The Tangled, Knotted Life of KimberlyKnits 

I'm not sure why I decided to join Divorce360.com today.

Maybe it was the cold weather, which is never any fun.  Maybe it was the umpteenth time I had to put "divorced" on a marital status survey form.  Maybe it was my bad health playing games with my emotions like it does every so often.  Maybe it was having spent the weekend with an old friend who hadn't seen me since the divorce, wanting details, and I had to rehash the pain I went through from July to December 2006 in a way I hadn't done in a long time.

But, for some reason, I felt a real need to seek out a community of divorced adults and have a place to just talk about how much my life has changed (and not always for the better, nor the worse) because of my divorce.

So, here I am.  As for who I am, well, that may be the least complicated thing about my life.

I'm KimberlyKnits, 44-year-old computer engineer and (until recently) programmer for a major U.S.-based ISP.  Female, divorced since December 2006, no birth kids, raised ex-husband's daughter from previous marriage for 12 of her now-16 years of life (and literally knew her from the day she was born--I was socially friendly with the ex and his first wife for years and held their newborn daughter just hours after her birth).  One of the more polite names I call the ex in print is "StoopidEx" (the first ex-Mrs. StoopidEx says she just calls him "The Idiot" and everyone knows exactly who she's talking about), and to avoid giving out more real names than necessary, I sometimes call "our" daughter LittleGirlEx (or TeenageGirlEx these days, as she is now fully and fairly stereotypically a teenage girl in all the positive and negative connotations of that term).

I'm an obsessive knitter (thus, the name) and have knitted objects, yarn, and needles throughout practically every room in my house.  I love computers, reality TV, perfume, lipstick, Barnum's Animal Crackers(only the best; accept no substitutes), bottled water, and online shopping.  I collect Barbies and stuffed golden retrievers, and my bed is now occupied by knitted projects, stuffies, and me.

I'm disabled, the result of benign spinal tumors and multiple auto-immune disorders (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Hypercalcemia, Polymyalgia Rheumatica) diagnosed starting in March 2006.  My health was already impaired by previous diagnoses of fibrocystic breast disease (1996), Fibromyalgia (1997), and endometriosis (1998). I can still walk these days (though my left leg sometimes buckles due to a tumor on the sciatic nerve and the pain is often overwhelming) and can more-or-less take care of myself (but housework is very, very difficult).  I've become somewhat of a practical medical expert due to spending lots and lots of time in ERs, doctors' offices, CT and MRI scanners, pharmacies, etc.  I take enough medications to keep a small pharmacy in business, and have had any number of negative side effects (most notably, I've gained a lot of weight and lost all the color in my hair).  My doctors gave me 3-5 years at most before the effects of hypercalcemia (a metabolic disorder where the body retains too much calcium in the blood, which along with an overly alkaline blood pH causes irritation to muscles and nerves, benign tumors on organs/the brain/spinal cord/nerve sheaths/etc., and osteoporosis-type bone degeneration) on my major organs take their toll and probably my life along with them (I already have lung and liver damage traceable to hypercalcemia).  This led more-or-less directly to my divorce, but we'll get there eventually.

I was laid off from my job in October 2007 along with 2000 of my closest friends.  I've been unemployed since, and am quite thankful for a generous layoff package that has enabled me to keep my house and pay my bills so far.  I'm job hunting; if your company is hiring computer programmers with 21+ years of job experience, let me know.  :)

I'm the eldest of two kids (younger brother) and a child of divorce; my parents split when I was 7 and divorced when I was 9.  My dad remarried and pretty much abandoned his first family afterward.  My mother did not remarry but spent much of the next 30 years with her longtime boyfriend, Bob, who became the best father figure ever; he could not have loved us more if he'd fathered us himself.  When Bob passed away in 2004, I understood what it was like to lose a parent.

My experience as a child of divorce led to a series of unhappy engagements throughout my 20s (I walked away each time before making the mistake of marrying them, thankfully).  I did not marry until I was 32, marrying a man I'd known for six years, a close friend, a good man, a funny, silly man who made me laugh and made me feel loved.  We were married in a Presbyterian ceremony (though we were both Catholic, his marriage had not been annulled, so we could not marry in the Church), and that hot July afternoon was the happiest day of my life.  We had a great relationship.  We had frequent visitation with his daughter from his first marriage, and LittleGirlEx quickly became "my child" in just about every way except legally.  We were two working people with decent salaries and were able to take trips, buy a new house, build a life together.  My career began to take off in the late 1990s and I changed jobs twice, each time with increasing salaries until (1) I was earning six figures, and (2) I was earning five figures more than he was.

