Category: A-Z challenge

Present.

We all say we want to live in the present, and we really do. We really want to savor the moments and see the world around us and breathe in the instant yet we don’t. We want to notice the way the trees majestically rise to the sky and hear the soulful coo of the mourning dove and say a sincere thank you to the person who hands us our coffee and even look them in the eyes while doing it yet we don’t.

be.here.now.

More often than not, we don’t.

Often we are plagued with burdens past or fears future and before you know it we forgot the present. We are pulled into the pain of then or the anxiety of next and meanwhile the possibility of now slips by. And we don’t see it, often, until it’s gone.

When your baby is done nursing for good, you try to think about the way he felt against your skin. It’s hard to remember, really, because you were there but not present, thinking about what to make for dinner or whether you would be on time to pick the other kids up. As you gaze at the road, you realize you don’t remember the last fifteen minutes of the trip and wonder what you were thinking about that was making you there but not present.

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Is that one of the ways that HUSBAND was able to live a double life alongside our life? Because I was there but not present? I was thinking of things past and things to come and forgetting to live in now and now was where he was living another life? As I try to think about those days of known infidelity now, I try to imagine how I had no idea (one of the mind scourges of the betrayed), and not living in the present was real. I spent time focusing on past failures and wounds, trying to avoid a future of mistakes and injury and meanwhile missed the now. Just like the driving reality – I woke up and wondered where and how I had gotten there.

Because that’s how present is. It is here now and gone then. But not like we sometimes think about present. It is seriously here now and gone then. Individual moment by individual moment. To learn to be present is something that finding out HUSBAND was a betrayer has taught me. To learn to literally engage here, now, in this very present moment and the next very present moment and the next and so on. To learn to quiet the mental chatter that feeds me messages from the past or fears of the future and to focus on the person in front of me, his words, his actions now without interpretation, and to receive it. To see the food and smell the smells and taste the tastes now, without expectation or comparison. To walk into a new barre class and see the space and feel the floor against my feet and squeeze the ball between my legs and receive the next move without anticipation.

Present. It is so hard, and so different than the way I used to live. But so completely – freeing.

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Such a dichotomy that it was my shattered past that led me to learn to live in the present. But for me, this is an enormous part of my healing. The shattering is what helped me have the courage to do so…you see…the shattering left me bloody and strewn out across all that I knew and exposed…but I survived. I lived on. I became strong and fierce and even though I may be stitched together in so many ways and have crazy scars across all parts of my being, I know that it’s a beautiful pattern. I learned that the One who went first had experienced all this – mockery and flogging and betrayal and abandonment – and He showed me the way to present. Through Him, the past has no hold over me, and the future is glorious.

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OR.

A tiny word, just two letters. But a word of enormous implications. It is literally pivotal, and sometimes the only thing between right and wrong. Good and bad. Healthy and unhealthy. Wise and foolish.

OR is fundamental into most moments and most days. We stop at Starbucks OR we don’t. We do? Perhaps we are a bit late. Perhaps we spend the $10.00 that we would be better not spending. Perhaps we take in calories it would be better to avoid.

or

Woven throughout so much of our journey, we have OR junctures, and we often –  even mostly – zip right past them without too much thought, and usually get it right. Even if we don’t, the cost isn’t too high: We get up (make the bed OR not? This outfit OR that? Breakfast OR not? Vitamins, yes OR no?) We head out for errands, work, volunteer (Make time for the gym, OR not? Take this route OR that? Stay in this lane, OR change?) You get it. You live it.

And then there are big OR times…these we realize have implications of huge import, and we weigh lots of factors and consider outcomes. Things like get married OR not? Have a baby OR wait? Send the little one to this kindergarten OR that? Big university OR small…rural OR city… You get it. You live it.

There are also categories of OR that we think we don’t have to consider but later realize we should have. Things like sunscreen OR not? Eat dessert nightly OR not? Dinner out frequently OR not? And twenty years later, we realize the better answer as we deal with basil cells, added pounds or smaller bank accounts. You get it. You live it.

