Day: February 9, 2018

Two months post DDay – a long, strange trip

Some days, I truly wonder if I’m losing my mind. If I manage to sleep, which is no sure thing, I might actually awake and have a brief, fleeting moment where I forget. I forget for a nanosecond what Handsome did. In that moment my life is like it was pre-DDay, and it feels safe and comforting. Then reality flashes in and I wonder if I had a bad dream. A split second later I realize it’s all too real and the feeling of profound loss washes over me and consumes me in an instant.

Two months ago, I was a certifiable wreck. I have no idea how I made it through a two week family vacation or Christmas. Sadly, the good times with my mom and kids among those days are such a blur they are lost to me…one more casualty of Handsome’s infidelity.

I’d love to write here that I’m getting better. Some days I feel as if I am. Not every day has been 100% awful. The affair is clearly over. Handsome started individual counseling, is working hard at it and has dialed back his drinking significantly. He is doing a good job controlling his angry outbursts. He tries in his own somewhat clumsy way to talk to me about what happened. We start marriage counseling next week. He tells me multiple times a day that he loves me. (I mostly believe he thinks he loves me, but I am very uncertain whether he is actually in love with me. How could he be if he did this awful thing?) We have had days where we laughed, had fun, had great sex (hysterical bonding!), and/ or talked about our future as if it was a certainty.

And yet on other days there is no light in the world and the very sight of him, or the sound of his voice, is both repulsive and hurtful to me. I spend days with tears dripping out of my eyes at work (it’s not exactly crying… tears just flow forth for hours on end… WTF?), and the waves of grief that wash over me seem never ending. I think of the deliberate deception (the burner phone), the duration of  his involvement with the Whore (years), how he made believe he was being a good husband and a good dad, and generally how he flitted around our home acting like nothing was going on when he was actively destroying our marriage and our family. It sickens me.

I’m tired of the emotional seesaw. I want to get off. I didn’t get on willingly or of my own volition. I was dragged onto it by the narcissism and selfishness of the person I love (loved?) most in the world. That realization alone is devastating. While I have good days and bad, every single day I’m aware of what Handsome did. It is in my head permanently. The mantra running through my mind is “He did this to me. To us.” It was intentional, disrespectful, disgusting, and dishonest. Two months in, I’m still not certain how to come to terms with that.

The Other Woman

“What’s she like?” That was the question my best friend asked me today. How do I answer that?  I’ve only seen her in pictures and heard her cigarette-weathered voice on my voicemail. I do not believe that he could have found someone more different from me (from both of us, frankly) if he actively tried.

While we were on our vacation Fire Dude included a picture of the Whore in the texts he sent me.  He was sincerely lamenting the loss of his “angel” at the hands of my husband. To him, she was his world. To me, she looked like a cross between a Russian hooker and a clown. Heavy blue eye shadow. Lots and lots of mascara. Pancake make-up with rouge.  (Seriously… rouge.) Hair she clearly dyed and highlighted herself, and poorly. Clothing two sizes too small. She was my age, roughly, but in fairness thinner and more petite. I’m going to date myself here, but she truly looks like a thinner version of Mimi Bobeck from The Drew Carey Show. (Google it)

I do not smoke. Handsome absolutely detests cigarette smoke. It repulses him. He hates it with the fire of 1,000 suns… and yet the Whore smokes.

I am educated. Handsome reads voraciously, and is big on proper English (we both are even if that may not be evident from this blog), and yet many of her texts seemed to be written by an illiterate dunce (“was you just up here?” by way of example). Her voicemails were equally lacking. Fire Dude says she barely completed high school.

I have worked constantly since I was 16. I work full time now to help support my family. The Whore lays on her couch all day and drinks. She hasn’t had a job of any kind in over 7 years despite pleas from Fire Dude to get even a part time position.

I have never used drugs and drink only occasionally.  According to Fire Dude, the Whore is an alcoholic who also uses and occasionally sells opiates.

I have never been in trouble with the law in any way shape or form. The Whore claims that everything started with Handsome when she asked a question about a warrant for her arrest. Separately, during the affair, she was arrested for punching her 11-year old son in the face. Handsome was not the arresting officer, but he apparently had to fingerprint her. There are texts from her regretting how bad she looked in lock-up (not for beating her child) and replies from him that she looked “YUMMY and delicious…like always.” I really struggle with how he could possibly have continued the affair after that particular incident, but he did.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I’m not saying that any of this would be easier if he cheated with someone from our neighborhood or our country club, but the fact that he chose to imperil our family, his job, and everything about our life for such a complete piece of trash is inexplicable to me. If she appeared on our doorstep applying for a job to clean our toilets, either one of us would have shooed her away in an instant. And yet he slept with her.

How does that even happen?