8:00 pm, I'm scurrying around the house getting the essentials I will need. Getting dressed for the weather - which I might add what as inadequate as was my irrational thinking.
Off I go and arrive there by 8:45 pm. Just light enough light to see my way to find keys with a dying flashlight.
I make it into the shack...light a bunch of candles and proceed to clean the mouse shit off the surfaces. Snooped around a bit - more so out of curiosity to see if the wine glasses and dishes I left there - were still there. NOPE. Probably used them for target practice. They were pretty - wine glasses with hummingbirds - symbolic of his mother and mine. 2-Plates to match. Like I said - I'm sure he got rid of them - heavens forbid someone see them and wonder why they were there. How would he explain fancy stuff like that at a dirty grimmy hunting shack.
Like trying to explain why there was a wine bottle on a stump to his son or why the place smelled like sex to his x brother in law. But hey - NO ONE knew. lol. He's such an idiot. The only one he was fooling was himself.
Anyway - I had brought a bottle of Apothic wine. Found a red solo cup, took a drink of his Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey while I was pouring wine... Not even a full glass and three shots later, I'm feeing every ounce of that alcohol. I knew I was in trouble. I realized I had not eaten since around noon. Every since having covid in January - alcohol was not really my friend. Small amounts - sure. More than 8- oz, not so much.
My hope was to write a note and go to bed. Lay in the bunk he does, be close to him. For some reason in my overly emotional state, that is what I needed. So I begin writing my thoughts on a pad of potlatch paper I found on the shelf by the sink. Most of which I can't even remember as I cried my eyes out while writing, ranting to his father, yelling at God and the universe as to why I must continue to feel as I do. Ultimately - just talking to myself as I write.
Multiple trips to the out house later, I finally am done writing, crying, ranting and yelling and decide to go to bed. I could barely walk. Was it the alcohol or the cold? I knew I was in trouble. I remember getting into the sleeping bag. I don't remember placing 4 phone calls. 2 to him and 2 to my daughter. I don't remember texting people either. I just remember being in the sleeping bag looking for my phone because it was ringing. I must have hit it just right - I heard a voice - and then it was quiet.
I remember just laying there feeling my heart beat in my head - slow and faint..thinking - this is it, Im going to freeze to death and die here in his bunk.
For some reason I got up - I suppose to go to the out house - I fell getting out of the sleeping bag - into the door frame feeling the breath knocked out of me- landing against the door going outside. Feeling the cold metal of the door on my face, I just laid there knowing I wasn't going to make it outside, that if I tried I wouldn't make it back in. Dysfunctional as I was, I was still coherent enough to know I'd freeze to death in the snow for sure.
As I crawl along the floor, finally able to gasp for air, face down on the floor I puke. Thinking Im going to drown in my vomit. I finally finish, crawl to the bunk and pull myself up to attempt to stand - I have to remove my cloths, they are full of vomit. I manage to do so.
28 degrees and nearly nakid in a sleeping bag. I slept, yet turned over frequently so I knew I was alive. I woke at 4:58 startled and began to shiver uncontrollably. I knew I had to get out of there. I remembered a blanket like thing on his dads bunk. I took it and wrapped myself in it, cleaned up my puke, gathered my things and left. Shaking and shivering all the way home. Feeling like a train wreck. Looking even worse. My eyes were swollen with fluid from crying. Puke in my hair. I reeked like a dirty shack, booze and puke. No al du perfume there.
In the course of it all I texted him, sent him pictures and an email with not one response that night. 4:15 am the following day he emails me "silence is my only option. If I open my mouth or send a message.... it's used against me."
Needless to say, I responded:
Silence is a response and your silence proves exactly what I've thought all along. I am worth nothing to you, my living means nothing to you, I am of absolutely no value to you.
How is that proven? Silence- not one response to ask, are you okay, are you warm, are you still alive.
Not one word. That silence speaks volumes. All i needed to hear.
28° in a sleeping bag, dysfunctional from alcohol and lack of food. Nearly nakid because I fell, knocked the wind out of myself, knocked out...proceeded to puke all over myself and the floor, which I did clean up the best I could with wipes...
Your lucky you didn't have a dead body. Had I not woke when I did to my phone ringing, that's what you would have had to explain.
So take your silence and choke on it. Because what you don't do, didn't do, paints a pretty picture too.
Guess what? No response. I swear he was hoping I would die so his dirty little secrets of having multiple women lovers would go to the grave with me. I now know the feeling of how he hated the girl before me. Hates me so much he'd rather see me dead. Its actually kinda funny.
8:23 first text - going to the shack
9:46 first picture of the shack
9:51 second picture of his bunk
10:05 pm emailed him - Im at your shack - our ol love shack...let myself in, lit your candles, drank some wine and your booze, cleaned a bit and snooped, flash light is dead.
10:23 text again-saying thats the bunk Im sleeping in (his)
10:36 texted him again- hello are you going to acknowledge my existence? If I should be lucky enough to wake in the morning. with all the candles burning, now that I am grateful to have had a really cold place to stay with an outhouse and bunk that is in the very least close to you. About as good as it gets for me as the cyotes crackle in the not so far distance. I wont text you again its pointless.
11:13pm text him - just let me die
1:37am text - i had fallen, puked on myself and hurt
12:53 Text a friend, left a voice message
1:07 He returns my call, the call I missed
1:40 I message him - Im not okay. ( no response)
1:44 called my daughter
1:49 phone call to X, answering machine
1:51 Called my daughter again
1:59 phone call to X again - answering machine
I realize I just gotta sleep and survive - I slept off and on until 4:58am.
I know my worth.
No more rash decisions like that! He's not worth it.
Months later - a day or two after memorial day, he decides its time for a conversation. I had cleaned out my closet and decided to decorate the shack with all the bras, underwear and nighties I had bought for him. I hung stuff every where.
He wanted to make it clear that his son could have found all that had he not stopped there first. That he had no remorse or compassion for me the night I was there. He could have cared less if I had died, that by comparison my dying is less important than whats going on in his life- which I am to blame for of course because I am one of those women he got caught sleeping with.
Poor Guy . Interesting how I am to blame for all the other women. As if I forced him to sleep with those before me (for two years and those during and after). I didn't force him to make those choices. Only thing I asked him for was forever. Thanks be to God that didn't work out.
God will allow you to be hurt again and again until you finally have the strength to figure it out and walk away. For me that took another brush with death. Ive learned my lesson this time.