I need help

You cannot give up on this, as I cannot though we cannot at this point imagine life without him, and it's insane. When I see his face in my mind now, I don't even see him nice as I used to. I used to have a mind full of the images of us together at the beginning, his great smile and twinkling eyes, etc. Now I just see him the way he is to me: nasty, vicious, degrading, dismissing, evil, heartless and cruel. I watch him go through life, carefully maneuvering among the web of "safe" places and people he's set up who cushion him from the world: his brother next door, his enabling babysitter, his few political friends. I see them laugh and hug, I see them talking out on the sidewalk or at their cars, I see them go out to dinner and parties, I see them coming home from trips. For me, he has only a dead expression and dead eyes. He asked me to have sex last night, even though I made it clear he could not come over anymore until he sat down and talked to my daughter about what has gone on (he dismissed her when he got his foster child two years ago and never once spoke to her about it; she was heartbroken because she adored him and we were supposed to get married and live together). He didn't even answer; he would never apologize or explain himself to anyone, let alone a ten year old. I asked him to go to dinner with me and talk about what is going to happen with us, what has happened with us, and he said no, that he had plans. I said, with who? He said, with a friend. He said that my concerns about my daughter and my complaints about being kept away from his son, and my complaints about never going out together or doing anything as a family are "nonsense." He then said that the other women in his life are smart and sensible, that they "don't do your drama" and that's why he and his son spend time with them and not me. Well, sad1, he might as well have cut my heart out with a butcher knife. The way they drain us of all our goodness and energy and love for years and then throw us away saying, "Not good enough. You are just annoying or a bitch or a whiner." When he brought home his child, out of the blue, we were just about to get engaged. We had appointments for fertility screenings. When he told me the news, I let my entire life slide to step up to the plate and be the child's mother, as requested, and I was rewarded with the two of them going out of town for a week so the N could sleep with someone else. I was a wreck, cooking, taking him to school, buying clothes, finding a doctor and getting him his shots, while my business failed, my children suffered, and my finances ran dry. One day, after I had been actuallly hospitalized from stress, I couldn't pick up his child from school and he let me know that I was a complete disappointment to him, that I couldn't "deal with" parenthood, and that he "was mistaken" about how capable I was. The two of them passed me on the street this morning, holding hands, and he didn't even speak to me. Even the child, who used to call me "Mama" just stared at me with the same blank look on his face. I know where you are. I was hopsitalized again two months ago when he moved his babysitter in next door (she doesn't speak to me or my children as he told her not to, though we were best friends before). I asked him how he could do that to me when he told me she was moving and I wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. He said, "She did move. Next door." In the hopsital, that was the only concern: that I was going to kill myself. I thought, you have got to be kidding me? Who is this person in my body who appears suicidal over some guy? I get dead drunk every single day, to keep from shaking. I have nightmares about him every night. I hate his child, the symbol of his sickening hypocrisy who he is making into a clone of his dead hearted self. I know my days of actual violence are over, as I know i will be the one in jail if anything else happens between us, so I just sit here in misery, trying to pay a bill or make a phone call or do a load of laundry. Life is excruciating; I pray for justice, for the child to go back home so I don't have to look at them anymore, for money enough to move somewhere else, for freedom of any kind. I've actually gone so far as to put a spell on him (!) so that he will realize what he's done to me and feel sorry for once. Crazy! I still think that one day he will say, "Gosh, honey. I'm sorry about what happened." But every day he says something worse to blame me and to dig the knife in deeper. It's insane.

"I know that it has been discouraged on here before to talk about 12 step groups." I hope that our individual healing processes are no longer discouraged here. I trust they will be tolerated now. We are here to heal, and there can be more than one way to do so. We cannot heal the N. Just ourselves.