throughout the years, just to know they were safe. 

I told him that I felt he should allow them to nish school without interrupting their lives, they appeared to be
thriving and I just didn’t think it would be fair to them. Honestly, after dealing with my own mentally ill and
unstable mother, I felt very protective of his girls. Although I loved him, I knew what it was to have him in my
life and I really thought the girls were better o without him. It hurts to say that, but it’s the truth. (It hurts
more to admit my own children would strongly agree.)

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Hope – The Dark Side of My Mind

So fast forward, the girls had graduated, and even though we were in the midst of a pandemic, our own lives
were going pretty well. I was still hiding and making excuses for the passive/aggressive behaviors and
allowing him to dominate our life together, so yeah… things were calm for the moment. He didn’t partake in
social media, and put down everyone who did (myself included, even though I only had accounts to stay in
touch with my own daughters). He started an Instagram account just for the sake of contacting them. I
remember the conversation before he reached out to them, he went on about how he was, happy they were
adults now and he could speak directly to them and not have to deal with their “crazy mother”. All I had ever
heard about her was how horrible she was. I actually felt a little protective of her too, she stayed and raised
her children and they looked happy and healthy so I had to give her credit for that. She never asked him for
anything, I believed I understood why, although I never voiced it. 

Skip ahead, he sends the message, one of the girls responds and agrees to call him the next day. That call
comes and he’s excited and happy and I’m happy for him, he tells me she asked if he had spoke to her
mother, that she thought it would be a good idea (what he did not tell me but I found out later was that he
had told her to give her mother his number) so as we are sitting there the mother texts him. He runs o to call
her, upstairs to my bedroom (we slept in separate rooms) he shuts the door… now mind you, this is how he
takes all of his phone calls, in my bedroom behind closes doors, but we have one of those houses with an
open oor plan so we all sort of disappear to talk on the phone. However, I felt this was a call he should have
taken in front of me. 

I could hear their conversation, and when it got mu ed, I moved closer. He did not say anything wrong, he
told her he was married, when she started going down memory lane he redirected, nothing was
inappropriate on his end. That didn’t stop me from reacting. I was at my desk trying to work, my desk was in
the living room at that time, I’m shaking, my whole body is shaking because I can hear her. I can hear her
crying and saying that he was her best friend and that’s why she was so devastated when he left them, she’s
saying remember when… and everything that came out of her mouth could have been me. The great times
they shared, the conversations, the memories, it all could have been me saying the same exact things. This
woman he had described as a mentally ill drug addict for all of these years, could have been me. It struck a
cord inside of me that pressed my abandonment button and I began to shake. I was shaking so hard I
couldn’t breathe, I felt frozen and when he walked downstairs and was standing right behind me excited to
tell me about their conversation all I could say was “I didn’t like that”. My voice was quiet, shaky but quiet. It
was hard to speak but something in me needed to tell him that I did not like that. Him, listening to another
woman cry about their lost love while sitting on my bed, the one place that was supposed to be my safe
space to escape, I felt violated and betrayed. 

It wasn’t just that, it was a combination of things, it was watching him suddenly become someone else. All of
a sudden, she wasn’t the enemy anymore, she was this wonderful woman who had raised his children who he
had been best friends with. He spoke to her with compassion and tenderness. Everything felt wrong. I felt
threatened. I felt like my world was about to fall apart. I realize all of these feelings were very extreme, this
isn’t a normal reaction to these things, but we didn’t have a normal relationship. We had a relationship where
he constantly reinforced the fact that he could leave me at any moment. 

Page 3

The Next Day – The Dark Side of My Mind

The Next Day

The Email

I hope one day you realize that this is just what had to happen, for both of us. You need to go learn about
your girls and learn how to be a good father. I hope you recognize through our trials that you still have work
to do. Give them the best you that is possible.

I’ll be here working on me, while I can’t imagine my world without you I could not live like this anymore, the
constant fear was killing me. You are not able to nd it in yourself to o er me security and stability, you want
me to nd those things alone, and I just can’t. I needed you to be strong for me and it was just asking too
much.

I know you love me, and I will always love you and consider myself your wife. I hope your next chapter is
beautiful.