However, my health has never been perfect, and it was beginning to get worse as the 90s came to a close.  Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 1997 after a knee injury that never managed to heal right and unending muscle cramping and pain, my family's bad genetic history with reproductive system diseases reared its ugly head in 1998 with the first of a half-dozen ovarian cysts that led to a diagnosis of endometriosis, confirmed in a 2000 laproscopy that removed two ovarian cysts and patches of endo inside my abdominal cavity.  By 2003, the endo had led to two additional surgeries and finally to a full hysterectomy that was complicated by abdominal bleeding that left me weak for months.  Though Hubby was still a loving and gentle man, he was getting exasperated with having to shoulder more and more of the housework burden while I was laid up recovering from surgeries.  He was also exasperated with my reluctance to regularly engage in intercourse due to the abdominal pain caused by the endo and eventually by the muscle pain associated with fibromyalgia until, by 2005, we were no longer having sexual intercourse at all.  (Mind you, this was not for lack of trying on my part to find a physical solution to the problem--painkillers, different positions, etc.--but eventually my doctor conceded that because of my health issues, intercourse would always be painful and the sooner we both accepted that, the better.)

During the 2000-2002 timeframe, I discovered that my sweet, loving, gentle husband, who pledged to love me for better/worse, for richer/poorer, through sickness/health, forsaking all others, til death do us part, was having numerous affairs with women he met in online chat rooms.  Most of them were just virtual sex, but I know for a fact that at least one of them was physical.  In 2002, when I discovered he was back again at least virtually with the one I knew he'd physically laid, I told him to get out of the house and go pretend to be somebody else (he was a part-time actor in community theatre), and if I was in a good mood after I'd gone out to clear my head and go see a movie, I might consider letting him in the house again.  I did indeed let him back in that night, but laid down the law:  No more affairs, period.  No more cyber-affairs.  No more real-life-affairs.  No more hanging out in adult chat rooms.  No more "playing online games" as an excuse to sit in a cybersmut chat room.  He'd had his last warning; if he even dared to think about doing it again, he'd better be prepared to move out and file for divorce, and he'd better just hand me his checkbook, because I was going to go after every dime he had in every way, shape, or form.  I think he was scared enough by the idea that I could and would take him financially to agree to the terms, and we spent the next two years repairing our marriage.

Then, in 2005, 10 years into our marriage, as my job responsibilities changed and my health got worse, he became noticeably less romantic and more distant.  I understood that in a lot of ways--I was constantly tired, my back was acting up, my job was hectic--but something wasn't right.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  But something was seriously wrong.

Little did I know that "something" would prove to be fatal for my marriage and nearly fatal for my life.

In December 2005, with my back really acting up and my left leg seizing frequently, I began treatment for what my doctor and I were pretty sure was sciatica.  I'd had it twice, I knew what it felt like; give me the steroids and we'll get this over with.  And it got better...for about 3 weeks.  Then it came back with a vengeance.  O.K., sciatic nerve's being a little stubborn; let's have another 10 days of steroids and life will be much better.  It was...for 2 weeks.  Then it came back yet again, and now my left leg was partially paralyzed--my foot would not flex; when I picked it up off the ground, the foot dropped to a flaccid angle.  Worse, my neck now hurts and my left hand (dominant hand) is losing fine motor control.  Doctor says something's not right.  Hubby says he talked to his friend "at work" and she thinks it's probably just a slipped disk.  (Odd.  He never discusses my health with anyone.  In fact, he usually tries to pretend my health is perfectly normal and I'm just a flipping hypochondriac.)  Doctor orders MRI.

MRI reveals a fig-sized tumor at L5/S1, right at the junction of the left sciatic nerve.

I still remember getting the phone call on a Thursday afternoon at work, just two days after the MRI.  I remember my blood running cold.  I remember Googling "nerve sheath tumors" and seeing a terrible survival rate for spinal cancer.  I remember sobbing in fear.

And I remember my husband telling me that his "friend" said that 99% of all spinal tumors are benign and that it's probably nothing to worry about.  I remember my anger at his denial that there could be something seriously wrong.  There was, but it wasn't just my back.

