Alternate Reality

Have you ever had a dream that is so disconcerting that you wake up feeling unsettled and out of sorts? That happened to me this morning, and I just can’t shake it. My dream was almost a nightmare, in that it delved into some old memories that I try hard not to think about anymore.

In my dream, I was suddenly outside of my old house, the one that my ex and I put tens of thousands of dollars into … also the one that he intentionally put into foreclosure to go live with the wolf after she tore our family apart. This one action destroyed me financially, robbing me of my half of the money we put in and damning me to a life of renting and never being able to afford another house of my own. Of course, he didn’t care about that because he moved in with the wolf in her McMansion, so what did it matter to him that our home that we put blood, sweat, and tears into was tossed aside as cavalierly as I was?

As I was saying, in my dream I was outside my old house, and unable to get in. I was acutely aware, in a way that can only occur in dreams, that I was able to shift my reality if I chose to. I immediately did so, and was ripped away from my house to the house we lived in previously – the place I try so hard to forget. As soon as I arrived in that reality, I  attempted to switch realities but I kept landing back at this hellish place. Each time it was slightly different, but the end result was that I was trapped there. That’s how I woke up, in a cold sweat and outright panic attack at being stuck in that place, having tried over and over to get away but being unsuccessful.

What is this hellish place? When my ex and I were newly married, in our very early 20’s, we were planning our future. His father told us that we should buy a duplex with him and his wife – coincidentally, the mistress of my ex’s childhood years who tore his family apart - although his father bears much of that blame. My ex’s father is an evil man, manipulative and controlling. My ex was always an eager student of his father, and started putting all his energy into buying a duplex with his father. The plan, per his father, was to live there a couple years and then sell, splitting the profit and going our separate ways.

There was nothing I wanted less than this. I found a home that was rent-to-own, and it was owned by a distant cousin of mine. It was nearby, the perfect starter home size, and only $69,000. I told my ex that this was what I wanted for us and our family, and he appeared to agree. We had all the paperwork done, and were ready to close on our first home. His father called, and although I was not privy to the details of the phone call, my ex tore up the contract when he got off the phone. He then wrote a check for the down payment on the duplex with his father. My heart sunk.

I would like to point out here that the home we almost acquired for $69,000 sold 5 years later for $179,000. It is now worth $350,000. But who keeps track of that? Certainly not me …

When we moved into the duplex with his father, our first child was 8 months old. It was an hour from where we were living. It was an hour – highway driving – from my closest family, and over half an hour from any of my friends. We had one car, and I was never allowed to use it by my ex. He had tightened the control to the point where I could only leave the house with him or his family, or my dad. 

Does not being allowed to leave without an adult male accompanying me sound normal? I didn’t think so. 

But, this control had been snuck in gradually – see my earlier post Like Boiling a Frog for more on that. I was a fully boiled frog at this point, and although I hated it I truly bought that he was worried for our safety. I was brainwashed in a way, and it's terrifying to look back on.

It makes me sick even saying that now.

We weren’t at the duplex more than a month when suddenly his father revealed that he had bought the duplex all on his own. We weren’t on the mortgage! We were so young that it never even registered that there had been no closing, no sale that we were present at. Suddenly we were renting from his dad, who dropped the next bomb: he had no intention of ever selling. So even though we had put thousands of dollars into this home with the stated intention of selling it in a few years and splitting the profit, we were now trapped in the middle of nowhere in a tiny duplex that we would surely outgrow quickly.

I wish I could say that was the worst of it, but it only got worse. His father and his wife watched our every move. If I had a friend come visit me in my isolation, they would call to ask who it was, and often would run the license plate to be sure that I was telling the truth! I sold things on Ebay for extra money, and one time the buyer – a man from New Zealand – sent a thank you card. My ex’s father called him over and sat him down to tell my ex that I was having an affair. He had taken it upon himself to open our mail to check for things like this, and decided that I was clearly cheating with someone in New Zealand. They tapped our phone. They undermined our household. They told me how to raise our children.

I was in prison.

I was in hell.

My ex would never stand up to them. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. 

One particular event stands out in my memory. The day is seared into my consciousness. My great-aunt was up visiting from Pennsylvania. I hadn’t seen her since I was a child, and I was eager to see her and have my kids meet her. She was at another relative’s house, about an hour and a half away. I asked (yes, asked – sigh) my ex if we could go on a Sunday. He fought against it, not wanting to “give up his whole Sunday” to visiting. Sunday morning rolled around, and his dad called him over. When he came back, he was suddenly sweet and conciliatory toward me. He apologized for fighting the idea of visiting, and said we would go. I remember being so incredibly happy. He said that before we left we would follow his dad to the lake to look at a boat his dad wanted to show us, and then we would head down. I was thrilled.

I packed the kids to go, and we followed his dad to the lake to look at a boat. Nothing seemed off about this, as we had plenty of time. After looking at the beautiful but absolutely unaffordable boat, his dad asked us to look at one more. It was about twenty minutes in the wrong direction, but if we hurried we still had time. My ex – who didn’t seem surprised by this request – said we would. After viewing the next boat, his dad said we should continue with him around the lake for the day, looking at boats. I immediately turned to my ex and said “But what about my aunt?” He grinned sheepishly, looked down at the ground, and in that second I knew what I should have realized all along - he never had any intention of visiting my aunt. The kindness and promises were just to get me in the car with the kids without protest. 

I became upset, understandably so. His father immediately jumped in, speaking to my ex about me as though I wasn't even there: "Just ignore her. She's nothing but a bitch. She's a troublemaker!" The verbal barrage continued, and my ex laughed. I was horrified, humiliated, and felt like a caged animal. I'll never forget it. And it got worse: he then proceeded to follow his father around the lake for the next 8 hours, and every time we stopped to look at a boat he and his father and his father's wife would laugh at me while I sat in tears. It was one of the single most devastating days of my life. He compounded the misery by inviting his father over for ice cream when we got home, and forbidding me from retreating to bed, insisting that I "serve our guests." They got extra pleasure out of watching me be forced to play hostess to people who had been mocking and laughing at my pain all day long.

My great-aunt died a few years later. I never got the chance to see her before she passed.

I could probably write a book recounting how truly messed up the situation in that house was. We eventually got out. My ex woke up a little and seemed to shake off his father's control. We found and bought our house. It was my escape; it was our fresh start. It was everything, or it should have been.

Maybe the real message of the dream is that I thought it was a new reality, but it was just a new version of the same old hell ...