I would have rather had a funeral

A would never ever want to kill anyone. I would never ever want to hurt anyone. I honestly have not or ever want someone to die before their time. I would never want to hurt anyone on purpose or even on accident. So when I say that I believe that it would have been so much easier if I would have had to bury my ex-husband than divorce him I mean it emotionally. I would never honestly want him to die, but the pain that he has caused me and my kids would have never had to happen if the good Lord had just taken him.  We could have had a wonderful memorial. With flowers and a service.  Spoke words over him and said our good byes.  We would visit once a week and than once a month and even though it would have been hard...we would go on living our lives. Fond memories would be spoken and good things would be remembered. But in divorce only the ugly comes out. All the good things are forgotten. You forget that he was a good man once.  That you saw only the good in this man.  That he made your heart pitter patter at one time and that you had vowed to stand by him till you died. In divorce the dream is gone. Not just gone either....shattered, burned, tortured, pieced back together and cried over.  You finally after soul wretching and agony you are able to walk into a new beginning.  Divorce is never easy. It hurts so bad that you go numb just to protect yourself from going insane.  Everything you said through out the marriage is gone over. You wonder what you did and what you should have done.  In my case, and many others out there, there was abuse. He beat me and abused me, cheated on me with many many women, and all while preaching the christian gospel. He ignored our children but retained ownership.  He called me a whore and slapped me, while he was sleeping with the sunday school teacher. I look back and wish I had had the courage to leave him when the kids were younger, but I just couldn't let go of the forever after story. He was my prince charming and I wanted the happily-ever-after ending.
I didn't get it. I wasn't meant to have it in this horror story. I was the one person that made it out to tell the tale.  I was not like other woman that had to hide for years to protect themselves and their children. I was not one of the women that had to bury a child or have them all taken away because they were being abused. I got out...so did my children.Maybe later then we should, but we did get out, and I divorced him and so did some of my kids.  We are survivors.  But would our lives be different if I had left sooner or if he had died and we could have been able to remember only the good things. The torture of divorce has horrible. The torture and humiliation of having a man cheat on you is agony. The emotional and physical abuse was major and I have to walk through the after-effects daily. At this point I have to think that having a funeral and remembering him as a good man and father (even if he wasn't) would have been so much better than going through the hiding, mental abuse,  legal paperwork and agony of divorce. The loss of divorce is so much more than the loss at a funeral.

Lashing out

I am a survivor.  There I said it. I still don't feel it, I still don't accept it, but I have said it. When I think of survivors I think of people that have gone through horrific things and came out of his battered and bruised and effected. Crippled - but running marathons, scarred - but becoming a lawyer, sexually abused - but standing strong in the face of her abuser.  Those are survivors. To call myself a survivor is to accept what was done to me. To accept that I was raped by the pastor that led the congregation I was a part of. Accept that the man that, I married, I trusted, had babies with, believed in, beat me and finally pushed me down a flight of stairs that broke my neck. That lied to the paramedics when they got to the house. That after neck surgery, breast reconstruction surgery, two years of physical therapy, I was stupid enough to stay with him. Even after all those things...I still don't consider myself a survivor or a victim. I don't feel strong I feel weak. I feel like I failed my children and every woman out there that was strong enough to walk away before it got really bad.
I can not answer why I didn't walk away sooner? I never want to answer that question, I always want to  answer that question with a question....why did he beat me? I know whathe told me.  He always said that I was the only one that could push his buttons.  I knew exactly what to say to really hit at his very soul. I had so much power over him that I provoked his abuse. So if I was that powerful, than why wasn't I powerful enough to stop him? Why am I the one that suffered through the bruises and twisted wrists? The surgeries and physical therapy? I still didn't say enough. I still believed that he would change. I lived in shame of the other women. The women that he met online. The women he spent nights and weeks with. Amazing the kind of abuse another human being will put another through. The physical usually heals, but the emotional leaves wounds so deep that they fester. You don't want to fester. You want to heal and go on, but its always in the back of your mind that you are broken. You always find yourself asking the question - what is wrong with me? Why did he abuse me? What is wrong with me that he had to find satisfaction in someone elses bed? If only I had been a better wife, better mother, better lover. If only I could be a better listener, better cook. He wouldn't need to cheat or become so angry.
I am a survivor. I survived his anger when he shoved me so that I fell down the stairs, breaking my neck. I survived his threats and his beatings. I survived his humilation when he told me that he had slept with my ex-sister-in-law, my best-friend, the neighbor, the sunday school teacher of the church he pastored. I still feel the humilation as I sat in the front row and listened as he confessed his sins in front of the whole congregation, giving up his commission. Asking for their forgiveness and forgiveness for the women he seduced.  But never once did he ask for my forgivness. Maybe that is why I couldn't forgive him. All I ever wanted to hear from him was that he was sorry.  But he was never sorry.  He was sorry for being caught. He was sorry that he lost his temper, but if I hadn't pushed him I wouldn't have gotten hurt. He was sorry, but not for what he had done to me. Only for what he had gotten caught at. He was a narrsasistic, selfish bastard, who never thought about what his action would do to his wife.
How he humilated his children. I see what their father's hippocrital behavior has done. He see's none of that. That is why I lash out. That is why I lash out now. Anger.