PippiLngstockng

I have always adapted well. Too well.

Went to the US and was in two 3-hour mediation sessions with xah, his lawyer, mine, and a mediator. Very expensive undertaking. We proposed settlements, we got nothing real back. He didn't even hand in his financial statement until mid-way into the second session - 5 weeks past due.

He's hid $70,000 since March of extra earnings. Didn't put a penny into fixing up our house that he's been wrecking, or his credit card debt that he blames on me.

I did get much of my stuff out of the house. That made me feel better, though I have no place to put any of it.

Then today we had what I thought might be the final two hours of mediation and then we'd be divorced. I went for literally the best most beautiful run of my life. Then half an hour later he proposed that I stay on the mortgage with him for the next 7 years. 7. He started by asking for one year and it has steadily risen.

When I went to the house last week to get my things, rain was falling through the skylight onto the unprotected hardwood floor, making a puddle. Again, as there was evidence of much damage in and around the skylight. There's an infestation of carpenter ants in the beams. The deck has rotted away and the whole chimney could slide off the roof at any moment. The house smells. There's cat hair and dust everywhere. There's half empty boxes in five of six bedrooms. The beautifully green well kept property is a mess of hay and tall weeds.

I feel checked out. The lawyer and mediator think he is depressed, controlling, potentially suicidal.

I just want to be free. I go about my life as though everything is great. People seem so nice. Colors so bright.

At the end of the mediation, after 7 hours of acting like he wanted the house, he started to suggest that DD14 would want to live there with him. And DS11, too. Then, shortly thereafter, he declared during tonight's mediation number 3 that he wanted to sell the house, charging me for half the repair costs, and move to Europe.

The mediator wanted to know what I thought of that. I told her that that was rather sudden after thinking with 7 hours of mediation behind us that we might be done already. And that it was healthy to want to be by his children. And that he's abusive so this would be hugely problematic in my own life.

When I think of him moving to Europe, the first thing that I think of is my life being suffocated by his. Next, that he'll kill me.