 

ORs are a hard thing for us betrayeds. You see, we think the decision to step out of the bounds of the relationship you have established as exclusive is one that should have been weighed, and the outcomes should have been considered. We struggle with the early steps of cheating: when the cheater first signed up for a dating site. When he wrote up a Craigslist ad. When he opened the door at a certain establishment. When he first had a conversation with someone that niggled at his soul a bit because he knew it was slightly out-of-bounds…but made him feel good. When he chose to share his cell phone and exchange text messages or set up an alternate email or agreed to meet at the art museum. Each one of those steps, those moments wasn’t OR screaming don’t forget me! Don’t forget there is an OR and there will be fallout from this step and this step and this step?!!

We betrayeds don’t understand how OR didn’t shake him up, how he could make this momentous occasion a zip-past-the-moment time and just stepped right on into his betrayal. Maybe it did…and he did it anyway after weighing it all? And the Other Woman, too…she was faced with OR after OR after OR and kept choosing the OR that lead to deception and pain and rippled out from there.

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Nearly two years out, and HUSBAND has searched his heart and mind and soul. He can’t really answer this one – how he had the OR minutes and junctures and just simply ignored it little  moment by little moment until he was making that call and sending that text and meeting that woman and taking off his clothes and it may be one of the areas I have to know that I don’t know and never can or will know. He admits he had to quell it, but he can’t explain now how he did. It is one of those haunting thoughts that tugs at my soul, because I, too, have had those OR moments. And I chose him. I chose us. I chose honor.

So OR…speak up. Shake up. Don’t give up. And may we become a people who give you a voice – you are wiser than we want to admit…

forever

Nauseating Nostalgia

We all know what nauseating means…and probably nostalgia too: a longing…sentimentality…yearning. And a sneaky little creature that sometimes tugs at the edges of our emotions luring us into rewriting times and events into something they really weren’t in the first place.

My dad was military and we lived all over the place. I remember how I thought of one of our houses in my mind’s eye…a really nice neighborhood, mid-size home, pretty yard, other homes that were lovely and spaced out too. I returned to the area of that house as a young adult and nostalgia hit…so I took a detour to drive by that home that loomed large in my mind and memories.

But it wasn’t so big. As a matter of fact, it was really really small. And all the houses in the neighborhood were small. Honestly, they weren’t nice houses in a small neighborhood, they were shoddy and poorly constructed utilizing minimal materials with small yards and very, very close together. Definitely not what I remembered…what I’d clung to all those years.

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It happens with people too. Some of the people who loomed large in my mind’s eye – physically and in esteem – upon revisiting just – didn’t. Perhaps it was my younger age, smaller size and perhaps it was also my stage of life and experience, but when we met again later, it just wasn’t as BIG as I’d remembered.

And that’s how it is with Affair Partners. Statistically, most affairs start one of two ways: at the workplace, or someone from the past. HUSBAND’s affairs were both. His “past” affairs followed high school reunions: of the three he/we attended, affairs were birthed from two. And he sees now how nostalgia played a role…painting a picture of a past that really wasn’t…and enticing him to take a journey – which he was already working toward in his sex addiction – but this made it easier.

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I talk with Other Women who have reconnected with friends, boyfriends or lovers from their past. They are determined, almost to a one, that fate messed up. That they were always meant for each other. That their MM (that would be married man) just married the wrong girl, and if they got married, it happened to them too. It really wasn’t anyone’s fault…that they are soul-mates, or twin-flames and that’s what justifies them having an affair now. Because it is really bigger than them…out of their control…the heart wants what the heart wants is what they say.

And I say nostalgia is playing its grand trick on you. It’s making that time, that friendship, that relationship more than it was. That through the years of reality and hard knocks and life, nostalgia helps you believe it was all good even when, upon closer examination, those early years were also fraught with fear and pain and uncertainty. Oh, there were good times back then – but bad times too. Ironically, much like the present, perhaps?

While submerged and engrossed in his journey down nostalgia lane, HUSBAND agreed to a point with SW’s urgings to recreate the past, to make it something it never was. She made music play lists of songs and he shared songs back from the early days…and they listened to them again and again. She spoke words related to events from high school, reminding him of his youth and virility and he gladly rewrote history. As he moved into recovery, and stepped out of the fog, he began to talk to me about high school – the real memories – and they weren’t all so great. Actually, there was fun…but also lots of pain, and angst and rejection. Yet while wrapped in the figurative and literal arms of his reminiscent lover, those memories took on different form, nostalgically pulling and drawing him and promising him a future that would look like the past that really wasn’t.

