Journal Entry: May 10, 2014

“It’s not the load that breaks you, it’s the way you carry it.” -Lena Horne

Days have gone by since I have written in my journal. This is not a good sign.

I knew this day would arrive eventually. I’m pretty sure it will go down as the second most destructive and heartbreaking day of my life. I think subconsciously, I was dreading the reality of what I am about to describe here. I am so sorry this day ever happened.

The week had not been a good one. My husband had been moping around generally not doing well. I was keying off of that and in a bad mood. After returning from a hair appointment, I grabbed the mail and went into my office and sorted through it. There was a card from the whore in response to the letter my husband wrote to her a couple weeks ago. It is just a regular old cheap grocery store card. Nothing special, nothing pretty. It is such a strange card, too. Very masculine in look and feel. The printed card says things like “You’re the Man,” and “You Can Do It.” In the card, she has written in her own hand about how she understands that she was just an object. Then she chastises my husband for writing mean things to her, as she is his victim and she is mean with her words. She goes on and quotes a couple of the 12 steps and underlines the one about making amends to your “victims.” She is clearly counting herself as a victim. She then, quite disturbingly names my original therapist by name and states that maybe the therapist can give B some references for a proper therapist or treatment program. She also states that hopefully my therapist (by name) can help me with my anger and abusiveness towards B. So apparently, I am the root of the evil and this is all my fault. I sort of knew this is how she feels due to the enormity of the lies my husband has been spewing at her for years. But in all honesty, it was quite disturbing that she knew the actual real name of my therapist. It was somewhat comforting that it was my original therapist from January. Not exactly current information, but where did she get the information in the first place? She must have hired someone to follow me, or was she following me herself?

B was downstairs on a conference call. I went downstairs and waited for him to get off the phone. He could see that I was upset. Who wouldn’t be, I am shaking knowing that I am holding a card that she held, a card that she wrote in to my husband. A card where she names my therapist. Before I show my husband the card, I ask him if he has ANYTHING to confide to me, if he is keeping ANY secrets. I realize it is a totally loaded question, but for someone who has committed to having told me the WHOLE TRUTH, swore on our marriage, on his own life, that he had been telling the whole truth, this shouldn’t be too difficult for him. I am expecting him to say he talked with the whore in January, trying to get her to back off (this was an 8-year pattern of their relationship after all, and we all know how hard it is to break habits) and maybe he told her we were both in therapy and he let the name of my therapist slip. But instead of saying what I am expecting, that he spoke with her desperately trying to get her to stop calling me, he discloses another trip that he took with her. Remember, at this point he has no idea what is in the card, but he knows it is from her. He discloses a trip to NYC, last April. Seriously? I immediately became quite angry. That was not the secret I wanted him to disclose. They were both fucking with me again, and I was losing it. He promised, swore up and down, that he had disclosed everything about his relationship with the whore. He was obviously lying. Even though I had told him that if he lied, I would have to go through the whole trauma process again. That if he was still lying, it would kill me. None of that had meant anything to him. Everything was about keeping his secrets. It was obvious to me at that point that he was not really in recovery. That he was still lying to himself and to everyone else. I became unreasonably angry and hurt. I was yelling, screaming really, and slamming doors. I decided to pack a bag and leave for a while.

I had been telling him for weeks that if he could not be truthful, there was no marriage left, and here he was, admitting to another lie. Sure he was being truthful at that moment (supposedly), but what about the weeks that had passed where he led me to believe that he had not been on a trip with her last year. That he had been managing himself and his horrifying behavior. That he was getting stronger. That he wanted the “truth” out. That he didn’t want to live in that sick place anymore. It was all a lie. As I was packing, I was feeling very vulnerable, very sad, angry, and hurt. The pain in my head and my chest was building, as it often does these days. As I was coming out of my closet, he was there begging me to stay. I screamed at him and asked if he was ever planning to disclose the information about the trip or whether he was planning to keep it his little secret. At this point I didn’t really even care about the trip. This made it 11 trips in 5 years, instead of 10. It is always about the lying and betrayal. He was still feeding his addiction by keeping lies and secrets. Or maybe he was planning to formally disclose the trip and even more details in front of a room full of people to further humiliate me and that maybe I wouldn’t get angry or upset with him in front of a bunch of people, namely therapists. What a coward. What a lying, manipulative, evil coward. My head was hurting so bad, my heart felt like it was breaking in two. I felt like I had lost everything all over again. In my anger and pain, I reached down to the table and grabbed a ceramic candy dish and threw it against the wall. The dish broke into a bunch of pieces and one of the shards flew back onto the table and rested against my right hand. In a split second, as I thought the pain of his betrayal would cause my heart to explode, I picked up the razor sharp shard with my right hand and sliced through my inner left forearm. I used quite a bit of force and the shard was much sharper than I had imagined, as sharp as a piece of rugged glass. Immediately my arm opened up to expose tissue and the blood started to spurt, and then pour. I stood there in shock. B forced me to pinch my arm together to minimize the bleeding. I pinched together the cut, which was about 5 inches long and quite deep. He wrapped a towel around it. He tried to usher me towards the car to take me to the Emergency Room, but I had no shoes on and I felt dizzy. It was like my feet were cemented to the floor, and I had no shoes! How could I go anywhere without my shoes? He grabbed whatever shoes he could find. I was wearing shorts and all I could think was he grabbed work shoes that I wear with slacks, but I was wearing shorts. How could I wear these shoes? I stared at those shoes all the way to the Emergency Room. My hand was filled with blood. There was a searing, throbbing pain in my arm, but my chest felt gloriously unencumbered. The pain had lifted. Maybe I would not die of heartache today after all.

When we got to the ER, they looked at my cut, heard my story (as told by my husband) and they ushered me, and B, into a pysch room. An ugly little room with no windows and with nothing in there but a hospital gurney and some soft-sided furniture. I got to tell our sordid little story to a physician, a resident, and a nurse, all separately. They called in a social worker and I got to tell the story again, but with B out of the room. They asked if I was trying to kill myself. I was not. If I was trying to kill myself, I would have cut my wrist, not my inner forearm. They all asked if B had cut me, or was he abusing me physically or sexually. Apparently that is what they all think sex addicts do, abuse their wives sexually. Ironically no one asked if he was abusing me emotionally. There was blood loss, a lot of shots of localized anesthetic and sixteen stitches. I sat there the whole time not believing this was me. Not believing this was now my story. How could my husband of 25 years, my partner, my lover, my life, take me, a 50-year-old woman, from a strong, independent person, a dedicated wife and mother, a helper who spent most of her life taking care of others, in just four short months, to a weak woman willing to harm herself physically just to release a little of the heartache. How could this be happening? Four hours later, we left the hospital.

I did not leave our house this night. I sat upright in bed all night in pain thinking about my life and what it has become. It has become quite the mess and I don’t know if I have the energy to help clean it up.