Divorce Support Forums: Finally getting the picture

It really helps so much to get feedback from other people who have lived the same thing. On Dec 20 (4 days before Christmas)my husband of 13 years informed me he no longer loved me and that he was sleeping with someone else and he was in love. For the last 5 years my husband would leave me and our daughter and go to NF for the summer months so he could decompress. It was something I also desparately needed. A break from the daily battering to my self esteem. He has severe PTSD and had a head injury years ago that left him with frontal damage. The frontal lobe is where we process our emtional reponses to external stimuli so it is the control that keeps us from snapping at little things. Needless to say he had some things going against him and yes he has been through worse things than anyone should ever have to go through but despite his issues he was also capable of using tactics to control himself when he wanted to. I'm sure he is doing that right now with this new woman and her two small kids but for how long? After lots of soul searching over this last week I have taken a long look at the many abuses I lived through over the last 13 years and I am finally opening my eyes. I can't count the times I had to apologise to store keepers or neightbors or even family for some episode that my husband would have created. All the broken dishes and punched doors, some in front of our daughter. While my mother was in hospital for the last 3 months of her life he resented the time I spent there with her. His reponse when I told him I needed some support was everyone dies. Last year he removed me from the joint bank account and made me get my own account and began telling me that he was planning to move back to NF within a year and if I wasn't planning to go to the small town of only 50 people with our daughter then I had better go back to full time from part time which I had started doing when I had to take him to Drs and counsellors and chiropractors etc several times a week plus be mother and father to our daughter. The financial threats began in ernest then. Now that he has left he has become very agitated every time I try to talk to him about support for us both. I have had to go to a lawyer immediately because he has already started with holding the monthly money he was sending us. He tells me he is doing me a faveor by giving me any money and if I can't appreciate what he does for us then he will let me see what it is like on my own. My hope for 2008 is to get custody and support settled soon, to get my self esteem back to where it was before he crushed me flat and to help my daughter through all the turmoil. The challenge will be to not bad mouth him to her and yet not condone his behaviour. With our daughter he has been playing with her emotions all Christmas. He sent her every gift that he knew I couldn't afford and he even offered to have her there for part of the holiday. My daughter is 12 years old and an only child. For the last 5 years she has been desparately trying to get us to adopt and he even tried to console her when she was so upset that she might get a brother and sister out of the situation. The day after she found out her father doesn't lover he mother and there is another woman and he expects her to be able to handle that by offering her what she wants most in the world. Well enough venting. If anyone has any suggestions about how to help my daughter through this all and what to ask the lawyer about I'd accept any advice.

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This is the first day of the rest of my life. Or maybe tomorrow will be.