If I start with 15 December 2010 I can actually feel some sympathy for myself. It was Wednesday. I got off work about 4pm and headed home. My husband usually gets home about 5 or 5:30. I turned on my laptop and checked my email. 5:00. Nothing much going on. 6pm. I checked his email. Nothing of note. For some reason I checked his sent mail box and there were two emails, forwarded to a yahoo account with his nickname.
They were just some jokes but I had no idea he had a yahoo email account. It was unbelievably easy to get in. My husband is a creature of habit when it comes to passwords. There they were. My worst nightmare. Worse than my worst nightmare. Emails between him and a woman he worked with. His lover.
"I adore you" she wrote. "You are wonderful" he wrote. "This is who I am" she wrote, "I do feel your pain, I feel the ache... I feel the desire and feel responsible... I should have said no... " "There aren't enough words and using mortal words would be an insult to the beauty and joy that is, and always will be, Terri Beuerelein..." he wrote. "I so enjoy being with you" she wrote. Time stopped. My heart stopped. My breathing stopped. What had kicked me in the head? What was that? An earthquake? Did a meteor hit the house? A plane fall from the sky? How could the air be sucked out of the entire world?
Why does infidelity feel like horror.
I called him. Come home now. Why? Because we're getting divorced. Why? Because I saw your yahoo account. Dead air. Dead space. Dead heart.
I was incredibly cold and my first thought was to get a coat. My second, a gun. My third, save the emails.
He got home so quickly I hadn't even processed what happened. I remember this. Insanity followed.
It was awful. It was the end of everything and the beginning of a nightmare. I tried to breathe and be sane. I tried to use reason and be calm. I failed at everything. I raged at him and he lied to me. He begged and I howled. It was me. It was me. I failed at everything. I failed at making him love me. I failed at being a wife. I failed at making a home. I failed at growing older with grace. I failed at fulfilling him. I failed at taking care of him. I failed at marriage. I failed at love. I failed at life.
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