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The truth about Jim: I don't ever really want to write about Jim directly. That's the trouble. Jim betrayed me and hurt me so terribly that I don't want to talk much about Jim. At least not at any length�. But I can talk about him a little bit. Jim changed at the hotel where the wedding reception was held right after the reception was over. The initial changes were subtle. Nonetheless, Jim changed into a man without one ounce of patience, without any concern whatsoever for my feelings and without the ability to communicate about anything serious. Jim was voiceless and without mercy. All that Jim cared about was Jim and as long as Jim was getting everything he wanted he could be all right to me. After the wedding I concentrated on regaining my health and on being a good wife for Jim. I'd wake up early every morning and prepare Jim's lunch from scratch while Jim ate his breakfast. After Jim's lunch was made, I'd prepare stacks of Chipati breads and my first meal of the day. Jim's lunch and my first meal consisted of tons of raw or slightly steamed vegetables to boost my immune system. I'm sure this food helped Jim as well. These weren't ordinary salads; they were full of cut turnips, radishes, kale, carrots, celery, beets, broccoli, green beans, spinach, lettuce and a ton of other fresh vegetables. They were eaten with the homemade Chipati bread on the side. I'd see Jim off to work and then I'd eat a huge bowl full of greens. After I ate I'd launch into watering the new plants in the front yard, planting yet more foliage, and other landscaping chores. When I'd moved in most of Jim's large front yard was nothing more than a bare flat expanse of loose dirt with some dried out dying grass and a number of dehydrated trees on one side of the yard. The other side of the yard contained nothing but dirt. When Jim and I first married, Jim rented a little tractor and plowed hills into the front yard. Then he ordered a few loads of gravel. The rest was up to me. I planted like crazy, getting free cuttings from a lady I had met, I placed huge decorative stones around the driveway and I laid railroad ties between two of the tiny hills. Now it seemed we had a high maintenance front yard, but it looked really pretty. When I finished with the front, I'd clean all the dog poop up from Jim's dog in the back yard. Then I'd go indoors again and eat another health snack-meal. After this I started cleaning the entire house. I'd vacuum the carpets, get down on my hands and knees and scrub all the big tile floors with bleach water, clean up the bathrooms, polish all the wood furniture, do the laundry and clean up the kitchen. I did all of this plus other house chores every single day. Jim's ancient vacuum cleaner barely worked so the carpet was never very perfect. After I was done with the house I'd take a nap, like Dr. "L" had advised. After the nap I'd start on dinner, made from scratch and nothing but health food with the best ingredients that I could find between the health food store and the regular grocery store. When Jim and I had been married for a couple of weeks or perhaps a month, Jim started to come home and fly right into a rage because the house wasn't cleaned up good enough for him. The carpet didn't look like it had been vacuumed or the tile floors weren't spotless or there were some dishes on the counter. It was always something that wasn't right. Jim would yell and scream and rant and rave and call me names for not being a better wife and getting everything cleaned up just right. I tried to tell Jim that his vacuum barely worked at all and that I'd been vacuuming that one rug in the living room for over an hour and it still didn't look clean. I would explain to Jim that his unemployed male roommate had been in the kitchen after I'd cleaned it and he had left his plate and utensils and cups on the counter. Sometimes the roommate would decide to finally empty out his room of all the moldy dishes he'd had stored in there for weeks and he'd dump these dishes heaped with rotting food on the counter while I slept and Jim would come home and see the mess. I would always get blamed and I got blamed as if I put no effort whatsoever into cleaning the house. Jim was obsessed with having a perfectly clean house except that Jim wasn't willing to pay for a new vacuum or cleaning supplies or a mop or anything else. Those things were all, "Too much money." Jim also refused to hold his two male roommates, the unemployed on being the worst, accountable for their own messes. I had agreed to let Jim keep the roommates because the rent money helped pay the bills, but I didn't know that I would be responsible for them as if they were my children. Jim kept coming home and screaming at me and slamming doors and hitting walls and I didn't know what to do. I tried to clean up more carefully. I wrote down every item I cleaned on the calendar. Even though it was a big calendar I had to write in microprint and abbreviate. It still wasn't enough. It wasn't proof of a damn thing. I was told so what, I could be lying on the calendar. I gave Jim an ultimatum, if he didn't stop treating me that way I was going to stop cleaning the house all together! Jim really flew into a rage and said, "You CAN'T do that!" Like I had no right in the world to even think such a things, then Jim continued to yell at me about how I was such a lousy house keeper as I was and how dare I think about quitting. Jim really thought that I could not do what I wanted to do, that I had no rights to do what I needed to do, and that I had no real needs at all. There were many more problems with Jim, but I don't want to talk about it��.. Another one of Jim's favorite phrases was, "You CAN'T do that." Eventually I did stop cleaning the house and Jim went berserk for awhile. After that the house just stayed filthy because Jim wasn't going to clean it up either. In his career as a husband Jim committed domestic violence a number of times, and he abused me while I was pregnant. That's all I want to say directly about Jim except that Jim did eventually, after a long horrible time of Hell, mellow a little. And my immune system did crash again completely when I was married to Jim, leaving me disabled and alone and with no resources at all. I was married to Jim, but I was alone because Jim always knew how to say, "I can't afford it," even when he could or even when he could have taken a part time second job for a few months to take care of something that was desperately needed. Jim was always and will always be, I'm sure, healthy and powerful and robust. However, Jim was also emotionally callous and lazy and uncaring and unthinking. |
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