This time a year ago, we had brought our baby daughter home after five weeks in the SCN. I'd been at home with her for just two days, and we were enjoying familial bliss. He hadn't even met OW yet, and our life and relationship was just fantastic.
Fast forward a year and we're just over 4 months out from DDay and R is going really well. I explained to fWH a few days ago that I haven't forgotten, that my A and aftermath 'reel' plays over constantly in my mind, but it's now like background tv: it's always there but it causes me no pain. It's the triggers that bring my pain to the fore again.
This morning I took my daughter to playgroup at the school where my H and OW work. Some of the other mums wished me a happy birthday and one said she'd made a baked cheesecake for me to celebrate. THEN came the trigger. There was a normal conversation about baking etc, and K, who'd made the cheesecake said "yeah, we had dinner at OW's house on Saturday and she made this beautiful cheesecake so I got the recipe to try it..."
TRIGGER hard.
But no-one knows about the A, about OW's pursuit of my H, about her total hypocrisy in pursuing a friendship with me to justify her actions - none of it. The thought of eating that cheesecake made me feel sick. Made me want to shout THIS is what that woman did! Do you know the pain and damage she caused?! Don't be fooled by her!
Instead I have to hold it all in, smile as they sing to me, eat cake and quietly feel my heart breaking all over again.
Then it gets worse. This term my H has finally convinced his principal (who does not know about the A) to restructure classes so that my H no longer has to team teach with OW. She takes a separate group of special needs kids in another classroom and is responsible for her own teaching and planning for them, instead of assisting them and planning with my H in his main class group. Downside is that the classes have been moved to a bigger classroom block and she has a room right next to my H.
Assuming she'd be back in her office several buildings away, I walked over to H's classroom to say hi and give him some time with our DD in his break. I walked past her room and there she is looking out at me. I completely ignored her, spent time with H and returned to playgroup to pack up and leave.
As I was leaving she comes over to playgroup (she has NEVER done this, ever before) and wishes me a happy birthday (wtf? Really? Now that you've just ruined it???) and then says to K (cheesecake maker) something about how much she enjoyed having them over blah blah blah. Nothing that couldn't have been said over the phone or in a text message. Top this off with the fact that K and I attend a bible study together, and I've been sharing my pain and dealing with issues about forgiveness etc, all to do with the A (not revealed to the ladies at bible study) and another lady who's our bible study leader (and attends the same church as OW) is also at playgroup, so seeing them hugging OW and interacting in a friendly way with her just makes my blood boil.
I know she did it deliberately. It was bad enough to be suffering from the inadvertent trigger by K and the cheesecake, but miserable to have to see her and be spoken to by her. So pissed to have triggered on my birthday.