The laptop

I wish I could have kept a daily journal of the 19.5 years living with my Ex. Somewhere around year 3 I began to realize the things my Ex stated just didn’t make sense. By year 7, the financial math just wasn’t mathing. And his almost continuous anger was wearing down my soul. I could do no right in his eyes. The more I questioned him the more sever he raged. In the beginning I weighed my options and decided remaining quiet was more bearable than his rages. Instead I began journaling my thoughts onto what I believed was my private personal laptop and a website I could post anonymously with questions and vents. Without exception, others posters advised to get out and get out now. The day I was shown I had no privacy is as vivid a memory as this morning. I walked into our living room. Ex was sitting on the couch with our youngest sitting on his lap. It was his face that kept my attention, completely missing my laptop sitting on the coffee table. It was his angry smirk with those terrifying solid black eyes. Then he looked down at my laptop and I saw it for the first time. Without saying a word he turned my laptop around towards me angrily chuckling. The website was open to my anonymous posts. Without my knowledge my Ex had downloaded a keystroke application to my laptop which then sent the keystroke logs to his email. He had been watching me pour my heart out for months. He instructed me to delete all my posts and shouted how do you think this makes me look? I said, but it’s all true. You did those things. Without skipping a beat, He told me either I delete all my posts or he would divorce me and take the kids. He said he would make sure I had nothing and would never see our kids. He made me feel small and insignificant, as if I was the naughty child caught with my hand in the cookie jar. As if I was the one completely in the wrong. He never once showed any acknowledgement of my concerns, my wounds, my fears. Any defense of myself was met with his counter of how I was making him look bad. Completely defeated, I deleted my posts in front of him. His smug satisfied smirk haunts me even now. But all the memories are etched deep into my soul. Devastating and unforgettable. I write from memory.