About six years ago, I looked at all the rent I paid to landlords over 16 years. It came to about $150,000. What I got from that is, hey, I wonder if we were able to buy a house, would we save some money? Strangely enough, we found a person who worked the numbers and found a way for us to get in someplace. After a very brief search (1 day), we found a house that appealed to us, and after all of the signings and applications and what not, we were homeowners in early August of 2018. In fact, we presented it to Natalie as her big 9th birthday present. Of course, we bought her some other presents, but this was the biggie.
And of course, for a few years our mortgage payment was higher than our rent had been so we had to negotiate that with one income. On top of that, our AC unit was old and rusted and needed replacing. Another expense. Plus, the water was crappy, so when a water softener company came knocking, we opened the door and bought.
I have no regrets about ANY of this, because I know after a little while, the rent would have become more than we could have handled. I have known for a very long time that with Vickie's health problems she would likely not be able to work again in a traditional job.
Having said "no regrets", I think new anxieties came up as a result of the new home dynamic and I did not deal with it well...meaning I did not deal with it in a healthy way at all. My anxieties were turning into sarcasm and anger and Vickie and I fought frequently as a result. And going from a fairly cramped apartment to a decently spacious house, I was able to find some space to "get away" here and there, and often that getaway was on the computer with the headphones on with Vickie watching TV in the same room. We had not fully utilized the loft yet so we were downstairs a lot.
I am beginning to understand now that my walls were coming up big time at this point. I think I had a similar though shorter-lived period after I got married. Married life was a new thing to me for the first six or seven months, for Vickie, too. We had not talked about the changes we would have to deal with. For a long time, she had the partly negative, partly funny nickname "bachelor teacher guy" for me because even though we were living together for months before getting married, I still had a lot of habits and behaviors from years of being single...MALE single. I still looked up porn on the computer and lef tclothes all around and also said things offhand which I thought were mildly funny but I had not realized made her upset. It was a long period of adjustment.
Also in those early days we realized we had something else big in common: bad spending hsbits. I don't remember how many times our bank account got in the negatives back then but it was often, and a fuel for argument, especially at Christmas time. I remember one argument we had after Christmas about funds and I think I moved my body in a way that she thought I was going to hit her and she moved back a bit. I would never have done that to her and it changed a bit how I approached arguing...but not exactly in a healthy way...I just chose to let little bits of anger come out when I felt them but did not find a full release mechanism.
Coming back to new homeowner days, I was withdrawing without knowing it by early 2019. I was also eating quite unhealthily and not moving a lot. Somehow through all of that I was getting some good blogging done.
Not only was I emotionally withdrawing, I was also feeling anger and frustration at work that summer as my bosses did not know what I would be teaching until 3 weeks before we reported back. I was also fearful of a kidney stone procedure coming in late August. Not long after that, we took in a 2 day old kitten that we needed to feed like a newborn, menaing many late night feedings and resulting lack of rest for a month.
And then months later COVID came. I was trying to get healthy by eating better and exercising. While this produced some good results, it was creating distance between me and Vickie. She supported what I was doing but she also knew I tended to throw myself head on into things and then crash and feel down about it. Well, time took its toll as I went about my health mission. We slowly got more distant. Well, I got distant, she reacted by buying lives and power-ups for games on her device and buying what seemed like the entire Amazon warehouse.
I reacted angrily to those instances which were many and I retreated into many social media platforms and posted and respended to others' posts, really just trying to get attention that I should have been seeking from Vickie. Not necessarily sex but just good 1 on 1 honest communication. She had seen some of what I posted and got very upset, understandably. Natalie had seen me be sneaky on the computer or phone and it affected her as well. And all of my harmful shenanigans were taking a toll of Vickie's relationship with Natalie, resulting in many dinner table arguments and storming off. I did not know how to deal with any of this, how to referee. I shut down even more.
Bigger shutdowns were happening in 2023 when a debt relief program I had signed up for two years before was showing it had failed and creditors were coming after me. On top of that, an old friend from my early teaching days was drinking herself to death and reached out to me for some kind of help. I had many long phone conversations with her just to keep her alive. She finally went for treatment in late July. When she was fully back on her feet, our conversations continued, but now I was sharing a lot of my grief in life as I saw it then. Once again I was talking to someone else but not my own wife and it was Vickie I was talking and complaining about. My mom was worried about Vickie hurting Natalie and my own frustrations made me lash out about that, too.
In late November, everything came crashing down as Vickie told me she had seen messages between me and others, particularly the friend and my dad. It was a definite fork in the road on my birthday: sell the house and go our separate ways or work on things just the 2 of us. We chose to work. I was still doing things on social media, not thinking anything of it being damaging, but that was dealt with down the road as well, my need for attention.
Wow do I need help!
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