One year ago tomorrow, at 10am in the morning, I opened up my husband’s computer, started reading, fell to the floor in floods of tears, and threw up the contents of my stomach. One year ago tomorrow, I will have spent 2.5 hours crying, copying letters, come-on’s, his AFF profile, his secret email accounts, his yahoo chat logs, and tons of other disgusting, heart-breaking communications, while sobbing, screaming, wailing, vomiting, and at times, being reduced to crawling to get to the bathroom. I will have mopped up the places where I vomited, washed my nausea-covered clothing and myself, put on a new outfit, and drove to pick my FWH up from work so that we could travel away to another town to spend the weekend. We never made it there read my profile for the details. And when we got home and I confronted him, he told me the one thing that I didn’t find out from his computer. That he had had an ONS with someone he met on AFF 29 days before. 5 Days before our 20th anniversary. And that he was in the process of trying to meet up with her again.
I’ve been dreading tomorrow. I counted down days after that day for months. I started counting down days TO that day about 2 months ago. And these last couple of weeks have been rough. Really rough. We got through the 1 year anniversary of him meeting her for coffee. We got through the one year anniversary of him screwing her. We got through our wedding anniversary by ignoring it. And then he got arrested for DUI and I had to bail him out literally hours before my mother came to spend a week with us. We got through telling her about the DUI. We’re dealing with all of the ramifications that this new slice of crap is going to shower down upon us. And now, tomorrow is less than 24 hours away.
I feel strange. I remember that frantic, crying, strung-out being almost in the third person. She was stabbed in the heart. She bled out for some time. She’s still got scarring and a lump of hurt in her. But she learned how to stand up for herself again. She learned how to set boundaries and how to walk away if needed. She learned when to take and when to give. And she’s learning more every day and becoming a person that I love.
And what about him? He learned that he was a broken man. He learned that he could not handle his demons alone, and he learned to open up to councilors and to her. He realized what he was throwing away, and grabbed his life back and is hanging onto it with arms and legs. He got cocky and learned that he’s still in need of healing that this is a road that will indeed be walked upon for years. He’s learning to be humble and to stay humble in the sight of God, and that he has to be that person every day.
What have we learned? That there is love between us. That we need to fight for and nourish that love every day of our lives. That there is no such thing as a protective lie between us. That we make a choice every day, to commit to each other and love each other, or to turn our backs on “us.” That we are both worthy of love and that we need to show love, caring, and commitment to each other every day.
One year ago tomorrow, I would not have believed that we would be walking the path that we are walking now. One year ago tomorrow, I thought that We would be He and I from that point on. One year ago tomorrow, my world exploded around me and I was left a bleeding hulk. Today, I look back upon that person, both people, with compassion and acknowledgement of the rocky road that was to come, wishing that I could have whispered in each person’s ear, it will get better you will survive. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. But I know where I’ve come from, and I can see where I want to go, and tomorrow is, with the grace of God, going to be just another way-station that I leave behind me. That we leave behind us.
One year ago tomorrow.