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Nostalgia. Not the same as fond memories, or a smell that reminds us of a moment in time or picture that takes us back to an event. Nostalgia for things that really weren’t but we thought they were, perhaps also called foolery, can play a role in justifying infidelity in the minds of cheaters. And that kind of nostalgia? Nauseating.

 

Mixed Up Marriage

I just happened to hear a news clip on a major network’s morning news show talking about marriage. The talk was that some people are now choosing a “menu approach” to marriage, and negotiating up front things like 3 free cheat days per year. Or sex with another person every 10 years.

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Cheating and sexual abuse is not new. Yes – I equate cheating with sexual abuse. So the oxymoron of writing in “cheat days” to your marriage contract? The term ‘cheat’ means to defraud, to swindle. It means to deceive or influence by fraud, to elude or deprive someone of something expected. Ergo, when a person enters into a marriage, it is with the intent that they are defining something unique and special about the relationship. They are declaring to the outside world and to each other that this is different, this one is for keeps, this is for the good times and the bad times and the reason I’m willing to this to everyone is because you matter, you are valued and I want to mesh with you like none other.

It’s somewhat easy to stand on the outside and look at news stories about new types of relationships, watch videos about girls who share their guy or listen to a podcast about a couple of folks in an “open marriage.” To kind of say “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, but whatever makes you happy.” Pretty much sums out how I lived – never really engaging in the conversation or caring. That is until it is about you. Until you find out your partner considered your marriage open but forgot to mention it to you. Until you realize that your partner invited someone else’s DNA into your vagina and someone else’s sexual desires into his mind. Until you see that he remembers, or maybe wants, to send her flowers on Valentine’s Day. But not you. Until you realize he can’t be bothered to make a restaurant reservation for you, but is planning plane trips and getaways with her. No…when it comes to your house, contracted or not, it is devastating. I know this personally, and I know it from spending hours and hours and hours with other women – both betrayers and betrayeds, and even some who agreed to open marriages or other such inane arrangements. It may look good on paper, but when it begins to be lived out…the pain…the agony…

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So I don’t buy it. I don’t buy any concept of marriage that isn’t committed and unique and sacred. We are humans – not animals thinking from just our limbic brain. Yes, our sexual needs are great and need to be met, but apart from engaging our minds and spirits and souls they are empty and uninspiring. They may release dopamine in our brains but don’t spur tenderness in our souls. Anyone who understands cheating knows it isn’t about sex anyway. And if your partner hasn’t dealt with whatever it is that causes him/her to need something else, something out there, then he/she isn’t bringing all he/she is to the table. To your table. To your life and your relationship.

I sat around a work table recently with five unique women from vastly different backgrounds. All are beautiful, and smart, and caring, and kind. All five…ALL FIVE…100%…have been directly impacted by infidelity in their lives. This was not a support group, or a women’s group for troubled marriages. This was a professional setting that had nothing to do with sex or sexual abuse or cheating or marriage. But the subject arose, and around the room, this is what came out:

One woman’s father had cheated on her mom…the aftermath a traumatic time for a preteen. The next one discovered after 20 years together that her husband was a cheater, and not the father of her children only. The next one is the daughter of a mom married to a cheater, watching her mom immobilized to move out of the abusive relationship and feeling completely and utterly impotent to help. The next? The daughter of a serial cheater who watched her own mother wither into oblivion, and who met numerous ½ siblings through the years…and is now grieving as her own daughter experiences a cheating spouse. Then of course, me. You know my story but in case you don’t, I’m the wife of a serial cheater, a sex addict, who artfully hid it from me for 25 years sending me into complete and utter trauma, and deeply impacting our beautiful children through his lies and manipulations to keep his double life secret.

No. Don’t buy it. We are selling out our humanity, our souls, our spirits, our minds if we allow ourselves to believe that having some sham of a marriage is healthy, or leads to wholeness or growth or peace. We are just furthering whatever hole is in the cheater, allowing him to fill it with temporary crap that ultimately leaves him more desolate than before.

