Today I decided to try mowing the lawn. It's something Adam's always done or hired out to a high school student. I knew that I would have trouble starting the mower, but I was full of an "I Shall Overcome" mood and decided to do it.

It was awful.

Seven hours later, I still cry when I think about it. Part of it was my fault for not eating before I took on the challenge. If ever there is a terrible time for my blood sugar to crash, of course it's going to crash then. As it did mid-mowing session. Before that, I struggled to get the mower started, I couldn't figure out how to reattach the grass bag after struggling to lug it over to the yard cart, and I ran over several Invisible Fence yard flags. This project was doomed from the start.

Sixty minutes, several breakdowns, too many starting struggles to count, two very scary hill experiences (yes, your lawn mower will try to roll back on you if you don't have the strength to push it up a steep hill), three spoonfuls of peanut butter, and a lot of tears later, I only have the front yard mowed.

I think the issue comes down to anger and resentment. I am so angry at Adam that he left me to do this. I am so incredibly pissed at him that he doesn't care whether the lawn mower rolls backward on me. I almost hate him for leaving everything behind for me to do. I say "almost" because I'm not a person who hates people. Someone would have to be pretty egregiously evil for me to hate. Sometimes I wonder whether abandoning your sick wife and three kids qualifies. There are times I think it does.

It is so difficult being a single mother. It's even more difficult when you add in the amount of emotional pain that stems from being abandoned. It's overwhelming when you add in a chronic illness and high levels of daily pain. Throw in an aging house and large lawn with constant needs, and I sometimes feel like I'm drowning. How does someone just abandon their life without a second thought? How do you just walk away and say, "Sayonara! Have fun trying to survive!" Could you, the reader, ever imagine leaving your children behind? Imagine your spouse being sick (unfortunately, I know some of you don't have to imagine)...could you cheat on that spouse with someone else and just decide that you're sick of having a sick spouse and walk away? I used to believe there were certain thresholds for decency that people wouldn't cross. I guess I don't believe that anymore.

I really hurt right now, both physically and emotionally. I know I will be in terrible physical shape tomorrow...I just did too much. I shouldn't have pushed it trying to mow the lawn. In this new life alone, I'm going to have to figure out what I can and cannot do. Clearly, I cannot mow the yard. It's just too much. I hope I will feel better tomorrow emotionally. I hate these down times when grief and anger push in on me. I succeeded in not crying in front of the kids, but now that Adam has come to get them, I guess it's fair to let the tears fall. I don't understand why life has to be like this. There are times that I want to shake my fist and say, "Really God?  More pain? It hasn't been enough? Cheating spouse, heart attack, overwhelming physical pain for six years, scary diagnoses, and then again with the cheating spouse. Isn't this enough?" I know that God would be okay with me doing that because He gave me this emotions. He is okay with me expressing my sorrow, grief, and rage. He doesn't love me any less for breaking down and sobbing.

The goodness in this is that I know He has a plan. He didn't cause Adam to flake out on our marriage, but He isn't surprised by it either. "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11. God is working on me and building me through this situation. He is drawing me near and carrying me through this. For all of my frantic attempts at orchestrating the meeting of all the needs I foresee, God keeps reminding me of Exodus 14:14: "The Lord will fight for you: you need only to be still." So I am relaxing my hands and trying to refrain from grabbing at things. I'm trying to purge the thought that only I will look after myself and that I cannot depend on anyone else to look after me. I am working on trusting God to meet all of my needs.

Interestingly enough, I ran into Adam's girlfriend this past weekend. They've been together almost two years now...Adam and I have only been separated for a few months. God most certainly was with me that day. In all of my angry fantasies about running into her, I never once fantasized about handling the situation the way I did. That will be a story for another time, as I hurt pretty badly right now. I think it's time to call this day to an end and go to bed.

Rings

     There is a visceral pain now when I see a man wearing a wedding ring.  The immediate thought in my mind is, "He loves his wife enough to wear his ring and honor that marriage. Why doesn't Adam?"

     I may never know the answer to that question. I know the fault lies within him, not within me. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't a punch in the gut to watch other married couples. I broke down in tears the last time I was at church watching a husband whisper something in his wife's ear, something that made her laugh. I wondered why that couldn't be me? How many times had I just taken for granted that Adam would whisper in my ear for 50 more years?

