The Dragons

"It's important to name the dragons", said my therapist during a previous session.

The dragons...those are my fears...the monsters...those things that keep me paralyzed. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. I fear the custody battle.
2. I fear that my husband will find this blog.
3. I fear rocking this boat so violently that we would all drown and perish at the hands of the sea monster under the raging churning waters of a storm that may not pass...and it would all be my doing.
4. I fear the children may take his side.

I am terribly afraid of going through a custody battle. I fear that custody would be granted in the exact opposite manner of what I would want. In this marriage I could leave EVERYTHING...except my children. I am afraid that he would take advantage of this vulnerability if he were aware of it.

If my husband discovers my blog, then he may take the fears and vulnerabilities that I expose here and use them as a weapon against me. His aim would be to hurt.

Life will never be the same after a divorce, but what if it is not necessarily for the better? What if none of us ever recover? What if we are not OK?

I don't want to turn my children against my husband; they need to continue to love him as they always have. I also do not want them to turn against me. I do not know how they will react to the news that Mom does not want to live with Daddy anymore. They are too young for me to explain to them the truth about his behavior. All they see is his current display of "affection"...and my reluctance to reciprocate. They don't see the ugliness inside of him. They think that I'm always just angry at him. I am afraid that they will blame me for the pain that a separation will cause and that he will continue to emphasize that it was not his choice.

These are my dragons - named and exposed, not for the purpose of doing anything about them but just for the sake of naming them. I don't know what comes next. Perhaps just seeing these monsters on the page makes them less frightening. For now, I am simply paralyzed by them.