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If you don’t want to have a marriage, don’t get married. If you don’t want to forsake all others, then don’t take on the promise. If you don’t want to press into the challenges and find strength you never knew you had, don’t enter the race. If you don’t want to bare all to become one, then don’t. Marriage is about so much more than sex – a commodity that is for sale on a street corner, on the internet or through a device. If you enter marriage…it is just different and about the whole you, the complete you, if you even know who that person is. The trail of turmoil and agony you leave behind when you forsake your marriage, not only for your partner, but for friends and family and any precious children just isn’t worth filling your emptiness or curiosity with lies. And I speak from one who has found deep intimacy; there is nothing and no one out there that can compare or who is worth the risk of damaging the beauty of real marriage.

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Longing

Longing – that ‘strong, persistent desire or craving, especially for something unattainable or distant’ according to dictionary.com is a soulful word, a haunting word and one that I don’t think I used to understand, really.

I hear my mom longing for the days of her youth…days where she remembers men were genteel toward women they cared about and toward those they didn’t. Days where women blushed at the utterance of a cussword and there were no commercials on television about how to enhance your sex life. Days where everyone gathered around the one small TV screen together to watch the one show that aired at the one time, and were just as likely to gather around the radio to listen to something. Mom longs for the days of phone operators who connected you to whom you wished to speak, and laundry was done only one day a week, period.

PhoneOp

I lived most of my life as such a practical girl, and longing – consciously – really didn’t play a huge role. No, I was determined to live with intention, to make my future be what I wanted through hard work and sheer grit. I was confident that I didn’t need to long because I could make it happen for myself, and for my family. Seeing that a longing is unattainable or distant, it had no place in my life.

Yet it did, was a driving factor that resulted in my staying in a marriage that was missing the mark for deep intimacy, for unity/oneness. Staying in a marriage enabling (how I have FOUGHT AGAINST THIS LABEL) my addict-HUSBAND, believing that tomorrow would be different and if I just handled this situation and if I only reacted this way and that this prayer or that marriage seminar or this discussion would make the difference.

What I see now was I had enormous longings. I longed for intimacy and communion of the souls. I longed for a family that honestly valued each other, that would meet at the heart level and care beyond perfunctory events and routine cards and empty words. I longed for adventure bridled with stability, and vision tempered with reality. I longed for deep, committed relationship. I longed…for love…

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I couldn’t let myself see that I longed for these things, and that I was not likely to get them, really, really, really get them. Ultimately, I discovered I didn’t believe I could get them – not because I had married a guy who was only willing to connect so far, to go so deep. That was the obvious answer and the one I clung to until DDay forced the journey deep into my own soul. The real answer, the real reason I ACCEPTED and stayed married to a man who gave me only part of his soul was because I didn’t believe I deserved love like this. Neither did he.

We were two broken souls who stuffed deep down their heart longings to live in a half-baked present that was wrapped in a beautiful package. It was like we could stay one step ahead of our hearts by having it all on the outside even though our insides were so sad. Nearly everyone…and I mean EVERYONE (other than our children) who knew us, lived with us, was part of us thought we had a great marriage, a great life and frequently told us that. Only a very few saw chinks in the armor because we were good – very good – at denying our longings and living on the surface of our really deep lives.

And that’s how this stuff perpetuates beyond our generation. The reason I say our children knew isn’t because we had big knock-down drag out fights, or called each other nasty names with regularity or were running out of the house, slamming doors and driving off in a huff. And it wasn’t that they consciously KNEW…it was because they knew us individually almost better than we knew ourselves, and they could see the subtle discord between the me and the him that wasn’t played out in the us and even though they couldn’t put their finger on it, IT was there.broken_family They saw we weren’t living our REAL dreams, even though we pretended to. This is what we taught them was life, was marriage. So if we had continued that way…if HUSBAND had carried out his plan to leave me for the final whore without me ever knowing his infidelity throughout our marriage, if I had gone on living in the oblivion that I had longings and they were driving me into craziness, if we hadn’t ended up face-to-face first confronted with the pretense v the reality and then each chosen to step into it….well, we would both still be longing and it would be the only picture of marriage and family that we painted for our children.

Oh, this journey. It is soul-sucking and devastating and still shocks me that I am the wife of a serial betrayer…a sex addict… It is draining and is full of places of self-blame and anger and having to work really hard not to be bitter.  I wish the triggers would stop, and that I didn’t still have questions and that I could trust unconditionally. I wish I didn’t have to deal with the voices in my head that say You Are So Stupid or He’ll Do It Again or You Should Have Left Him or It Is All Really Your Fault. I wish I didn’t have a marriage history and a new marriage history that is so much shorter than the marriage history. I wish my children didn’t have a past that was full of lies, and a stable home growing up that really wasn’t so stable.