     Let me be blunt: this sucks. There is no other way around it. This pain can not be imagined or sympathized with. It hits in a million different sneaky ways. I feel like a ghost walking around Meijer because all I see are older married couples gently bickering over cereal and peanut butter. They move as one unit after so many years of marriage, one taking over the cart when the other stops to peruse the store's offerings. I always assumed that Adam and I would end up like that and found great comfort in the notion that we would travel around and enjoy each other's company. It hurts when I go to the hardware store to find something the house needs and see married men with their 'Honey Do' lists, gamely tackling their latest project. It feels almost post-apocalyptic to be walking as a single, divorcing woman amongst the mostly-married culture of West Michigan. Me against the zombies. Or maybe I'm the zombie. Dead Woman Walking.

     I always go back to why and how. Why has Adam done this? After witnessing the pain he caused with the first affair, why did he do it again? And how does one feeling person do this to another(in the first place, let alone again)? Depending on who I ask, I get different answers, everything from "He's a cold-hearted, selfish SOB" to "You may never know how or why, but you need to just know it isn't your fault."

     I could hate him. I could put all of the anger and hurt into one big, razor-edged, black mass of hatred that I use to will him out of my heart. I could discount the thousands of loving gestures (hundreds maybe) over the past 13 years, putting them all in the category of further manipulations by him. I could trash-talk him to my family, my friends, and willfully squeeze him out of his place in my memory and my heart.  And that is very tempting. Wouldn't that be the appropriate reaction to a hurt this purposeful and enormous?

     Ugh. But I can't. That's not who I am. I am not a person who hates. I almost wish I was because it seems that it would be easier to hurt and hate than to eventually stumble to a place of forgiveness. Not forgetfulness, but forgiveness.  I will never, ever, ever forget that Adam took the trust I gave him after his first affair, ripped out my heart, put them in a blender, poured lighter fluid on both, lit them, and then turned on the blender.  I will never trust him again. He has yet to keep a single promise that he made in the wake of this last affair. The promises flow easily...the honoring? Not so much. He has lost my trust and he will always be damaged in my eyes.

     It hurts so much to say that and I am crying as I write this. In my eyes, Adam was an honorable man, one who wanted to help other people. He was a generous, kind man who gave money where it was needed. He was funny, intelligent, articulate, handsome, and he stuck by me when I fell ill. I loved him with everything I had in me. We had our difficulties, no question, but I certainly did love that man.  It breaks me beyond description to recognize in retrospect that so many of those qualities I loved in him weren't actually there. That man didn't exist. (And lest you think I am being dramatic, let me just assure you that I heard it from the horse's mouth). I am really trying to not mourn the man I thought he was because I may as well mourn a fictional character. I received wise advice from someone who said, "Be sure to mourn the man he actually was, not the man you thought he was. That man didn't exist."

     I've taken off my wedding ring. I initially thought I would wear it until the divorce is final. However, it struck me after yet another cruelty by Adam that the ring symbolizes our marriage, the fact that I am united in holy matrimony with him. It symbolizes a commitment. That commitment, that holy union, no longer exists. Adam invited two other women into our "holy" union. He has made his choice. I no longer belong to him in any sense and I am not united with him in any sense. I'm not worried about displaying a misleading message of "being available" because I simply don't see ever dating again. Adam accomplished several things during our marriage, one being I have a very difficult time making, keeping, and trusting friends (see  2006). The other is that I'm not sure how I'll ever trust someone again. Adam's deception was thorough and he is accomplished in the art of living two lives. How will I ever know for certain that every man isn't like him?

    Some of you may be uncomfortable reading this.  You may be thinking that my words are harsh and unfair. Let me assure you that these words barely scratch the surface of the pain I feel. Again, let me be blunt: Adam cheated with my best friend in 2006; I forgave him; he's been cheating for the past year and a half with a woman from work and refuses to even try to work things out; he's barely left our home and is spending nights at hers and spending money on her (and yes...he and I are still legally married.) So if you think I'm being harsh, dwell on those facts. Try to put yourself in my place and imagine, just try to picture, how you would begin to feel if that husband you love did those things. And trust me...I didn't see it coming. I thought he was the wonderful, saved, Christian, loving man described two paragraphs above. A point of pride (apparently) in him telling me about the process of revealing his affair to his closest friend at work: "He didn't even know!  He was shocked!!" Like I should swoon with pride because my husband can fool everyone? 

