Deceiving is Lying

November 18th, 2013: The day I filed for divorce.

That night, it was eating at me that I had no real definition for why this was happening. Were there really just a bunch of little lies? Or were things worse than they seemed?

I was going through a bunch of Peter's and my stuff in our closet because I was angry and wanted some evidence---evidence of what? I didn't know.

I went out to the garage to throw away a bag of aluminum cans Peter had been saving to turn in for cash. I dumped them into the recycle bin and my eye caught what looked like a beer bottle. I began to rummage through the trash I had just thrown away and I found cans upon cans of alcoholic beverages, all hidden in my own damn garage!

I was furious. Mr. I-Would-Never-Drink was drinking in my garage, while I was home, with my children close by.

For some of you, that doesn't seem like a big deal. Let me explain my tangent just a teensy bit for you. I have a strong testimony of the Word of Wisdom. I don't believe in consuming alcohol, coffee, certain types of tea, among many other things. If you'd like to learn more, click on the link above.

Furthermore, the biggest problem was the LIE. Peter Pan had promised when he left our church that his standards hadn't changed. For a year, he lied. For a year, he promised he wasn't drinking and that his irrational escapades were due to lack of sleep or problems at work. You know that emotional abuse and manipulation I'd been experiencing? There was NO WAY it was due to anything other than sleep or work problems...he promised lied to me about that.

The truth is, these were signs of an addiction. You can call it an alcohol addiction or you can call it an addiction to lying. But the manipulation made me feel like I was wrong for not trusting him. Anytime a problem would arise, he would turn it into my fault and most of the time, I ended up believing him and second guessing myself. The anxiety I had been experiencing didn't make sense until after D-day because I had nothing to base it off of, other than "bad feelings". I think deep down, my intuition was gearing me up for D-day. I think I knew things were so much worse than I had proof of. Anxiety is a funny thing. Well, actually, it isn't funny at all. But anxiety was my inner feelings trying so hard to yell at me and tell me things were WRONG and had been wrong for a long time---a lot longer than I would've guessed.

That night, I dug deeper and found more. I found things from 2010 (three years into our marriage...you know, when things were "good") of him drinking and lying to me. I found a letter from a few months before he left, during the months I thought were good in our marriage, where he told a friend he wasn't happy and wanted to leave.

What I wondered is why the HELL he didn't just come clean?

Why lie? What was in it for him? Did he really think he could live his entire married life that way without me ever finding out?

December 14th, 2013, I wrote this in my blog:
I have a love/hate relationship with old blog posts. I'm grateful that I can be reminded of the ups and downs but it angers me to read and remember those times where I was really trying. A year ago, we were in marriage counseling. What in the hell happened? I read an old blog post about "Peter's" birthday and how he'd been working hard on a Saturday and the emotions surfaced. Was he really at work that Saturday? How many other days did I think he'd been working when he wasn't? Why? Why does he have to be a liar?!! Why did I marry a liar? I'm angry at him tonight but I blame both of us. It was my decision to marry him but the lying? The heartache? The emotional abuse? That was all him. I hate him tonight.

The addictive lying has made it so I don't trust very much. The addictive lying has made it so I question everyone, including myself. The past seven years have taught me so much---some of it good, some of it crap. You know those rose-colored glasses that most people have when they're getting married or watching love stories? Yeah, those don't exist in my world.

Love requires a lot of trust and that is scary. Worth it but scary.

My heart is healing from the "learning experiences" I've had. And in the mean time, if there is one thing I have learned, it's that deceiving is lying---it's the same damn thing.