But ironically, it is all of this that birthed my ability to find that I have longings. To be able to admit my longings. And I have found that HUSBAND now isn’t the vapid, unemotional and stale man he pretended to be for much of our marriage. His vulnerability and mine have met together in the entwining of our souls, into one flesh that isn’t just flesh but is mind and spirit too, and my longings are not so distant now. Real, honest, in-the-light beauty from such a pile of ashes.

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Kungle. Knurry. Knavigation. Kalopsia. Kindred.

Searching for just the right K word for the A-Z challenge, I came across a few little known gems that just ached to be shared.

Kungle– an old word from the far north of Scotland…it describes a large stone worn down and made round by the sea.

What a cool word…a kungle…I found a kungle…look there is a kungle…can we find some kungles…do I have kungles in my life….

SeaStone

The picture of a strong large stone that gets enveloped by the sea, knocked around the ocean floor, sometimes thrown up onto the shore and sucked back in to the sea, rubbed against other rocks and plants and sea creatures and sand and seaweed and eventually is made smooth and round. And lovely. And useful.

A little like life, don’t you think?

Knurry-this is something full of knots and tangles.

It is knurry…oh dear, daughter’s hair is knurry and will hurt to comb out…the plans are quite knurrish…darn the fishing line is knurry…the path to my healing? Knurry.

Again…such a great descriptive word for life. Full of knots and tangles. They can, and should, be gently combed out but some really pull and hurt and may even take out a hair or two, but in the end we have smooth and sleek. A word for paths, and hair, and rope. And life.

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Knavigation-this is a dishonest story or statement. Literally, it’s the kind of story a knavish person would tell. Oh…and a knavish person? That would be one that is untrustworthy, dishonest…waggish…roguish…mischievous.

What a knavigation…another knavigation from that waggish woman…our neighbor tends to tell quite the knavigations…

What an utterly perfect word for the world of infidelity. For affair partners. For sex addicts. Ultimately, we, the strong and brave and betrayed, have to learn to navigate the knavigation of all the rogue and mischievous parties involved. Is it possible?

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Then there is this word: Kalopsia – which is the delusion that things are more beautiful than they really are.

Another word that seems to be made for the lives of cheaters. I’ve learned over the last two years that betrayers make all things beautiful that are really tarnished and filthy and ugly. Things like porn. Or chat rooms. Or one of the gazillions of apps that cheaters use to hide their illicit conversations and photos and videos. Or the “relationship” itself…you know the one…that amazing-where have you been all my life-we are soulmates-and will have our-happily-ever-after relationship that exists behind closed doors watching movies in hotel rooms or closed in apartments eating food from take-out because we can’t risk being seen unless you’re out of town and that you have to hide the presents under or in your desk at work so even your coworkers don’t ask but it is L. O. V. E. And the Other Women insist we just don’t understand….we just don’t get that they are loved because he texts her good morning and good night, some nights, when he isn’t with us – you know, the WIFE. Good heavens…there is simply nothing, NOTHING beautiful or loving about lies dripping from the mouths of two illicit lovers, telling each other all the things they want to hear but know deep in their hearts are not true. So yes, kalopsia. A most excellent word for the world of infidelity.

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Which brings me to the last word on this K day of my alphabet-life journey: Kindred. This word has a couple meanings including people related to one another like family, clan, tribe. This relationship can be natural, or marriage, or affinity.

Here on wordpress with this amazing community that, for me, began with betrayeds and betrayers and now includes sympathetic readers, cantankerous posters, young people and single people and people who agree and people who disagree, I have found astounding affinity, kindred spirits, a tribe. I am so deeply thankful that this beautiful kindred has grown from a place of such pain.

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Juxtaposition

juxtaposition

A noun. A noun that is defined as “1) an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.”

Two years ago today, I began to find out that my life was a juxtaposition. Two years ago today, I got an anonymous email from someone I consider a hero who began to pull the edges off the covering that would reveal that side-by-side to my life as I knew it there was another life.

