B.Løvetann

Life gives and takes away. We end up in situations we never believed could be possible.
When I look back at my life, I almost have to laugh. So many times, I said:
Now I’ve hit rock bottom.
And then it got worse.
We human beings can endure so much more than we think. But at some point, everything starts to grow dark. And that darkness—that is what slowly eats you alive.
That darkness is what can actually kill you.
Both physically and mentally.
I had started planning my way out of the relationship.
I was just waiting for the final thread to snap.
I knew that if I left, all hell would break loose.
But I also knew that if I stayed, he might destroy me completely.
I realized that I no longer had anything that was mine. Everything belonged to him.
So I decided to start buying my own things. A sofa. Two chairs. A cabinet.
Small things.
Small steps.
But to me, they were part of the plan.
I had started investing in my own future.
During this period, we lived almost completely separate lives. He did his thing, and I found myself a hobby.
Plants.
I went from one plant in April to fifty by July.
I loved it.
I read, I learned, and I actually became quite good at it. The plants gave me something to hold on to.
Something that was mine.
Eventually, I noticed that I wasn’t as focused on him anymore. Days could pass without us really speaking. I made a new friend he didn’t know, and I talked to her a lot.
Without fully realizing it, I had started building a life of my own.
He noticed.
And he didn’t like it.
Before, when we disagreed, there would be arguments and shouting. But now I simply said:
“I’m not going to talk to you when you speak to me like that. We’re not going to agree, so let’s just leave it.”
Then I went into my plant room and closed the door.
I sat down among my plants and enjoyed myself instead.
He would make comments about how all I ever did was mess around with “those plants.”
But whenever he left, I realized how good it felt to be alone.
Eventually, I almost started encouraging him not to be home.
I think he could feel that he no longer had the same control over me.
When he was supposed to enter his second drug rehabilitation program in December, I felt an enormous sense of relief.
Three months of peace.
Three months of quiet.
I couldn’t wait.
But that relief didn’t last long.
Shortly afterward, I received a call from his addiction counselor. He had arrived so intoxicated that he couldn’t begin treatment. Instead, he was admitted to a psychiatric ward, if I remember correctly.
Later, I heard that he had discharged himself and gone away.
Then I received a message from him.
He wanted to stop by and pick up some clothes before going on a cabin trip with his friends.
I told him that if he left, I didn’t know whether I would still be there when he came back.
He didn’t care.
He packed.
And left.
That was enough.
I called the father of my children and asked if he could help me move.
This had to happen now.
Mom and Dad came too.
By the end of that evening, I had moved out.
It felt strange.
Painful.
Heartbreaking.
And difficult.
We were still together, but I had removed myself from the situation.
Something I often had to remind him of.
That Christmas, he went to Oslo and was gone for almost the entire holiday. He was alone, so I asked a friend if he could spend Christmas Eve with her and her family.
He went.
And had a good time.
In the new year, he entered rehab again.
This time, he completed the program.
As far as I know, he stayed almost completely sober for six or seven months.
That summer, he told me that he had paid for sex with three prostitutes the previous Christmas.
He explained that he had thought we were over—even though we were still together.
He had been hurt.
He had been lonely.
Or so he said.
I accepted it.
It was okay.
He promised he would never do it again.
Then autumn came.
And he relapsed.
He had old drug debts. On top of that, he was told that a mole was cancerous.
He became withdrawn.
I remember begging him not to shut me out. I told him he had to tell me what was going on inside his head.
But he refused to talk.
Within six weeks, he was diagnosed with melanoma and declared cancer-free.
He set fire to his own house so he could use the money to pay off his drug debt.
Then he told everyone around him that he had—or had had—cancer, and that his house had burned down.
He received sympathy.
A lot of sympathy.
And he loved sympathy.
Meanwhile, I had bought a house.
I had found a job.
My children could finally come and stay with me.
I was beginning to live a fairly normal life.
It felt good.
For a little while, I blossomed.
Then, after he was “well” again, he disappeared.
For six weeks.
I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He refused to answer my messages and rarely picked up the phone when I called.
Remember, this was a man who, according to himself, lived an isolated life.
Whenever I finally managed to reach him, he accused me of trying to control him.
He said I was sick.
I tried to explain that surely it was normal to care where your partner had been for weeks.
But the few times I managed to speak to him, he yelled at me.
Actually, yelled is probably too mild a word.
He roared at me.
After six weeks, he came back to my house as if nothing had happened.
I remember one evening when I went to curl up in his arms.
Suddenly, I felt it.
Someone else has been here.
I said it out loud, the way I always did when something felt wrong.
At first, he denied it.
A few days later, he admitted it.
But with a twist.
He had been raped.
I asked him to explain.
Eventually, he admitted the truth.
No.
He had not been raped.
He had been having an affair with this woman.
He said he had cheated because he had been lonely.
“Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?” I asked him.
“You disappear for six weeks. I sit at home worrying about you. And then you tell me you cheated because you were lonely? You could have come home. Instead, you cheated. For fuck’s sake, I’m the one who should have felt lonely.”
It ended with me comforting him.
Later, we went to see her.
She told the truth.
He became angry.
And hit her.
She moved away from him while he sat down in her kitchen to smoke.
I followed her.
I talked to her.
I told her I believed her.
Later, she showed me the evidence.
The photographs.
He had been there several times.
Not just once.
He had been having a relationship with her for some time.
And that was when everything started to go dark for me.
I lost weight.
I barely ate.
I was completely falling apart.
And I still didn’t know that I hadn’t reached rock bottom yet.

To be continued…