I remember going in for the follow-up MRI.  I remember hubby going to visit an online friend and fellow cigar lover "Ed" in Pennsylvania, near Cigar International's distribution center the weekend after the MRI while I waited for MRI results in terror.  I remember excusing his behavior as his way of dealing with the possibility of bad news, since he'd never done that well, and decided to just cut him a break.

I remember my relief at learning that the tumor was indeed "99% likely to be benign" given its characteristics.  But I also remember the way my stomach dropped when the second MRI revealed five additional tumors in my S-Spine, one in my C-Spine, and two in my brain, though they too had benign characteristics.  I remember hubby seeming to not be as excited about this news as I was, but again, I was trying to cut him a break and let him deal with processing this mixed news in his own way.  Maybe I really was overreacting.

My recently retired and "widowed" mom came out to take care of me in February 2006, running me back and forth to the doctors' offices for more tests, more imaging studies, more "well, it's not this, but it could be that" diagnoses.  Mom later said that she was annoyed at Hubby for not being more interested in hearing the medical news and seeming to be almost angry at having to do housework/dishes/laundry/etc. because I couldn't and Mom's arthritis prevented her from doing too much housework as well, but she didn't want to say anything for fear of further upsetting me.

The diagnosis in March 2006 of hypercalcemia--and the pronouncement of a likely demise within 3-5 years even with treatment for the disorder because of signs already showing up on my liver and in my lungs--established new boundaries and new parameters for life.  Life as I knew it would forever change.  At 43, I was going to have to get my affairs in order and start planning for a future I knew none of us really wanted to face.  My doctor signed paperwork allowing me to get handicapped placards for my car and sent me to physical therapy so that I could regain some mobility now that medication was getting my blood pH closer to normal.  I spent 3 months in rehab and got my left leg back from nearly unusable to 80% functional, as well as restoring my left arm and hand back to near 100%.  Mom spent the month of April with us, again noticing that Hubby is very detached from the situation, and now noticing that hubby spends a lot of time on his new computer and reading text messages from his cell phone.  At one point, when TeenageGirlEx was spending the week with us and every bed in the house was in use, Mom wanted to go to sleep but Hubby was in the guest bedroom where the computer was set up, playing a computer game non-stop.  I finally went into the room and said, "[Hubby], turn off the computer and let my mom go to sleep now."  He responded hotly that he was in the middle of a scheduled match tournament in his favorite online game and couldn't just log off.  I said, "Fine, get my laptop and go into the blanking living room between rounds to play.  My mom is tired and it's almost midnight and she wants to go to bed now.  Don't make me go unplug the cable modem to settle this."  He gave me an "Eat Flaming Death" look, but dutifully signed off and went downstairs to continue play on my laptop.  Mom said he also gave her a "get the blank out of my house, woman" nasty look and looked like a sullen child when he signed on to continue the game.  (Looking back now, it's easy to see why he was so upset--having cybersex with his newest flame on my computer would possibly leave an unwelcome cybertrail that he didn't want to leave.)

Mom finally left in late April to return home and deal with other family issues (her mother entered into Hospice care just days later), Hubby went off on a "business trip" (and since his work dealt with government intelligence, I wasn't allowed to know exactly where he was going), and I got back into the rhythm of PT, new meds, regular scans, and in general learning to live with a terminal illness.

By May 2006, though, things were definitely not right.  Hubby was gone on business trips or to acting workshops or something practically every weekend when we weren't custodial parents of TeenageGirlEx.  We were barely seeing each other--the most time we spent together was often when we were both asleep due to my work schedule and his work schedule and his theatrical schedule and the business trips and the what-have-you.  Even I was beginning to notice something wasn't right.  I tried to get him to talk about it, but he didn't really want to.  Nor did he want to spend time cuddling, kissing, snuggling, etc.  When our air conditioner broke and I told him I would split the cost of a new unit with him (we had separate checking accounts, thank goodness) but I couldn't come up with the entire amount up front because my cell phone bill had been unexpectedly higher recently, he grumbled and complained about not having enough money to do it either, but reluctantly agreed to split the cost, and we scheduled the install.

In June 2006, I noticed for the second time in two months that my cell phone bill is significantly higher than it had ever been.  Thinking the change could have been due to a change in our office paging systems where pages were sent to cell phones as text messages instead of to paging devices, I studied the charges.  Out of a $500 phone bill with two lines--his and mine--only $110 was mine, even with the increase in text messages to my device.  His line, however, was almost $400, and almost all of that was text messaging.  And almost all of that was to or from one number, a number I did not recognize at all.  "What is this?" I said, showing him the bill.

