So much happened in that first week. That first day he played dumb. For hours. Even with the texted screen shots. Eventually I got written confirmation. By the time he made it home I'd moved all of his stuff to the downstairs guestroom. I think I was in the hallway and directed him downstairs and then ran across the street to the refuge of another one of my dearest friends where I spilled the beans. Later that night when I was in the livingroom he tried to speak to me but I couldn't. Few words would come out of my mouth. Sobs. "No!" “Don't Touch Me!" I sat outside crying in the dark for a really long time.
I did post some vague memes on Facebook, enough that his mom called asking what he did now. For the last couple years I cried and vented to her regularly about my struggles with him. I told her I wasn't ready to talk about it and would call her later-or some other vague response. She'd been my mom and best friend since 1999. She knew how hard I had been trying and I cried to her often asking what I should do to get him to stop drinking so much and put the kids and I first. A few months earlier when I was down and out with another ankle surgery and he'd been particularly cruel she had actually told me to throw him out-that maybe that would finally wake him up. When I think back over our marriage and throughout the hard times, sometimes I didn’t leave him because I was afraid of losing her and my extended family. Apparently, my gut knew.
The next day I told her. We cried. She told me that I'd always be her daughter. But then the ask that would apparently change it all.
"Aren't you going to do therapy? Work it out?” That “No, I can't,” was apparently my exit ticket.
I called her to check and see how she was doing and let her know how telling the boys went, and after Family Weekend at my son's college I had sent her a small gift since she decided it would be too hard to come. I never thought the too hard part was facing me. The next week I discovered she blocked me on social media, removed herself from our Life360 family group and didn't have the decency to say anything to me. If I wasn’t persistent in trying to find out health results on my father-in-law, I wouldn't have discovered she'd blocked me from her cell too.
This was as devastating as the affair. Almost more based on past trauma. Through therapy I've accepted she has her own past trauma and emotional needs and this is the only way she could deal with this awful situation. As I reflect, I also see there were a lot of unhealthy expectations in our relationship that I just accepted and I broke this dynamic by finally standing up for myself, so I accept the result. I did act out-maybe excessively trying to explain how she was hurting via letters since she wouldn't speak to me. I returned some precious jewelry and things that meant a lot and always made me think of her. That probably put the nail in my coffin.
While sad, I needed to protect my island. In Glennon Doyle's book,“Untamed,” she talks about her island that she had to put her family on- this is what I was doing. Building a moat. Pulling the drawbridge. If you haven't read the book-run to the store, Amazon, etc. I think when I read it originally I knew my marriage needed to end but I was too afraid to reframe what I thought I wanted my life to be. I thought I could still fix it. I couldn't give up. But I think that's when I actually realized that I had lost my inner Cheetah. And boy oh boy – am I finding my "F ***cking" Cheetah. (Read the book!) And this is a GOOD CHEETAH - not a CHEATA'!
Shameless Plug-my amazing sister drew that Cheetah on the cover and then the illustrations in the subsequent journal. She's also a F***cking Cheetah!
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