My ex-husband

I'm writing this with very little coffee in my system, but I wanted to get this out.  I've been thinking about writing about my ex for a while, just to clear my mind and close that chapter.

I met Mark (yes, ex has same name as current) when I was 18 years old.  I was working at Stratton Mt Ski Resort as a secretary for Villa Housekeeping, the housekeeping department that kept all the condos up to snuff.  We had housekeepers working there as well as a few maintenance men.  I became friends with Moose and Jamie......the two maintenance men.

We were all partying one night (it was a non-stop party at Stratton) and Jamie introduced me to "Yukon".  Yukon aka Mark was 12 years older than me and held very little attraction for me.  Very little.  His looks were...not for me.  He had bad teeth.  He didn't much believe in grooming or taking care of his hygiene.  That being said, he started pursuing me.

I was sent roses at my work.  I was treated relatively nicely (remember I was young and single, so pretty much anything impressed me).  After a couple months of his pursuance, I gave in and started dating him.  What an idiot I was.

Once Mark had me, he was done trying.  No more flowers.  No more dates.  No more pursuing.  He virtually ignored me at times.  Which made me want him even more, of course.  Mark was a stoner.  Mark smoked pot from the second he woke up until he went to bed. And at Stratton, he also started using coke.  Quite the combination.

I was renting a house with two of my girlfriends, and Mark would show up when he felt like it.  He wasn't working, much.  Never did.  I guess when he needed food or booze or sex, he'd come on by the house.  When he needed money, he would find his way back to Ohio, to his Mom's house, stay there a while, get as much money as he could from her, and then come back to Vermont.

When I was.....20 I think?  Mark had been living in Ohio for a few months.  His Mom bought him some land out there and a trailer to live in.  I finally convinced him that he needed me out there.  I think he thought I could help by having a decent car and possibly finding work.  I drove out there with everything I owned or could fit into my Plymouth Horizon.  And the nightmare began.

This trailer he owned....was one of those tiny one room, turn the table into the bed at night, trailers.  No bathroom, had to go a mile down the road to the campground bathroom.  But at least we had running water and heat.  I couldn't find a job to save my life.  To feed us, Mark would break into campers he knew were vacant and scrounge up whatever food they had left behind for the winter;

Mark started hitting me.  Mostly when he was angry that we had no food.  Or if he didn't have enough money for his pot.  It was a miserable existence.  And then it got worse.

Mark lost his job at the campground, and so he and his friend decided to move the camper out to his land.  No running water, no nearby bathrooms, no electricity.  And then he would take my car and disappear for weeks on end.  I wanted to die.  I was living in the middle of the woods with no way out, cooking potatoes on an open fire because that's all there was to eat.  And historically, when Mark returned with my car, I would make him angry when I complained, and so he'd hit me.

I finally woke up after a year or so and begged my parents to let me come back home to Vermont.  I went and lived at their house, worked, paid rent.  Had a normal life.  And should have been done with Mark, had I had any self-esteem.

I ended up moving to New Hampshire.  I had a good job, a nice place to live, made money, had people wanting to fix me up with their friends.  Never took any of them up on it because I felt that it would have been cheating on Mark.  God forbid.

I found my old friend Jamie again, he lived on state over.  He was getting married and wanted me to come to the wedding.  Surprise......Yukon was there.  I wasn't going to do it...no way, not after the way he treated me.  But then.....he gave me attention.  He apologized.  He made everything right.  And so I got back together with him.  Stupid Mindi.

Another couple years of Mark sponging off of me.  Watching cartoons all day.  Robbing places at night to support his drug habit.  Mark used to give me fair warning.  "If you don't shut up by the time I get to 10, I'm going to have to hurt you".  And Mindi and her big mouth.....I used to go into work with strangulation marks on my neck, black eyes, slap marks.  My co-workers wanted to kill Mark.  But I kept going back.

And then we got married!  October 19. 1991.  Almost every guest at that wedding told me not to do it.  When it came time for me to walk down the aisle (staircase), no one could find Mark.  Or my sister.  They were eventually found out in the garage, getting high.  You see, the only way he could marry me was if he was high.  That wedding night, we stayed at a hotel.  And fought.  And he shut me up.  Again.

We lived in New Hampshire for a couple more years.  I worked my ass off.  He watched cartoons and disappeared to go to his Mom's house in OH.  When my father died in 2003, we decided to move back to Vermont to be near my Mom.  Found a place to rent, and left.  I cried for days after my Father died.  Not because he had passed away, because we had a really bad relationship....but because I KNEW that I would be moving back to Vermont.  And I didn't want to leave my friends in NH.

He finally got a job in VT, such as it was.  On and off, working once in a while, when he felt like it.  And taking off when he felt like it.  Maybe I was just jealous, because I was never the type to just take off....I like to think I'm a bit more responsible than that.

We rented a huge farmhouse.  I started working dispatching ambulances.  And I discovered AOL.  I was on my computer at every moment I could be.  I discovered that other men actually DID give me attention.  Mark had always told me that I would never find anyone better than him.  That no one would put up with me.  And that I was too fat to find another man.  And so in my warped mind, I set out to prove him wrong.  And I proved him wrong over and over again.

Because I was getting to feel more "free", I was also putting up with a lot less from him.  And I was paying the price.  He tried to push me down the stairs a few times.  Yanked me across the room by my hair.  He did a lot of his counting back then.  There were a few incidences that occurred that I was lucky to have made it out alive.  I decided it was time to leave.

I found myself a beautiful little apartment and moved out.  The last time I saw Mark, he had broken into my little apartment, and I came home to see him laying on my couch WITH HIS DIRTY BOOTS ON.  I asked him to leave.  Told him not to come back.  He served me with divorce papers a few days later.  YAY!!!  I was so happy....free, broke, alone....and free.




Well now I'm exhausted and need more coffee.  That's my ex husband story.  And now I've been with "the good Mark" for 12 years, married for 10 years on June 21.  And yes, there ARE men who will treat me better.  Mark has never raised his voice to me, let alone his hand.  And I love him for helping me see that I am worth it.