He looked panicked.  "Uh...that...that's the team captain for our team in [Computer Game].  We text all the time to schedule matches and stuff."

Now, I may have been addled on painkillers and distracted by other things, but even I was beginning to notice that answer sounded pretty suspicious.  "He's texting your 20-30 times a day?"

"Yeah.  You know, those text messages have to be pretty short."

"Why doesn't he just IM you?"

"Well, I'm not always on my computer, and during the tournament, we have to be ready to play whenever the other teams are."

"What, he can't just call your cell phone? We do have unlimited long distance, you know.  Tell him to call you from now on.  And I'm not paying for your captain's itchy texting fingers. You owe me about $400."

"Uh...I don't have it."

"You got paid Friday, right?"

"Child support check."

Again, the answer doesn't ring true; his child support check is paid every 2 weeks so that it doesn't completely consume one check.  "Fine.  Figure out which credit card you'll have to raid for the funds and have it to me by Friday, because I don't get paid until next week."

"Uh...O.K., fine."  He looks over my shoulder at the bill.  "Can I borrow that?"

Not sure why he needs to borrow the bill, but I hand it over.  "I need it back so I can enter the number into my budget software."

He suddenly needs to go smoke a cigar.  I determine later that he went outside and called his mistress--whose number was all over the phone bill--to tell her that I'm starting to figure out something's not right and they've left a hideously obvious trail that I'm starting to follow.

That Thursday, three days later, he told me he was going "up to New York" to visit "Ed and DeeDee".

This is the first time I've heard the name "DeeDee", though I vaguely recognize "Ed.".  "Wait...who's DeeDee?"

"Ed's wife.  She's throwing a party for Ed and invited me to come."

I now remember where I've heard the name "Ed" before.  "To New York?  I thought Ed lived in Pennsylvania."

In retrospect, I should have seen his mind scrambling frantically.  "Uh...no.  He lives in New York."

"Then is this a different Ed from the one you met in Pennsylvania?"

"No, same one.  Ed lives in New York.  He drove down to meet me at the cigar factory."

"He drove down to meet you there?  You're two online folks who've never met in person, and you both agree to meet at a cigar factory in Pennsylvania?"

"It's the halfway point between us, and we both like cigars.  Look, do I need to get out a map or something?"

I finally relent and agree he can go, I'll be fine.  But I need the money before he leaves. On Thursday, he gives me $300 in cash (saying it's all he had in his savings account) and says he'll repay the rest later, then leaves for work Friday morning and presumably goes up to New York from there.  (I later found out he skipped work and went straight to DeeDee's house, in a panic about how they were going to get through this.  From voice mail records, cell phone timestamps, and friends' statements, I now know this was the weekend they finalized plans for them both to leave their respective spouses.  DeeDee isn't her real name, of course.)

Naturally, once I'm alone, I get sick again--this time with shingles--and have to go through the painful shingle treatment all alone when the disease is at its worst (first few days of treatment).  My mother is fit to be tied that he isn't there and says that she's concerned that "he's not handling your illness well" and "you may need to talk to him and help him understand that he needs to be there for you, especially on weekends, when you're trying to recover from the grind of the work week".

TeenageGirlEx's mom, FirstEx, calls to talk to Hubby.  I tell her Hubby isn't home.  She says they must have gotten their calendars crossed, because she could have sworn this was a custodial swap week--our turn--but he never showed up for the swap.  Now this is weird, because he's never missed a swap before, and I was pretty sure this was a swap week too but figured they'd worked all that out since he was heading out of town.  In any event, since I'm not the legal custodial parent, I technically can't pick her up, and because I have shingles, I don't want to expose her to the virus, so I tell FirstEx to give him a call and find out what he wants to do.  FirstEx calls back and says he's not answering his cell phone, but says her family is planning a 4th of July celebration next week and she'll just swap the weeks off and notify him of his new schedule.  We exchange pleasantries and hang up.

Hubby comes home, in some ways even more stressed than he was before he left.  I tell him he needs to call FirstEx ASAP because he missed a swap.  "No, I didn't," he protested, then when I told him about the conversation, he mutters that "[FirstEx] must be getting senile because I KNOW we already worked that out."