What Was Happening

Regret and fear were starting to pull at the edges of my mind. What I want you to picture is that I’m home
alone, sitting in bed with my ankle up. I’m physically hurting, my heart is broken and I’m just trying to nd a
sense of peace. Yet I am still worried about Him. His feelings, his heart… because I wanted to believe that our
love was real, that the years of turmoil and the constant anxiety meant something. That is had mattered, hell
I even wanted to believe that if we took this time apart maybe we could x our issues and come back
together.  

All I knew the day I threw him out was that I couldn’t take it anymore. It was him or me, and I wasn’t willing to
die for the sake of “our love”. Honestly, I think he would have preferred that. I think he would have just kept on
living here and living his life and wouldn’t have skipped a beat. He probably would have gotten a new suit for
my funeral, he does like to go shopping (and put on a show). Sorry buddy, no amount of mind fuckery is
worth my life, not for you or anybody.

Page 4

Fear Begins to Settle In – The Dark Side of My Mind

Fear Begins to Settle In

The Email

Manifest a way to x this. You are the head of our family and I am the heart, there must be balance between
us. Our family needs both of us, and we need each other.

What Was Happening

I was honestly panicking. Why did I throw him out? I could have just sucked it up, I could have waited until he
was done punishing me. We could have just went back to “normal”… Normal. That’s the thing, there wasn’t
anything normal about it.  
A normal husband treats his wife with respect, with love, he builds her up, he makes her feel safe and o ers
her stability. 
He DOES NOT constantly threaten to leave her, put her down, mock her, put his hands on her in anger – ever!
He does not give her the silent treatment or refuse to show her a ection, he does not call her names or
compare her to other women, he does not make her feel like she’s going crazy by telling ridiculous lies. He
does not irt with other women in front of her face and disrespect her openly, and then call her jealous when
she stands up for herself. He does not refuse to speak to her on airplane or car rides… just because he hates
to travel so he admittedly comes up with a reason to ght so he can take his aggravation out on her. 
If you nd yourself making excuses for any of these behaviors, let me ask you a question.  
Would you treat someone you love this way? 
I know I wouldn’t.

Page 5

Do You Think We Can Talk – The Dark Side of My Mind

Do You Think We Can Talk?

The Email

Do you think we can talk?

What Was Happening

It was just a subject line. I sent it via email, imessage, text… and that time, he did respond. I had thrown him
out on Tuesday, this was just Friday… but it felt like forever. I needed him like a drug addict needs a x, I was
so deep in withdrawal I couldn’t function. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t even speak to anyone else without bursting
into tears.  

I was driving to DD2’s house and just as I was about to turn in I saw that he had replied. He had texted “sure”
and then when I didn’t respond he texted again, asking if I was going to call him. I decided to drive up the
street a few blocks to the medical center on the corner so that I could park and talk with him privately, just as
I was making a left into the parking lot he came from the other direction and made a right, we ended up
parked right next to each other. This is nearly how we had ended up getting back together years previously
after a four month break (more like a four month ghosting). 

This is important because I am a rm believer in The Universe, I believe in SIGNS just as strongly as a devote
Catholic believes in The Mother Mary. This was a sign, my mind was reeling The Universe didn’t want us to
really end things, we were meant to be together, he was my soul mate, my true love, the man who pushed
me to grow and be better… aka D&D (Devalue and Discard). 

We both parked and got out of our cars, he had tears in his eyes, I don’t even remember much of the
conversation, I do remember him saying things like “… you’ve never spoken to me like that before.” He was
right, I had never stated the obvious truth of matters before that fateful Tuesday. I ate it. All of it. Constantly,
because I didn’t want to rock the boat. I know that I apologized, I tried to tell him that I was in ght or ight
that morning and that I just couldn’t take anymore. That didn’t phase him, he only wanted to talk about how I
had wronged him. How I had hurt him. 

I reached out my hand, it was this thing he would do whenever we were “in con ict”, he wouldn’t hug me, he
would shake my hand like I was a stranger… this time he took my hand and pulled me close and hugged me
and that’s when I began to cry. I kissed his neck and told him that I loved him. After I drove away I texted him
that I would always love him, and he texted back that he loved me too. 

It gave me hope.

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