Hit by a Bus

The range of emotions over the next few weeks was vast. Kimberly Kennedy in her book, Left at the Alter, says this, "Someone might as well have come in and told me Lew had been hit by a bus because it could not have felt any worse if he had, In fact, if I think about it, it might have been easier to handle if he had." I so relate to this comment. Daniel was in Iraq. If we got the news he had been killed I think it would have been easier to heal from. He would have stayed a hero in the eyes of our kids, and we could focus on the happy memories. Sharon Hart Morris PH.d. says, "Death is final, and so there is closure." There is no closure with an affair and I think that is what makes it so difficult. I struggled with these feeling now and again. Wouldn't it just be better if he were, well you know. I didn't stay here long because I knew it wasn't a very healthy place to be. My friends would "joke", things like, "if I see him I think I will run him over with my car." These kinds of lighthearted moments actually gave me the freedom to stop the angry thoughts about his demise.

A Not so Happy Anniversary

It has been a year since discovering my husband's affair and the subsequent end of our marriage. I still remember doing him a favor that day. I was updating some names in his hotmail when I spied some mail from a female soldier. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and I knew that was not a good sign. I opened the emails and read their contents. Not completely benign, but also not completely appropriate. Not knowing exactly what to do, I wondered if his facebook password was the same as his hotmail. I tried it and success. Within minutes I knew that our marriage was in jeopardy. Unlike the emails, the facebook messages painted a very clear picture of an affair in sticky sweet details. I sat alone on my couch at home reading through these horrible messages. Why? What was he thinking? She knows he's a married man? How could he? Haven't I been through enough this year? I messaged him immediately that I knew he was having an affair and that he needed to contact me immediately. He called me with in a couple hours. The conversation was short. After he tried to deny it for a minute, he conceded and I told him he needed to make a decision and that I didn't want to hear from him again until that decision was made. I was sick to my stomach and I wanted to throw up. Where do you go from here. Your world stops. The next morning I took my son to school and as I was exiting the parking lot I received the phone call. He was such a coward. All the cliche's came out, "I didn't mean to hurt you", "I never meant for this to happen", "I don't know how this happened", "I have to follow my heart", and the best one was, "I have to do what's best for me." Wow, was all I could think for a while. I was numb. Do what's best for you? What about your kids, our family, your military career, coaching, all of it? Did he understand that doing what was best for him left a wake of "not best" things for his kids and our family? It was clear to me as I sat in that parking lot and watched other kids get dropped off and parents go about their business, that our lives-me and the kids-would never be the same. At that moment no one knew the subsequent turmoil our family would have to go through. Everyone was going about their day, while I sat in my van contemplating the end of a 20 year marriage and all the hurt, rejection, sadness, and a myriad of other emotions I had not even begun to feel. They would converge on my life and the life of my kids soon enough.