I love the internet more than my husband.

He’s wanted me to choose for a long time between him or it.

He hates the internet. It started, he says, when he sifted through my email account one day. Bella was a newborn and he found some correspondence with an ex boyfriend. Completely innocent, yes, but that didn’t matter. His snooping was justified by the fact that there was ’something to find’, even though there wasn’t an ounce of flirting in the emails (that I can recall). I was wrong because even though my passwords were saved and accounts easily accessible, I was hiding something from him with ulterior motives.

I found out how much those emails bothered him when Bella was 7 weeks old. He’d gotten drunk for the first time in our relationship and he berated me, telling me that I had ruined Bella’s life, that it was my fault that she suffered her birth injury and he’d make sure she knew who to blame for her bad arm, and that it wasn’t his fault that my father and mother had both abandoned me but he could see why, and that no one would want me when he was done with me, except maybe that ex boyfriend from my emails, because yeah, I was already back to my pre-pregnancy shape and weight, but once he saw the stretch marks that came from carrying an 11 pound baby in my womb, he’d probably throw up and not go near me.

I only allowed him one more chance to get drunk around me, and he blew it that time too, so I never allowed him to drink much around me again. I never will.

His distaste for the internet started, I say, when after 6 months, he finally took an interest in my very first blog and read some not-so-nice things about him. I talked about our ups and downs, and being as our downs have always been more frequent, mainly our downs. He is shy, and didn’t appreciate a detailed account of his life (not ours, his) out for the public to see. He threatened to divorce me if I didn’t delete it. So I soft deleted it, and after another fight I put it back up, but couldn’t get back into it so I moved on.

A year or so later, we’d drifted even farther apart. I was now angry at him for not wanting me to come to his job because his boss was racist. I felt disrespected on the most basic of levels, and talking to him about it got me no where. I remember being glad, in spite of myself, that my baby was as pale skinned and brown haired as he was so that he wouldn’t be ashamed of her too.  We argued over something inconsequential one day and he left, taking the cell phones and computer. The next thing I knew my mother was knocking on my door at almost midnight, having driven 3 hours to pick me and Bella up because Jason had called her and told my family that if they didn’t come get me he’d turn off the electricity and gas and Bella and I would freeze to death.

A few weeks later I returned, but not emotionally. How could I come back from that?

I drifted, taking to flirting online with various characters. It was wrong, I know. I was searching for what I wasn’t getting from him: for what I was yearning and nagging and complaining for but he refused to give. The internet provided it, in the form of one guy in particular in New York.

Jason checked my phone at one point, or email or something, I don’t remember, and found something suspect. All I really remember is him pulling me out of bed by my hair (he says it was my arm but it was my hair) and screaming at me. I remember him choking me into the carpet and our just turned one year old daughter clutching at my leg, screaming at the top of her lungs  out of fear and unhappiness that she’d been awoken. The baby and I left that night.

12/04 to 5/07 was a tumultuous period in which we lived apart, half-assed purposely conceived our second daughter, almost aborted her, fought incessantly, gave up, went through child support hearings, decided on a temporary custody agreement after he’d sued me for full custody of my daughters in retaliation for me suing for child support, reconciled and eventually decided to give it another go under the same roof.

Even though I was happy where I was, on the right track, back in school, doing what I needed to do to improve myself, I missed him. I missed us. And I now had two daughters to think of. He sent me emails telling me he couldn’t live without me and threw tantrums when I said I didn’t trust him, that I didn’t trust that he’d changed or that he’d be willing to give me what I needed. But he wore me down and I returned.

I blogged during that separation on a friends only MySpace blog. When we moved, I kept my internet. It was never optional.  This time I needed it mostly to enroll in online courses, even though when it came time to, he said we couldn’t afford the cost of tuition and supplies so I didn’t. I kept on blogging after we moved back in together, but tried to occupy my time with outings for me and the girls, mommy groups and exploring our adorable little beach town. I moved to immoralmc.blogspot.com – once again a public blog. I didn’t tell him, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to mention it to him more than in passing, so he shouldn’t have cared. Still, I changed all my passwords to 15 character alphanumeric sequences. Not because I had anything to hide, but because I didn’t deserve to be snooped on, no matter what he said. He found a way in though, and continued to snoop, until the day we separated again, and I don’t doubt that he still does now. The only thing I believe he doesn’t do is read my blog. Only because he’s completely disinterested in anything that makes me happy.

We fought over BlogHer. When I complained that he didn’t want me to go and be happy doing something he didn’t like, he told me that he would send me to San Francisco, that he didn’t care if I went and didn’t give a fuck if I ever came back. Maybe that’s when I realized that he wouldn’t come around to it, and I would have to let one go.

I’ve never wanted to give up the internet. It’s been my one true friend during my entire marriage. No other friend has been here for the entire ordeal. It has brought me more happiness than he ever has, and much more than he has attempted to in a very long time. It’s given me an amount of love and support and loyalty that he never will. It’s listened to my opinions and took them seriously. It’s cared about what I did today and never blasphemed me in front of my daughters for not scrubbing the hardwoods. It’s told me I was intelligent, and beautiful, and never scoffed at my passions, but encouraged me and inspired me. It’s been telling me for years “Your dude sucks at life. You need to leave him.” and I haven’t listened.

But now I am. Simply because I was given the ultimatum that I need to choose between the two things. And I don’t choose him.

The internet has not damaged me more than any other person on the planet. I don’t have to try to forgive it for taking my children from me out of spite, knowing that I never, ever can. The internet recognizes how much I love my babies and how much I’ve given up of myself to give to them.  I don’t have to worry about the internet telling me it hates me and loves me in the same breath or telling me that I’m awful and everything about me needs to change. The internet takes my words as they are without trying to twist and turn them to mean what’s appropriate to the point it’s trying to make.

The internet loves me more than my husband does.

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