Raw

That's how I feel today. Just....raw. I think so many emotions are trying to bubble up to the top all at once it's left me overwhelmed. Drained. Confused. Can I trust him? Should I trust him? Do I even want to? Sometimes I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin. I'm living my life, but I feel like I'm watching somebody else do it. I'm living a facade. How are you today? I smile and say "fine." I'm not fine. Tears are just beneath the surface. Look at me cross-eyed and they might spring forth. J feels foreign to me too. He's familiar, but a stranger. I know every inch of his body, and yet I don't know him at all. I thought I did. I had two beautiful children with this stranger. That makes me sad. How did I get here? When did I decide it was better to squash who I really was? When did I decide that the real Heather wasn't good enough for J? I cheated him, I cheated myself. He did the same. What a mess. I'm so sad. Sad we got so far away from what we intended. Sad that we screwed up so bad. Sad that he betrayed me.

Why did I let him stay? A lot of reasons. Sometimes I wonder why I let him stay too. But somehow the fact that they didn't actually have any sort of physical sexual contact makes a difference. That and she's hundreds of miles away. I think the fact that he chose someone like that says something. If he was trying to end our marriage, he would have chosen someone locally. Sometimes I think this was a wake-up call from God: "You're off track and haven't seen the signs, you haven't listened to your instincts. Look what could happen if you don't open your eyes." It's not right. He never should have done it. But it's done. I'm sure he has feelings about this too. He's expressed regret, remorse, guilt, shame. It's still not the same hell I'm living. His world hasn't been completely turned upside down.

He's out of town right now. An event for one of the side-bodies he's a member of. Six hours away. Might as well be a lifetime. Forever. I miss him. On the one hand it's good...gives me a chance to examine my thoughts and feelings in privacy. On the other....what is he doing? Technically he could be doing anything and I'd never know. That scares me. Makes me feel vulnerable. Do I believe he's not doing anything he shouldn't be? Can I believe that? Should I? I don't know. I mean honestly I know that I could very well feel this way with anybody. There's no guarantee with anybody that they won't cheat. I guess that's the other reason I've let him stay - there's no guarantees with anybody. And oh yeah - I'm still in love with him. Right or wrong, I am. He's the father of my children. Sometimes I look at him and see that he's a good man that just made a bad choice. Very bad choice. Everybody makes mistakes. It was an unfortunate circumstance, this whole thing. I want to get past this. I don't want to resent either of them forever. It takes far too much energy and will just eat me alive. Hating them won't benefit anybody, least of all, me.

But I hurt. I honestly can't remember the last time I felt such deep pain. Was it when David, my ex, lashed out at me for months for breaking up with him? It felt like deep pain at the time, but I've since moved on. I have the memories, but no scar on my soul. He was just pathetic. I feel sorry for him, really. This feels different. Maybe it was August 1999 since I last hurt this bad. The day I realized I had to be away from my parents forever. It's a long and ugly story. One I don't want to get into - it's not the point of this blog. It was the hardest and most painful decision of my life - bar none. It was also the best decision I've ever made. It's why I was able to recover from my depression and become the highly functioning woman I am today. I'm still in the middle of this though - still surrounded by the pain. Somewhere in the distance I can see the lesson I'll learn from this, and feel like I'm learning it now. Leaving my parents was excruciating for years. It still stings sometimes. All the other hurt combined I've experienced in life doesn't compare to how I feel about J's cheating, except to that. That's how big this is. It's a loss, like that was. I lost trust, faith in J, in the vows of marriage and in the obligations of freemasonry. Maybe a loss of innocence too. At 37 years of age I still had some innocence about me. Some naievety. Funny. I guess the little girl in me still believed in happily ever after. I don't want to believe that doesn't exist - happily ever after. The day I married J, I intended it to be the only time I got married. For better or worse. This is the worse, when do we get the better? I'm lost. I was given no skills to deal with something like this, to have a healthy marriage. I'm stumbling around in the dark, blindly, hoping I come across the right answer.

There has to be a better way.