I realized that my husband was mentally ill when he told me that God talked to him through the car radio.
He believed that he himself was either a reincarnated John the Baptist, or John the Disciple. He wasn’t sure which, but he was sure that he was one of them.
He carried a flashlight and a gun with him at all times. He said that it was his sword and his lantern, which he had been under command to carry. He had to always be prepared for the day of armageddon, when he would rise as a paraclete. He told me he could feel the wings sprouting on his back whenever he was around evil people, which was really everyone but himself. At this point I would ask him why he wanted to be a parakeet. But he wouldn’t laugh.
That isn’t what made me leave him, although it should have been. But I was a broken woman for many things that had occurred before I had even met the man. In the beginning, he’d been charming enough.
What made me leave him was an enormous sense of overall disappointment. He had no character, no job, no motivation, no conscience. I found evidence in my car that he’d been visiting the house of incest and rape. I packed up that very day, and he helped. There was no anger. We were both relieved as we stood by the car and said goodbye.
It was the year of the first great Texas heat wave. The car had no A/C. We pulled a U-haul for 800 miles, my one year old daughter and I.
With great disappointment he told me that his parents’ first response to him was, “Well, take all of your money out of the bank!”
He was disappointed how little they cared for the absence of their granddaughter and only cared about the money, when he and I both knew that only I had earned any of that money that was in that bank.
They were always such crude, crass, dishonest people.
Then his mother insisted that he visit us and take back the crib she had given to us for our daughter at her birth. It was an inexpensive crib, she had assured me in her crassness when she gifted it to me.
My daughter slept in a playpen on the floor until I could afford another crib.
My ex never paid a penny in child support and tried to steal my daughter’s social security money when he became ill with liver cancer. He claimed that she was living with him and began to receive her checks, which his mother tried to cash.
They had to pay it back after he passed away.
Oikos 