Wow! It's been 4 months since I last wrote a blog. I need to say a huge big "SORRY" for that! I sat down several times intending to write, but it didn't amount to much. I'll explain more in a minute.
I also want to say a great big "THANK YOU" for all the people who have read, liked and subscribed to this blog in the last few months. The response on here and on Facebook has been incredibly humbling. I know you write a blog for people to read, but to be honest I never really thought people would actually read it! It has completely blown me away. I get messages from women all over the world now and it's truly amazing. If anything I have written helps or gives solace to anyone else, then that is totally worth telling my story. Please write comments or email with questions and I'll do my best to help.
So.....where have I been?
At the beginning of June we were preparing to return to the UK at the end of July and this just took over my life. The kids were going back to school after lockdown, we were applying for opportunities to potentially stay overseas and life was all over the place.
It was incredibly full on in every sense of the word. Stressful, busy, emotional, time consuming, pressured, draining and overwhelming. So many feelings about potentially staying, leaving, moving on, leaving friends behind, coming back home, giving up my job, my husband changing jobs, feeling vulnerable, starting again, ......urrgggghh. Just trying to list it makes me feel sick. I get that tightness in my chest and funny sensation in my mouth as I write this. I think I put off writing again because I wanted to be positive. I wanted to talk about moving on and feeling free. I wanted to show hope and healing. I felt that after over 20 months since D-Day and finally building up to leaving that place behind, I "should" be pretty much over it or least well on my way, and I really wasn't feeling it. I felt a huge responsibility to all those who were reading my blog, who were out there looking for answers and hope. I didn't want to let anybody down and to be honest, I didn't know where to start with the tidal wave of emotions I was facing again.
So my kids and husband moved back to the UK at the end of July. I had to stay an extra 10 days to get my dogs home, so came back in early August. During that time I was alone and staying in a friend's house while she was away and I truly felt fantastic. No one to worry about except myself, no reminders from my husband, my own job, free time, I don't know what it was I just felt great. I ran, went to work, saw friends, hung out at the beach on my own, swam with turtles, but......
....I also had an inside view of what it would have been like for my husband there on his own and I was fucking fuming. Poncing about like he was fucking single. Like me and his whole family didn't exist. What a fucking arsehole. So, although I felt great in myself I was fucking angry, still having nightmares, still fighting off debilitating melt downs. Still unable to shift the sicky, sticky, icky, relentless knowing of the situation I had been thrown into, that was never, ever, EVER going to go away.
Then I went home. God, it was emotional. Can you believe I had a run in with the OW in the last 30 seconds I was in that place? Honestly, you couldn't fucking make it up! A few days before I left I went to pick up my dogs from the kennels to spend an extra day with them before I had to take them to another kennels for their pre-flight checks and transport to the airport. The next day I took them out very early in the morning, as it's the only time cool enough. We were walking up a rocky hill, through some undergrowth to get to a path leading back to the house. I had had a lovely walk. As I said I was feeling great. I was so enjoying being with my dogs, getting up early and simply breathing in the views and morning air. At the top of this hill one of my dogs was ahead off-lead and I heard a voice. I thought "Oh shit! Who's he bothering?" and quickened my step to deal with any problems. As I emerged from the trees I saw the OW trying to hide behind a bush, but my dog was pestering her and her dog. I just stood and watched, calling my dog over, as she got all flustered, wouldn't look at me and then turned with her dog to go back the other way. As I walked away I laughed to myself at how she must have seen him coming, recognised him and tried to jump behind the bush, but he flushed her out! Fucking funny!
