The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire!

So I started a new blog. This is it, I've been needing an outlet and I like introspection. I started to work on my old blog, started to post on it, and then re-read it to get reacquainted.

Then I realized that I'm not that girl anymore. I read her blog...and it hurt. I remember being her, but distantly. I felt sorry for her. I'm in a really different place now, kinda reborn, stronger and meaner and leaner and ready to take it all on again.

So the way things stand now are really different. Brian and I have split. What's not in that blog is the year after I stopped posting. He got mean. Psychologically and emotionally abusive, verbally hateful as hell, and then in a seemingly unavoidable move, got physically violent. I kept so much hidden. Never told my family. Some of them saw it, my mom would grill me over "accidents" and beg me to leave him, but I'm stubborn.

I'm a deliberate person. I'll think long and hard before I make a move, I'll run in place forever until I know where I'm going and how I'm going to get there. My plan was really to just insulate myself further and ride it out. I felt like it wasn't fair to take away the kids' father- further changing their family. These kids have had it rough- they buried their sister. It wasn't fair.

He's lost his ability to restrain himself around the kids. We're going to court soon, I'm grateful that the end is near. He's managed to convince himself that he's the wronged party and that it's all my fault because I MADE him get that way with me. I hear that's really common. Right now there are pending charges against him, he threatened me with a crowbar and hit me with his car a few weeks ago during a visitation switchout. The kids were in the car. Hysterical. He sped off and had them calling me to "please not call the police on their daddy".

I've been seeing someone for a while, he's a good guy. He's not the *perfect* guy, but he's a good one. He's much younger than me, but he's responsible. Takes care of these girls. Soothes the little hurts of being ignored and being a sideshow to their dad's ego and posturing as the "best dad ever". I think that if he ever really got to know them, he'd be amazed to know he's got some pretty awesome kids.