If I could find that one thing to stop time to prevent this pain from happing, I would search the end of the earth, I would spend all my time doing so.
The truth is that it’s been 1,000 days, 24,000 hours, 1,440,000 minutes, 86,400,000 seconds since the events that blew up my happy, content life. The joys of therapy homework. The therapist asked me to think long and hard about what scares me; I wrote this. If I could find that one thing I did, you know, that thing that “pushed him to cheat more like 20 times,” yes, his words in the end! I am not sure if he said it to be cruel or just another of his lies? Either way, 1 or 20, what differences should it make? The sting from the lies, disrespect, cheating, all damage that may never fully heal. Maybe it’s the comment “you are a terrible mother,” or “I was always the better parent.” These are the things that I am scared of, you know, the ones that made this happen! I am scared, I don’t trust, this action, this choice has made my world small, I don’t feel safe. I think that if I knew what it was, what I did to make my husband cheat on me over and over again, maybe just maybe I could live life again and not fear it.
The reply I got was, you have got to stop trying to rush your healing. This traumatic event in your life happened; it was devastating because you thought you had a loving, happy marriage. I want you to put that down, I want you to remember this...
Because of your husband's betrayal and choices, you are experiencing a roller coaster of emotions that no wife should ever have to experience in her lifetime, and this has impacted you significantly.
You need to have feelings of hurt, anger, betrayal, loneliness, and grief requires a compassionate response from someone who will not blame you for your husband's behaviors. Oh yes, they are out there, the ones that say “there are two sides to every story.”
This isn’t you. You won’t find that thing no matter how hard and how long you search. You neither asked nor deserved what was done to you. That thing you are scared of? Is him. He could have protected you, and he chose not to.
I have been sifting through the rubble, trying to find all the memories, the beauty of my life I lived, and I struggle because I can’t find it among the ashes. I keep returning to that ash pile, trying to find that one piece that explains it all. I don’t find is the person I used to be; she is burned among the ashes. It’s hard to look at the pile of ashes, the ones that I never would burn, the ones I didn’t burn to the ground, even harder sifting through them.
I DID feel when something was wrong; I felt it in my heart 1,000 days ago. I knew something was wrong, but I had the softest kindest voice reassuring me nothing was wrong. Telling me, he knew he was one of if not the only reason I felt that way. That he loved me so much and would never hurt me like that again.
Looking at those ashes, how does one look you in the face and lie so easily? I search for the answers as to why my loving marriage is now a pile of ashes. The truth is I can’t find that answer either.
You know what people don’t tell you? What others don’t talk about the pain associated with cheating and the words that haunt you after they were spoken, the ones that creep up, the ones that scare you into looking for that one thing that caused all this pain so that you never do it again, it rips your sense of self away. You are left trying to figure out what was real and what was fake. It destroys your trust, your perception, you doubt your own judgment because, how just HOW could I have been so blind not to see the affair with the neighbor. How did I not know?
Maybe love is blind.
I mean, I am a smart girl, or so I thought, now I doubt every thought that comes, I second guess every decision, I doubt the truth, and I doubt the lie. Because I lived the biggest lie of them all. The life that was full of life and love.
Don’t rush the healing, they say; well, have you spent 1,000 days feeling so broken, looking for yourself in a pile of ashes?
Maybe she has blown away with the wind, maybe she lays at the bottom of that rubble that someone deliberately lit the match, tossed it, and then walked away because they cared so little, that they didn’t look back but started a new life because they knew they had just torched the old one?
Except they didn’t tell you that they even lit the match so that you could run, they left you standing in that fire in a fog, and when the smoke cleared, it was too late to save yourself.
What I didn’t realize was Although I couldn’t save myself, the lord was about to place some of the most amazing people in my life, the ones that would save me from myself, the ones that would bring light in all the darkness. These people loved me when I wasn’t very lovable when I was, in fact, a pile of rubble. I am not sure why? I also questioned why he would send me so many wonderful people to hold it together while I was. The best I can come up with is a 23-19 (monster inc). I was that 23-19 that object that everyone was whispering about that everyone was looking at the one that some, including many that I loved, were ignoring. Through this writing gift, I have found others with similar stories. I have met so many that are searching the ashes for themselves also. In the last 1,000 days, I have been forced to put down that perfect perfection and just be real and honest and live in my truth. This is my hard truth. My life isn’t where I thought it would be, this isn’t the story I want to be told, this isn’t how I envisioned it would be; letting go of that dream has been hard; no, it’s been excruciating because it was the life I wanted. This experience changed me, and letting go of that nieve me is hard also. 1,000 days, and I still want to wake up from this nightmare. I have made it 1,000 days because of the amazing people surrounding me and living in my truth.
