Friday, April 19, 2013

April 13, 2013

4/13
I start work part time in another town next week, weekends. Nabal was today wondering why. I didn't really need to work, after all once work picks up he'll catch up. I almost laughed. He has overdrawn his account just about every week lately. His bank curtailed his check writing at gas stations and food stores. He's lucky they didn't close his account. 

He at one point was almost $700 in the red. Last week I covered $274 of overdrafts, by the time he put a check in he was $134 in the hole. When I speak to him he defends it all by saying he has to get around somehow. Like the bank should really get with it. 

We are so far behind. No satellite TV, which I had been thinking needed to be scaled back months ago, but he had to have his Spanish channels. No Internet, but he's the only one bothered by that again. Only local calls, no long distance. His credit card is grossly in arrears. The truck payment of almost $500 a month is overdue. (he wouldn't go get a better loan. Wanted me to go do it for him) I got a good check a few weeks ago and was able to catch up on utilities. The mortgage is not quite late yet. Property taxes haven't been paid since December and more will be due come June. He has a traffic ticket he told me to pay last week, luckily I looked, that was when he was $275 in the hole. He never checks how much he has, just writes checks...

I feel overwhelmed, I live in fear of things being taken, confiscated. My life the past few years feels like a bath draining slowly. Very recently I can feel the tug of the whirlpool forming before the final whoosh of the remaining water. I stepped up work by 2 months as things here are not getting any better. I was hoping to wait until our girl graduated. We won't have 2 nickels if I wait. I felt so bad last year when our boy graduated and didn't have money to even go to a restaurant to celebrate. Nabal has no problem with it. His answer is to throw a party, invite all his single drinking buddies and get drunk. 

Since the Spanish TV went off Nabal mostly gets drunk somewhere else and one night none of us are sure he made it home. He came in a few nights ago and wanted me to fix his plate, because that's a wife's job. When he realized I'd shut the chickens in he started saying, "I knew you loved me. You took care of the chickens." It's stuff like that, just doing the right thing in general, and he tries to make it all about him. He just pretends I'm being temperamental and nothing really happened. This is why I write.

When I was going for my interview last week, Nabal had the audacity to ask me if they had some office work for me to do. This doesn't sound bad until you understand the interview was with a premiere resort where my skill set is needed and th pay is well above office personnel. my profession is a skilled craft and he was trying to slam me and my confidence. Funny thing is even my past profession wasn't office work. I've never been an office type, have nothing against them. Not saying what I do is better or worse, it's just right for me. My interview was over the top good and I was offered the job unofficially then and there! HR called and made it official. Funny, other people think me and my skills are pretty slamming! Funny thing is I'm still pretty POed about the office work crack because I saw what he was doing. It kinda helped me, I got so mad I completely got over my interview jitters! But it made me mad and sad seeing the manipulation. Instead of him bettering his behavior, he'd rather tear me down so I will have to stay. Then there's the nightly, "You going to sleep with me tonight?" I think he's just seeing the handwriting, maybe he honestly thought I would just forget and go back quietly to our old life. Then I'm sure he'd go back to his usual self if he ever caught a whiff of me caring again. I'm just not playing the game anymore. I'm off the abuse cycle merry go round. 

know a split is going to be hell, that's when the real Nabal will come out. Looks like I'm in the road, but there is still fear.

He was just down here complaining about a drunk he has to deal with who he works for. Complaining that every time he needs to talk to the guy he's drunk. Then asked me why I thought the man was getting worse. He asked if I thought it was because the economy was getting better. 

He moved onto his nightly plea for me to come upstairs with him. Then apologized for not providing the life I envisioned. What? Oooooh, I see, now the reason I act the way I do is because he can't make enough money to make me happy. Nothing whatsoever to do with anything wrong he's done. So he gets to be misunderstood. The poor working stiff. Me? I get painted as a shrew. Anyone who knows me would laugh out loud at that. I've never been materialistic. Talk about surrealistic painting. He had rewritten history do make himself out to be the poor man who can't make enough money to please his wife. He's the one who sucked all the money up with nothing to show for. He's the one who refused to leave his money in a savings account because he wanted to show 'someone' that he had lots of money. He's the one who was begging me for ten thousand dollars at a time, which he promised to pay back once he got paid for a job, only to spend it all and be back begging for more until it was all gone. He is the one who wants to be the big spender, yet he's projecting it onto me. 

I'm pretty sure he's drinking right now. Pretty hard to tell these days, the only thing that tells him is he tries the sexy talk. 

He just came down, outraged that my good friend who was married to his ex-pastor, had left him. I already knew that, but didn't let on. He was so mad at the woman. I reminded him that most people predicted this almost at the wedding because of he was he was such a nasty controlling little man. Nabal said, "But he changed." I reminded him he did not live with them and just because he was different in public didn't mean he'd changed at home. Then Nabal said she was crazy, and he remembered the day she went crazy. He and some guys helped them move when Noel lost the house. (funny, his neighbors who went to the church refused to help him) Nabal said that day she went crazy, trying to tell her husband that she could do whatever she wanted. (hmmmm) Up to then, she had been quiet in accepting his abuse in public, ducking her head and complying. He spoke to her any way he felt. That day she stood up for herself- Nabal saw it as her going crazy. That's a telling thought don't you think? Until she stood up for herself they all pitied her, stuck up for her.  Nabal said he'd 'spoken' to Noel about his behavior, but the day she had the audacity to speak up and not take her husband's abuse- she went crazy. Thank God she has a lawyer this time. She also has her parents here as support, and a women's group specially for Spanish speaking women! Nabal's parting shot was: They fired her dad from his job. He was all about defending the abuser now, there was a time he defended that woman. What happened? I think he's that abuser Lundy Bancroft speaks of who is the woman's champion yet abuses in his own home. Mostly psychological abusers- yup. If they don't throw a punch; they are spotless. Well, Nabal may have given a clue as to how Noel plans to get their kids from her. I think she has a lawyer who is used to dealing with these folks. She'll get a heads up for sure. I wouldn't put it past Nabal to go be the church deacon witness for his abusive buddy. 

These guys really hang together and cover for one another.... 

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