Two years ago today, I began to have a glimpse of the (current) woman who had been placed together, side-by-side to my life and my marriage that I had no idea existed. A woman that HUSBAND used for comparison or contrast and she knew it but I didn’t.

I can remember that life before knowing, but the memory is fading. I can remember that my marriage wasn’t perfect, but that it was not bad either, and that I thought it was for the long run despite challenges and dark moments along the way – actually believing we had weathered the worst. I can remember that I thought there were lots of good things about HUSBAND – fabulous cook. Even keeled (okay, at that point he was completely detached and unemotional but I rationalized that it was even keeled). Hard worker. Always returns things in better condition than he found them. Adventurous and would always take care of the cars and cheer for the same college team that I did and was gracious to my family and friends. And we had 27 years of marriage history, four amazing children, a beautiful home, a life together. Yes, we were together for the long run and any yearnings my heart had I just stuffed away because obviously they were just the things of fairy tales and youth and dreams. We had life, together, and it was good.

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I can remember walking up that specific morning…my daughter was in town and she took me off to a barre class first thing in the morning – my first one…so that day already held special meaning for me, and is memorialized with an instagram post. Then a few simple hours later, I got another first when I read the email. I will never forget where I was standing or what I was wearing or what I was thinking when I handed HUSBAND the printed out copy of the absurd anonymous email from ‘Sid Breeze’ and he told me it was true. That split second, that instant began to reveal that my life was a juxtaposition and that there was someone close together that I knew nothing about.

These two years have been the journey of me extricating the two lives and looking at both of them with brutal honesty. Of dusting off memories and ideas and thoughts and understanding the comparison of what I thought and what also was. But there is also what he thought and what was. And I can see that our life together was a juxtaposition in itself…that we lived a life together, married, yet saw things differently and just assumed the other saw it the same. Our healing journey has required that we face these things individually, and then intentionally, together, write the story of our new marriage. The story in which there is no juxtaposition because we are one.

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A challenge in the process is the other juxtaposition. The one of the wife and the Other Woman, who off and on during my marriage, also lived side-by-side. The juxtaposition of the wife and the other woman. Living side-by-side but oh, so different in nature and method. That one is moving slowly…and in fits and spurts…and is a story for another post.

Imagine

HUSBAND and I went to watch a talk last week at a Creator-Innovator event. One of the speakers, involved in the space industry, mentioned ‘the Overview Effect’ and described it much like Wikipedia:

“…a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts…refers to the experience of seeing…the Earth in space…a tiny, fragile ball of life, ‘hanging in the void,’ shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere…national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this “pale blue dot” becomes both obvious and imperative…”

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Imagine.

Imagine if we could all somehow gain the perspective, and change the way we live and think and see and respond to each other. Even in our own little space….much less globally…how the ripple effect would change our world.

Imagine if it didn’t matter if two cars merged in front of you and not just one (or none, depending on you).

Imagine if you had extra food from dinner and you packed it in your car and when you saw a homeless person on the way to work you handed them a home-cooked meal. And didn’t worry about getting the container back.

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Imagine if you mowed your lawn and then mowed the neighbor’s lawn instead of complaining about how they never mowed their lawn.

Imagine if the neighbor that you mowed the lawn for came over and asked if they could scrub your windows when they were scrubbing their windows instead of complaining about how you never clean the mildew off your windows.

Imagine if your friend who has lots of money donated to the local community college and didn’t get a building named after him, but did reduce everyone’s tuition by $100.

Imagine if we didn’t care about manicured lawns so much and instead allowed the indigenous “weeds” to grow strong and beautiful and flower in their season and everyone in the neighborhood thought it was beautiful.

Imagine if we spent less time suing each other over issues and more time hearing each other’s issues.

Imagine if we did less compromising of individual wants, and more negotiating together toward shared mutual vision.

Imagine if we learned to value each other because we are humans, not because we have stuff or looks or are a particular gender or race or religion.

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Imagine if families didn’t break up and when things got rough we banded together to help any way we could – all of us.

Imagine if we only had a glimpse into the heart of each other and when we saw the joys and the hurts and the excitement and the sadness we cared.

Imagine if we spent so much time and energy focused on helping others that we didn’t have time to worry about our stuff.

Imagine if our emptiness and hurt and fear and anxiety was filled with people who showed us our value and worth instead of getting artificially high on pain killers or pot or alcohol or synthetics.