Anyway on the morning I was leaving it was a Sunday about 9.30am. One of my friends Anna* (*name change) had come to pick me up and take me to the airport. After locking up, I had to drop my friend's house key to another friend, Sheila* a few doors down. Now it just so happened that Sheila lives next door to the OW. Yes, I had spent 10 days living about 5 doors down from this woman, but it really didn't bother me and I rarely saw her. `I have no idea if she knew I was staying there either. As I walked down the road towards Sheila's house, this the absolute honest truth, I looked up to the sky and said out loud "Not now, ok. Just not now." Knocked on Sheila's door and she came out from the back gate. Now a little back story. Sheila was the previous owner of one of my dogs. We adopted him from her about eight months before. So I wanted to have a really nice goodbye and tell her how we would always look after him, we would forever be connected and always stay in touch etc. etc. We had been talking no more than a minute or two when I happened to see the OW out of the corner of my eye, across the road, coming back from walking her dog. I could see Sheila seize up and look really uncomfortable, but I just carried on saying what I was saying and ignored it. As she walked past I thought I heard the OW say something, but I didn't hear what, as I was fully in "ignore mode". It was enough though to disjoint our conversation, so I gave Sheila a hug and said I'd call her from the airport instead. As the OW turned to walk into her own back gate, she shouted a very loud and very sarcastic "Bye!" By this point I was walking back down the road towards my friend Anna's car. I turned round and waved and reciprocated the "Bye!" in my most loud and cheery manner and then started to laugh. Apparently she then continued to say "So sorry you're going" or something to that affect. However I didn't hear as I was laughing so much.
I got in the car with Anna, looked at her and said "Can you believe that just happened?" We sat there stunned and then just howled with laughter. It was so fucking funny. Two days earlier she was hiding in a fucking bush!!! WTAF??!!! All of a sudden literally the minute I am leaving she gets all brave and shouts at me as she's retreating into her garden. Just funny and ridiculous and surreal all at the same time.
Now my friend Anna, is the fucking bomb. She is one of those people who just says it how it is. I've always loved people like that, but not everybody does. She was the perfect person for that final drive. We pulled away and I was literally in shock at what my last 30 seconds on that camp looked like, laughing in disbelief. She turned to me and just said "That woman is a cunt." Then followed it up with "What a fucking spineless coward. She is a complete loser in life and that is why she has to go for other people's men."
She was absolutely right.
I just burst into tears. The whole 20 months of living in that place, enduring what I had endured, the unbelievable, insanely surreal situation I had found myself in just flooded out of me, as I was driving towards the airport. Treated like some kind of fucking criminal, talked about, judged, looked at and spoken to with such disregard and contempt. I can't even express the disbelief and complete astoundment at this woman's attitude. That last 30 seconds literally summed up what I had been subjected to because of her and my husband and I had nothing to fucking do with it!
Nothing!
I did fucking NOTHING!!! FUCKING NOTHING!!!
I was just THE WIFE. That is all. That is my only fucking crime. Being "the wife".
The pair of you fucking disregarded and discarded me like I simply did not exist. Like my rights, my feelings, my simple presence as a human meant less than zero. For what? For fucking what? So you could justify pursuing your own happiness? Feel good in your sad and lonely pathetic masquerade of a life, at the expense of an innocent bystander. Then be shitty and righteous and fucking belligerently ignorant about it when that bystander dares to fight back. It literally floors me. Being stuck in this vortex of shock and astoundment is such a surreal place to be. A black hole where your brain just cannot function properly. It simply cannot compute. Permanently wide eyed and confused, plus stripped, sliced to pieces and scarred by the whole experience. All because of the choices of someone else. Of someone fucking else.
Fucking spineless. Totally and utterly fucking spineless.
Leaving that place was supposed to be a relief. It was supposed to be a new chapter. But it simply enraged me. How fucking dare they?!!
HOW FUCKING DARE THEY??
FUCK YOU! SERIOUSLY FUCK YOU!
WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING AND HAVE BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME???
And that's what felt like the worst bit in that car on the final drive. No one has a fucking clue or even cared what I was going through. What I was actually doing. What I had faced and did for my family. How brutally traumatising everything had been for me, although everyone had a fucking opinion on it didn't they? How disgustingly disgraceful her attitude really was and is. What a total arsehole my husband was. How everyone just gossiped and jumped to conclusions and assumptions about me, then treated me so abhorrently because of that. God it makes me so angry. How do you move on from this, seriously how is it possible?
