Tying to make sense of it all

At 19 I met the the future father of my children, the man that I thought I would grow old with. I first noticed his smile and his sense that the world was his playground that he knew how it all worked and his optimism that everything would always go the way he wanted it to. It was so different to how I felt about the world then. His enthusiasm brushed off on my and we set off on a life together. He used to joke that I would be happy in one little house with all my savings safe in a shoe box under the bed. He was right, I wanted a simple life and I felt we had enough even when we had nothing. I remember the first apartment I had and my first job it all felt so grown up and I was so greatful. I even managed to attend college at the same time. he made me embarrassed at my gratitude for what I had. He taught me the importance of 'leveraging' which meant always be overdrawn, always have borrowings, always spend the Banks money, invest and just as you are managing those investments, invest again. He had one eye on our life and one eye hoping his big brothers and family would someday pat him on the back and say... "there's the good Protestant, we are proud of you now". That pat never came and he became addicted himself to the pot of god he imagined at the end of the rainbow. I was a catholic from a small town, what did I know he would say, and I would deep down feel he must be right. I was always an objective based girl, give me a job and I would get it done, often in record time, often at the expense of myself and my own needs. So we set off on the adventure of a life together, me wanting to stop and admire the rainbow and he chasing that pot of gold. He believed his job, his health his space, his job and his goals were superior in everyway to mine. My interests my passions, well he would tolerate them and be very welcoming to anyone who shared my interests so he didn't have to. It lead to much lonliness and confusion in many ways. I admired him so much though, he was controlled, organised focused, neat, tidy and always sure of what he was doing. I was always questioning, wondering trying to understand things and grow. I always felt like a child who didn't quite understand the adult world which he lived in. Little by little I lost myself completly in his objectives. He would joke that everyone thought I was the strong one, implying he knew better, he would joke that I was naive, he was right. The first house we bought in 1993 meant we had hardly any money to eat, going out socialising was a waste of money we could be investing. He showed no interest in others and spent most of the conversation lecturing that people should be investing rather than having fun. Little by little I stopped socialising to. My 21st in a hotel in my home town had over 400 people, friends from school, from college and from the airline in which I worked. He wasn't flexible he wasn't sociable so I became more and more reclusive too. I don't remember him proposing to me, I know he said he couldn't afford a ring so I got car insurance instead. The "perfect wedding " was planned, but it was far fro what I dreamed of. He was supportive in me creating the story and the image of a beautiful wedding but I don't remember it being a shared experience, I just checked in now and again and told him how it was going. Then on the day the two families and lives mixed... like oil and water. The honeymoon, on the paradise island of seychelles, without any romance, or fun, I was lonely. Always looking to see something in his eyes that meant we were one. I only saw either approval or disapproval. We came home and faced the serious amount of debt we were in. Solution, he went off on a contract to Luxembourg two months after our marriage. he would fly home some weekends and discuss money. We had become a business partnership. While he was away I threw myself into work and managed to secure a great job, I called him and said you can come home we don't need you to work away now. His answer, Luxembourg is 90% of my life now you are 10%, deal with it till I get back. I waiting another 6 months, he missed our wedding anniversary and my birthday. Then he announced another 6 months contract because he wanted to buy a lotus esprit. I made him choose me or the car... he chose the car. In a few days of hellish nightmare I bought the house off him and he left. I had called his bluff and I was not ready for him to just walk out. I spent the next few weeks, with the biggest physical ache in my chest, utter heartbreak and unable to process the reality of what had happened. But I did and I was managing when he came back. Gone was the bright fresh face, instead a dark thin, helpless soul, physically different and lost. He had no one else to talk to and began to explain the inner demon he said lived within him. Outpourings of stories of a very lonely childhood, ignored, devoid of affection, boarding school into pillows he cried, feelings of insecurity and terrible terrible nightmares. My heart bled. He asked me for another chance. I saw the courage in his honesty and I took him back. No sooner back and I mean within days, he began to invest again putting us into sever debt. At the same time we were trying for a baby. We embarked upon the roller coaster of IVF, and all the challenges that brought with it. I remember the day the doctor explained the side effects for me of the medication, he proudly said, Lisa will not get any of them, got an injection gun and volunteered that I could easily do the injections at home to save the trips into the hospital. SO I did. We moved into a most magical home in the country isolated and beautiful. By the time the baby was born, we were burning shoes to keep warm and wondering how we would be able to afford the heat for the winter. To the outside world it all looked so idyllic, successful and most importantly for him, in his mind anyway enviable. I played along so willingly. I was so lonely. The physical hard work of maintaining this beautiful house was good for us and I believe our happiest times were spent there, but it was isolated. I was trapped, trapped in our story and in a marriage that felt so lonely. But happiness with a goal only satisfied him for maximum two years. Again he became depressed. We moved to Hong Kong, or should I say he went and left me to move, sell a house and relocate with a new baby. When I arrived in Hong Kong in a strangely uncomfortably idyllic island town called Discovery Bay. He brought me around and explained his view of the people. Mostly pilots and their families populated this golf car driven little paradise. There were 3 groups, the happier married ones, the wild playboy single ones and over in the darkest corners of the "plaza" the disgraced ones he called the loosers. These had come over previously as we had with their families hopes and dreams. They then ended up loosing their families, having nasty divorces and married very young often very pretty philipina girls and were now sitting red faced from life and drink with a gaggle of young girls often pushing prams and supporting half of their families back home. The luster of their previously boosted egos no dulled and the wives and kids gone back to their own countries had healed from the loss of their dreams and moved on. I remember him looking down on these men and saying how utterly pathetic they were. The irony of it all! We promised to each other that we would never end up like that....... how wrong we were. I have decided to write this blog, no one will probably ever see it but I need to have some way of trying to relieve the pressures at this time. Maybe even make sense of all of this to myself. I don't know how things are going to work out and I don't understand why they are the way the are. SO I do not have a beginning or a middle or an end. Just here and now. This is not meant to be an attack or an allocation of blame, who knows why people do what they do, but each decision, can lead to the most unexpected outcomes. Lets see how it goes.