Imagine if people honored each other enough to help them keep their commitments and find solutions even when their resolve was running low.

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Imagine if somehow we could embrace and experience the overview effect in our own lives in our own homes in our own neighborhoods in our own towns in our own states…and it caught on…and caught on…and caught on.

Imagine.

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Her.

Ok, so today is H and that is Her.

Her the wife, me. The her that loved him imperfectly perfectly, bound in covenant and for the long haul. The her that stood beside him through the escapades of younger days: drinking too much. Sneaking around with old friends and pot. Setting up some private bank accounts to spend money without her knowing. The her that kept believing better days were coming and that better days were here and meanwhile bore him babies and kept the house and started a business and knew that one day we would have time together that was about her. The her that held the bucket for him to pee in when he’d had surgery and bought his clothes and floated the money when there wasn’t any and made sure there were presents under the tree for the children from him. The her that listened to stories about things she didn’t care about involving people she didn’t know doing things she couldn’t imagine. The her that always seemed to want to talk at the wrong time…either he was tired or he was getting ready to do something or he had to get to work early…and her waited. The her that believed everything was really okay and told herself all the good and the bad really wasn’t very bad and reminded herself how blessed she was. The her that didn’t care about emerald rings or diamond earrings or houses on the river or expensive trips, but yearned for being desired and cherished and valued. Her the wife, me.

family

Her the mistresses. Them. The hers that saw him as being able to provide them with something they were lacking and beckoned him to join them in play. The hers that were willing to meet in secret, to be a secret, to live in the shadows. The hers that sent texts and emails and cryptic notes that were erased and destroyed. The hers that helped him believe the real her wasn’t able to see how really great he was and the hers helped him believe they were the road to happy. The hers that gave him an outlet of fantasy and moments of sex and words of allure and a false road to freedom. The hers that lied to their friends and their families and their bosses and to him and to themselves. The hers that began pretending it was all for fun but quickly declared they were real and wanted more and then the hers wanted to know when he would give them more. The hers that were okay being part of the plotting and creating destruction and pain and devastation and believing that there was good anywhere in that plan. Her, them, the mistresses.

mistress

Her the honorable. The her that served HUSBAND while out of town, with kindness and engagement. The her that brought him beer and food and wiped the table. The her that the other men encouraged HUSBAND to approach because the her seemed to think he was interesting. The her that looked up when HUSBAND came over, and when the her heard his question “So what time do you get off?” the her that lifted up her left hand and pointed at her fourth finger. The her that responded to HUSBAND’s puzzled look and responded “You’re married. I don’t do married.” The her that the real her holds in high esteem, honors.

honorable

H is for the hers in my journey.

Grateful

It is Friday.  I’m grateful. I’m not exactly sure why since I’m overloaded at work and have to meet someone tomorrow at 9 am to try to catch up. But I am, grateful. It is Friday.

HUSBAND just went to make me a cup of coffee. Coffee first thing in the morning, while it is still dark out and I’m sitting up in bed blogging…I am grateful.

coffee

Beautiful blooms all around as I drive to work…in the trees…on the ground…in the bushes. I am grateful.

My darling little hoffice (in a renovated duplex, so much more than just an office) that I was moving into when DDay occurred…a respite from all things shitty…I am grateful.

hofficeflowers

4 strong, beautiful children each forging their own distinct ways, making time to connect with me. I am so utterly grateful. Despite all that my screwed up marriage did to screw them up…they are whole, and full of life. Did I mention I was grateful?

God, breathing life into me so gently. Waiting for me to understand and patiently caring for me even when I denied Him, pushed Him away, called Him all kinds of profane names but He never did leave, or forsake me. I am grateful.

BreatheLife

The community of bloggers. I am grateful. A place I can vent or ruminate or dream or complain or wish or cry out or try on or reveal and I am heard. I am incredibly grateful.

The sisterhood (and brotherhood) of the betrayed. A group I have been part of for so long, but just recently discovered…amazing, strong, brave people who show every moment of every day that they have courage, compassion, insight and are supportive in our individual journeys. I AM GRATEFUL.

And the scars. Beginning now to heal over, still breaking open in new places but each time, purging the infection of pain and bringing the promise of new skin – soft, pure. I am grateful.

Scars