Ready To Heal

Mr. Excitement and I broke up. Somehow everyone saw that coming but me. It’s only now with the 20/20 vision that hindsight provides that I can see how destructive that relationship was. Mr. Excitement never did completely overcome his addictions. He merely replaced his alcoholism for prescription pain medication. In the months following the birth of our son Boo his prescription abuse escalated.

In December of 2008 he faked an injury at work and filed for worker’s compensation, forcing me to quit school and begin working when they refused to pay for the fictional injury. He took up the parental role in name only, sitting up late at night watching TV with the baby while Boo slept and I worked. He slept and watched more TV during the daylight hours while I attended to the house and cared for our son during. I was catching brief naps while Boo slept, but he berated me for being lazy and sleeping all day though I was only receiving 4 to 5 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period and even those were not consecutive.

The relationship had turned into a prison for me. He insisted that I hand over every dime I made in tips because I was too “irresponsible” to handle the money. He kept possession of the car keys and monitored my mileage to assure that I was only driving to and from work, the grocery store and the laundry mat. I was not allowed to communicate with friends and I could only speak to my mother when he listened in on my phone calls. He, on the other hand, was running up the cell phone bill my mother paid by $200 every month calling his friends and family. He insisted that we didn’t have enough money to pick up Bubba for my visitations with him, but he was spending about a $1000 a month on prescriptions. I was in danger of going to jail for not paying child support and my ex-husband, Mr. Perfect, was talking about taking me back to court to cut off my visitation.