I Can't Do It Anymore

I've said it so many times before now but this time I'm really done. 

I thought I could get over a lie here and there and I wanted so badly to believe him when he said he would never talk to her again. He always assured me that he now realized how awful he'd been and he was sorry he changed when we moved to Texas and he wanted to be in love with me again. Goddammit, I wanted to believe him when he said he wanted to be a family with just me and his daughter like any decent man would!

I've done nothing wrong except stay as long as I have and let my self-worth wither like the trees and flowers in this hell called East Texas. We were so happy in Atlanta when we didn't have any money.  We had a cute little house that we were slowly renovating and it was the place all our wonderful friends came to hang out.  We had my family an hour away and his family next door.  We went on walks in our awesome neighborhood and we were close to every great clothing, furniture, or grocery store we could ever want.  He would often tell me out of the blue that he loved me more than anything and he was so happy to be spending his life with me.  He wasn't perfect, of course. I know that nobody is and I accepted his flaws because he was so great in so many other ways.

Everything was ok when I unexpectedly got pregnant soon after moving away.  I was very understanding of his extensive travel and was his rock when he came home hating everything about his job. He told me to hang in there for the first three years because the hours would be long, the travel hard to deal with, and we'd move several times but then he'd have an office position in Houston and we could start a family.  He was so supportive when I was dealing with depression a couple years earlier.  I thought he knew the signs but he denied being depressed when he finally told me in April that he wasn't in love with me anymore.  After three months of trying to deal with his sudden emotional abuse while very pregnant and far from any family support, I found out he had been cheating on me the whole time.  The next couple months were a rollercoaster of emotions and lies and apologies and tears and more lies. 

I always told him that if things were to somehow go bad between us, I'd stay in Texas with our baby so that we could raise her evenly and she wouldn't have to go several hundred miles between parents like both of us had to do as kids.  I can't stand by that promise today.  I've been hurt too bad and lied to too many times to do him any favors.  If I were to stay, my daughter would see me as a sad, bitter woman missing her family and clinging to the memory of her happily-ever-after that was so brutally crushed.  She'd have both her parents but I would not be setting a good example by rolling over and continuing to live his career dreams if we weren't a couple anymore.

I start my story here and I'll slowly backtrack over the events of the past 2 years or so.  Some of you will think I'm stupid for staying as long as I have, others will think I should still stick it out, and most will wonder how the hell I'm still sane.  Some of the things I'll write about what he said or did to me will sound inhuman but I swear I have not made up a word of it.