Finally Free....

I want to thank everyone here for your help and encouragement. I have finally done it. I am out. After the marriage counseling and 17 1/2 years of a sexless marriage I finally ended it about a month ago. It took over two months for him to finally move out once the decision was made. However, that is par for the course with him. Everything in our marriage was done on his schedule. The day after he moved his furniture out, I started gutting the master bedroom.

When I move back into that room after over a year and a half, it will be all new. From sub-floor to ceiling. We divided everything up and I kept the living room furniture and had him take all of the bedroom furniture. So I have bought a new bed and have designed a new room that will be peaceful and perfect for me.

I have decluttered and removed all of the crap from around the outside of the house as well as most of it from inside. It took 15+ contractor bags to clean up the mess he had outside alone. I was never allowed to clean up the outside because all of the stuff out there were things he might need. Including I guess the pop bottles and coffee cups that fell out of his mess of a truck every time he opened or closed the door.

He showed up at the house while I was working outside to bring something to one of the kids and was upset because he said no one would ever help him when he wanted to clean up the yard. I told him that he never wanted my help and had told me outside was his area and not to touch anything. I didn't have help either but I got it done even with my health issues. It was so representiitive of our whole marriage. No one could touch anything without his permission, which was never granted.

I sorted and boxed all of the items within the house for his move. I told him that he would have to sort the garage and camping stuff, I told him the only thing that I ask is that he be as fair as I had been. (The first week in his new house the only thing he had to buy was groceries.) He went through part of it and was upset because I wouldn't help. However, up to this point there had been no arguing over who got what and I didn't want it to start now. He texted me a few days later and asked for a few things he didn't take. He said that going through all of that stuff was hard because it drove home that things are really over.

He left a few things behind, saying if he needed them he would come borrow them. However in about 2 weeks the deed to the house will be in just my name and I will be dropping a few more things off on his lawn if necessary. I do not want him coming back into the house to borrow things. I do not want the tools that I have been buying mixed in with what he thinks he has the right to borrow.

What has amazed me more than anything is that so far I don't miss him. I had been lonely for so long with him there, that now all I feel is relief. I am not coming home to his mess around his chair or all of the extra laundry. Or the clutter and mess that he accumulates. (I have heard that it took less than a month for every flat surface in the new house to be cluttered and full of crap.) I don't have to share the living room every night with a person who is just there, yet not there in any way for me.

For the first time in longer than I can remember I am looking forward to tomorrow. To having the bedroom done. Every project he ever did around our fixer upper home has one or two little things that are not completed. I have another trip to the dump to make and the outside of my house will once again look peaceful. Without him there, it will also stay that way. It's really nice to know that soon, my whole house will have the peaceful feel that my heart finally does. I hope to not be alone forever, that one day I will meet someone.

Right now, today, I am only concerned about meeting me. The person that I can be. I am looking forward to tomorrow and the plans that I am making for my life. I am enjoying the peace. I actually feel less lonely now that he is gone and I thank a lot of you for helping me find that peace.