Oh I do so hate when this happens - I woke up about a half hour ago from a bad dream. Bad dream? Why a bad dream? Anytime I dream of Crusty, it's a bad dream. And the dream involved Crusty. Long story short...

As usual with bad dreams, the setting was 'weird' - set in the late nineties or early (pre-9/11) 2000s. But with current thinking - Crusty asked about my husband Paul. But then he switched back to the years just after the divorce. As I wrote, it was a weird dream.

We were walking through an airport and he was asking me to use a skill I have (from my USCG days). But typical Crusty, whilst asking me to go waaaaaay out of my way to do something for him, he also insulted the hell out of me - he asked if I was working and I answered - 'No phone, no car, no job'. His reply was 'Good!' as though I deserved to be hanging on the cliff edge for what I'd done to him.

And I woke up. Angry. Hurt. It took me a few minutes to understand something - it's not that he lied so often and so long to justify all the hell he created for himself, me, and most of all for Fox, it's that people believed him and never once thought to ask me!

I lay there staring into the dark thinking 'I can't work out what hurt the worst, that he lied to people that I was the one at fault, or that people believed his outrageous lies.'

For the record - I'M NOT THE ONE WHO HABITUALLY CHEATED (and in addition to cheating with his friends wives and the odd airline stewardess, his primary cheat was with hookers, ick!). I NEVER CHEATED - I was a good and faithful wife and NEVER betrayed him. NEVER!

Also for the record, he was the biggest spendthrift on the planet - I worked SO hard SO many times to get us out of the truly horrific debt he created - and his response every time I got us 'back in black' was to dig us deeper into the red.

He was a terrible husband and father - there isn't enough room here to list all the ways and reasons why Crusty is best described as a psycho-sociopath. The worst thing he did was to use Fox as a chain, a weapon - every time I tried (from the time Fox was an infant in arms) to leave, Crusty put a virtual (and on occasion particularly towards the end) gun to our heads.

Using a child as a chain and weapon is EVIL - CONSUMMATE EVIL. End of. He'll answer to God for that.

Saying 'He lied and lied and lied and lied and...' just doesn't begin to cover it.

He lied. To every one. For years. After the divorce I found out he'd been lying to every one for the entire time we were together.

He lied.

And people believed him.

And in the dream, he too believed, he'd lied to himself and everyone else for so long he'd come to believe his lies so completely that hearing I was having troubles gave him a great deal of satisfaction. As though I deserved to suffer for what I'd put him through.

I believe in God. I believe Crusty's day will come and he will be unable to lie to himself any longer, and he'll have eternity to face the truth.

And while I know it's wrong - this morning I'm finding a bit of comfort and satisfaction at that.

Perhaps later on this morning I'll find the strength to pray that rat bastard saves his soul before it's too late but just now, all things considered, I am finding a bit of comfort in knowing Crusty will face God and finally have to answer for what he did to me, and most especially what he did to Fox.

And I know the answer to my question (what hurt worst) - people believed Crusty's lies. I don't think I'll EVER get over the hurt that people who knew me actually believed his filthy, savagely cruel lies.

For that, there is no comfort. I hope I never see any of them again in this or any other life. Ever. They didn't stop to think, they didn't bother to ask me. That's it - we're done.

The only people I care about are my children, my grandchildren, and my Asperger's, coeliac, idiopathic hypoglycaemic husband Paul.