This one is odd…and for some may not be a gift at all. I think many betrayeds will understand, will see why and how it could be such a gift. I found it to be a gift on several levels…

So remember me? I was the digger, the one who had an unstoppable need to try to find every answer to every question, every piece of evidence, every phone call or text or message, every email or present or FB comment. I created charts and excel spreadsheets and somehow gained sanity through the insanity of putting semblance to chaos in my own strange way.

But there wasn’t much, because HUSBAND was a master deceiver, and adept at deleting, so during that frenzy I was often frustrated with the lack of evidence that what he told me was able to be backed up. I wanted to see the messages, watch the videos, read the emails, but there were so few. I asked questions, though, and he painfully answered them.

HUSBAND told me they sent pictures with frequency to each other. I wanted to know what kind of pictures, and he told me mostly just mundane things as life happened: pictures at work, or pictures of an outfit or pictures of her dog.

“Naked pictures?” I asked…and he answered…a few. He told me she’d taken a stance like a flamingo (one leg folded up with foot on knee) while looking into her full-length mirror and snapped selfies, sometimes lifting her shirt to reveal her breasts. That she’d never spread her legs for the camera, but she had taken full-body photos while lying on the bed. That she’d sent photos frequently of herself in mirrors and from work and from the car.

So here is where the gift comes in. The odd, muddled, maybe-not-a-gift-for-some-but-an-incredible-gift-for the insatiable searcher comes in. After six weeks or so, and a million combinations of searches, I happened to uncover some photos that HUSBAND had somehow overlooked.

Photos of her, of SW.

And incredibly, they were just as HUSBAND had described.

The awkward stance in the hall, shirt raised. The selfies over and over and over and over into the mirror. Mirrors, mostly in bathrooms…at work. At her house. At her cabin. And a few, in an elevator. I enlarged every photo, observed every flaw, saw every deceitful, nasty piece and part of her expressions and fingers and toes and ass and breasts that I could, but every photo – EVERY PHOTO – was just as HUSBAND had described.

He hadn’t lied.

Another tiny step toward rebuilding trust, and these disgusting, trashy photos helped me get there.

Gifts sometimes come in strange packaging.