Then, suddenly, he's eager to do laundry.  And dishes.  And cleaning up his mess by the bed.  And putting away books and crap he's always leaving by chairs, in piles, etc.  No lie, he spends the next three days doing nothing but laundry and housework.  I resist the temptation to ask about alien abductions and what happened to my real husband and just sit back and enjoy the pampering.

Except...it's not really pampering.  I soon notice that the laundry getting washed is primarily in the colors he wears all the time--black, blue, white.  No reds, no pastels, no sheets, no towels.  And he's getting obsessive about picking through the laundry pile and matching up socks, finding dress shirts, etc.  At one point I see his laundry pile consists entirely of his clothing.  I add a few items of my own in the same color range to the pile.  When he returns to fetch the pile for the next load, he looks confused that it's twice the size he expected it to be.  "I need work clothes, too," I noted with a smile.

"Uh...O.K., but I really need those pants for dress rehearsal next week," he replied.

"And that would preclude you from washing my pinstripe pants...how?"

He said nothing and went to do another load.

Of course, I now recognize the obsessive cleaning as a classic sign of a spouse in the midst of an affair.  More directly, a spouse in an affair who's ready to desert his current spouse for his lover and freedom.

The morning of July 6, 2006, I was sick as a dog and strongly considering calling in sick, then deciding belatedly to suck it up and go to work.  He left before I woke up that morning.  The last time we had been in the same house together as husband and wife was while we were asleep.  The phone in the house rang twice, both times from unknown phone numbers.  As soon as I answered, the person on the other end hung up.  I strongly suspect that he was calling from a number I wouldn't recognize to check if I'd left the house yet.  As I was heading for the office, I swore I spotted his van at a nearby gas station, but dismissed it; there are a gazillion blue minivans on the roads these days.

The day was terrible.  Horrible.  I felt like death warmed over.  I was having blurred vision and decided to cut out early and go to an optometrist and have my vision checked.  (Good thing, too.  The glaucoma test revealed my eye pressure was over 20, a possible sign of glaucoma.  Later testing revealed the initial readings were incorrect and my eyes were fine.)  On the way home, I called the house to tell Hubby I'd be home in about an hour.  He didn't answer the phone.  I thought this odd but decided that he was probably out having a smoke like he was doing more and more frequently, and I'd see him soon enough.

As I approached the house, I noticed two things:  There was a package on the porch, and a note on the door.  I thought both were odd:  Hubby always gets the mail and the parcels off the porch, and who would leave a note in an envelope stuck in the screen door?  As I reflected on my stinky day, I wryly said aloud:  "With my luck lately, that's a 'Dear Jane' letter."

And then I got to the porch...and realized that was indeed what it was.

As I stood on the porch and read Hubby's rambling, self-serving, happyhappylovelove for his new beloved, DeeDee, I had to remind myself to breathe.  I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.  I felt as if I'd been kicked in the teeth.  I felt as if I'd been abandoned, deserted, left alone to die.  I even found myself thinking, "What, did he hate me so much he couldn't stand to wait until I died?  It's not like he'll have long to wait at this rate..."

I dragged myself in the door and read it twice more.  That's when I saw the empty bookshelves, the full bags of garbage, the boxes strewn everywhere from a hasty packing attempt.

And then I broke down crying, screaming from deep, searing emotional pain, sobbing so hard my body was spasming.

I called my mom.  Her reaction became the prototype for the reaction of every single person who knew us as a couple that Hubby had left and was now on his way to becoming StoopidEx:

• What?
• No [intercoursing] way!
• You've got to be [intercoursing] kidding me!
• [Insert insult questioning his manhood, his gender, his intelligence, his bravery, and/or his parentage here]!

I called Soon-To-Be-StoopidEx on his new cell phone (he'd gotten smart enough to go get a new line after finding out his secret messages were no longer so secret) and told him I'd read the letter.  "So, this is it?" I asked.

"It is," he replied.

"What, you couldn't even find the decency to tell me in person?"

"It's better this way."

"I'll take your word for it for now."

"Fine.  I'll come clean out the rest of my stuff next week sometime while you're at work."

I muttered something noncommittal and hung up.

And at that moment, the happy married life of KimberlyKnits turned into a tangled, knotted mess.

Tune in next time for the fun of property negotiations, mortgage refinancing, quit claim deeds, and filing With Cause in a state that only recognizes three causes (Adultery, Abuse, Abandonment).

Until then, remember that I'm telling this in retrospect, which means I survived.  And if I can survive a divorce with my messed up physical health and emotional pain, you can, too.

God Bless....