Yesterday was my middle son’s birthday. He was with his dad. He was there an unusually long time, and he came home very excited; again, unusual. He showed me a flash drive that his dad had given him. Apparently his dad had a video camera from the early years of our marriage, and he’d moved the videos to the flash drive. My son had spent his birthday with his dad and his dad’s wife, watching movies of his childhood. He couldn’t wait for me to watch them. Exciting, eh?
I’m hoping that the feelings I’ve been experiencing are heightened by quarantine because boy – I am really raw. It will be 7 years in March that my ex asked for a divorce and right now, it feels like yesterday. And I can’t figure out – am I over reacting? The thought of watching these videos, videos of the life I thought I had, after they’ve been viewed by my ex and his new wife; they feel ruined. I know now that any movies or pictures I look at were a lie. They were based on lies and deceit. Those scenes you see in movies, where the ex’s come together to joyfully look through the remnants of their life together – that will never happen for me and my ex. I’m not even sure I’ll ever be able to look through the old photo albums without reliving this pain. And the thought that he shared this part of My life with her……ugh. I don’t even know what to do with that.
Have all of my children’s memories been negated? And when the fuck does this stop hurting? Can I ever recover from this man who left me to wrap up our life alone? Does it ever end? If not, what is the point of all the work I’ve done?
Groomed but Escaped 
I think it ends but it’s proportional to your investment. It takes a lot of time. I have somehow untied my brains from the damage. I doubt I could have done so as quickly if o had not found out about his cheating and spent months collecting information prepping to leave him in secret, because it really allowed me to see his duplicity. His accusations and lies and discussions about him considering divorce because he didn’t like MY conversations with a coworker, stressing that I was awful and shitty, and it was necessary for me to make amends and it might never be enough. He made these protestations and claims while I knew he was knee deep in hookers and spending our money on that while I made money and he made peanuts while going to school. It was mind fuckingly painful and reality spinning, but- boy oh boy did I realize that his intentions and his words and his value of me and all the things he did and said- meant nothing. And what I did and thought and actioned for myself was what mattered. And that meant he got cut out of my good thoughts in the past. Those good memories are good. But they are good for me. They have NOthing to do with him. He didn’t ruin them. That’s the best I could ever do for myself. He didn’t take away those good moments. He was there. But they were so good. They were so sweet, so happy, even he, in his wolf in sheep’s clothing asshatry- didn’t ruin them. Nope.
Now- it wasn’t always like this. I hated all those times for awhile. Now I just see him as an out of focus presence. Oh yeh, blob was there. I guess that happened. But hey!!! I loved Hawaii with my family.
Oh. That last Christmas with my grandma. She kept making jokes about how she had Alzheimer’s. Yeh, that out of focus thing at the corner of my eye? Yep, blob was there. But he doesn’t ruin those cute moments with my granny who asked her son- whom she didn’t recognize, my dad- the very very staunch minister who has never had a drink- to get her a god damn beer for her supper- that will never be ruined. I didn’t like thinking about it for a long time. But now it’s a triumph. It’s a thing I can hold over his memory. “You didn’t fucking ruin my decade and a half you asshat”. And he didn’t. And things from now on? They’re going to be precious. Stay the course. You will get there. You just have really deep wounds. They take a long time to heal.
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