     Yes, this is ugly. This is my life.  These words are true and the hurt is unbelievable. Every day, there is something that hurts more. Today it was Adam talking about the new coffee table and TV stand in his apartment: "It feels more like home now."  Umm...okay. You had a really nice home here with a woman who thought you were wonderful. Really? Your apartment feels like home?

     I'm tired of crying, I'm tired of hurting. I want to purge him from my life and my mind. I understand why divorces turn ugly. People so hurt and so tired of being hurt lash out in the only way they can: fighting over children, money, and furniture.  I get that now. I'd always been judgmental about it, wondering how someone could drag out a fight over a china cabinet or an extra hour on Sundays. But now I see that these things turn ugly almost without anyone willing it. Someone hurts, so they dig in their heels. The other party lobs a few insults, maybe tries to bully the first party, and fires back by digging in their own heels.  And thus it goes down the drain, into the court system for a number of years. By the time anyone realizes that the china cabinet doesn't mean that much, they're already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with legal fees and so many hurtful words have been said that the hatred is intractable.

     In the first few days after Adam dropped his bombshell, we talked of keeping things civil, settling everything, being respectful and kind to each other. That now strikes me as being as fanciful as childhood dreams of marrying a prince and living happily ever after. He is not the one drowning in pain. He left this marriage and went into his already-established relationship with a 'lovely' young-ish paralegal at work. They'd already been dating a year and a half...perhaps all kinks are already worked out and it was a seamless transition for him from wife to...well, you know. It doesn't seem to matter that she's also still married.  Obviously marital laws and the whole marriage-as-an-institution-of-God is not a stumbling block for either one of them. So yes...of course Adam wants to keep things civil because it's not hard for him. The burden falls on me, the abandoned spouse. I'm not sure how long it takes to get over your husband yelling, "Get it through your head...I DON'T LOVE YOU!!!" but I'm pretty sure it takes longer than Michigan's six-month waiting period for divorce.

     I say this now and have moments when I believe it, and I know those moments will start to last longer soon enough: Being single certainly runs rings around being with someone so selfish that they have absolutely zero regard for you, your well-being, and your marriage.

Broken Again

I never thought I would be back here writing because my husband had betrayed me again. I trusted him. Yes, even after 2006, I trusted him again. I cannot say I regret being married an additional 6 1/2 years to the man who has shattered me again because there was happiness in those years and because I don't think my children ever suspected what their father had done.

Of course, all of that is gone now. On February 6, 2013, my husband told me that he had been having another affair, this time for a year and a half. She's a woman he works with (at least not my closest friend this time); however, she also lives in town (apparently he likes to keep things local). He also told me that he has no interest in working things out.  He wants a divorce. The hurt, shattered, destroyed, broken-beyond-repair part of me says, "This is what you get for trusting him again.  This is what you get for being who you are. What did you expect to happen when you forgive a cheater?  Of COURSE he's going to do it again...you made it too easy for him!" That part mocks me in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.  She tells me that I am stupid, weak, pathetic.  She tells me that I would be a fool to ever trust someone again.  She whispers that I will be alone forever, I will always be broken, and that no one can ever love me.  Sometimes I get so tired of shoving her to the back of my mind.  I get tired of fighting.  I grow weary of the pain. How much can one person hurt in a lifetime?

I'm under no impression that my pain is the worst in the world. I'd need only watch the news to debunk that myth. But this pain is real. It is overwhelming. It is cruel in its mockery that I ever thought my husband loved me. It ridicules me for ever believing the tears in his eyes when he swore to me time and time again that he would never leave me. This pain is beyond description. And I am mystified as to how someone I loved so truly and respected could willingly do this to me. When I gave him my heart not just once but twice, how can he throw it at my feet, crumpled and bruised, torn beyond repair?

Clearly I am just existing moment to moment right now. The chaos and bickering of the children are welcome relief. But the nights come and remind me that I am alone, unloved, rejected, and that he just does not care. Who knows if he ever did? When someone admits that they've lied their whole life, who am I to selectively determine what was truth and what was just more lying? Every 'kind' act, every word of love is beyond suspect now. They are trash.

And that hurts beyond description.

The crazy truth

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