Well, one thing is to rise above, as they say. Which I try, I do really try.
What Miss Disrespectful, Cowardly, Entitled Royal Highness didn't realise is that earlier on I had left a bottle of Prosecco and a letter on her doorstep. I had ummmed and arrred about it for days, gone out for a run early on my last morning and decided to go for it. The letter was kind and fair. I told her that I was leaving and I had done what I went there to do, which was keep my family together. I told her that I wanted her to know that I always understood her situation and had had a lot of compassion for it in the beginning. That was until her actions became intentionally deceitful, calculated and cruel with the intrusion on my home with the card she sent, to set me up to be able to send the pictures she took of their final night together (read Watch Out!! For The OW Antics for more details). That I had kept a respectful distance until then despite a grenade being thrown into my life and the life of my children. That her behaviour was disgraceful, the disregard and contempt for me was astounding and she was incredibly naive to throw petrol on the fire and get upset when it blew up in her face. What did she expect?
However, I then said I was sorry she was hurt and left alone, however that is the risk you take when getting involved in extra marital affairs. That statistics show they usually end in favour of the wife simply because of the characteristics involved and their delusional nature. I said I was surprised that after participating in them before that she had not realised this before too. I wished her well in her new chapter in life and hoped that she finds what she's looking for. I suggested that she didn't try taking it from others in the future which may lead to a happier outcome. I implored that she do her homework about what she's inviting into her life and choose better for herself. I said that we all deserve to feel loved and I hoped she does one day. That was about it.
Did it make me feel better? Yes and no. I am proud at my ability to rise above when I need to. It is so damned fucking hard to do. Battling these immensely strong emotions and impulses is the toughest thing I have ever had to do. I don't get it right all the time at all, but when I do, I do feel proud as I know how monstrous and elephantly powerful these emotions are. They are indescribable. So if you are battling them, do not beat yourself up. Do not feel bad for wishing ill of someone who has wronged you so intently. It is not your fault. It is fucking hard, really fucking hard. People kill in these situations for fuck's sake. I get that I really do. I have a whole different appreciation and compassion for crimes of passion. I comprehend the incomprehensible, I feel for the unforgivable, I have sympathy for the unimaginable. I didn't do it, but I get it, I really do. It's ok for wanting someone dead. For wanting someone to feel the same level of pain you have. It's just not ok to do it. I have felt all those same things, but I never did anything about them. That's the difference.
And no it didn't make me feel better, in the respects that nothing really makes me feel better. There's never any closure with someone like that. There's never an acceptable resolution. She's never going to see anything from a perspective other than her own. She will continue to blame everyone else, justify her behaviour and masquerade as a nice person in her life. She will remain sucking people in with the poor me, victim mask until some of them wise up, see the reality and disappear from her life, while the others remain sucked into the charade. I just hope that what she experienced with me is enough for her to break the pattern of her life and not do it to anyone else. But I guess I'll never know. Unless one of her future wife victims finds their way to this blog, now wouldn't that be fucking weird?!
I often wonder if there are more of us in her pitiful wake. I am absolutely sure there are.
Just to finish this story, I have to mention Anna. I cried so much when we said goodbye that day. I cried checking in my luggage, I cried messaging her on the way home. I landed that night and then cried messaging her I was home ok. I was just so grateful for her being in my life at that time. You know people say you're sent guardian angels when you need them, well she most certainly was that. A true friend in every sense of the word. The voice of reason all the way to the airport, staying with me until the very last minute I had to go. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. The next day was a Monday. I was still crying. She messaged me to say that the wine bottle gift bag was gone from the OW's doorstep. It was still there the night before, but was no longer there. That made me cry too. She also said that she had driven past the OW on her way to work that morning. She said she was sorry and that she couldn't help herself. I was like, what?
She had beeped and given her the finger, that she wished she'd videoed it as her face was a picture. I warned her she might complain. She said "Let her. I'm a fucking grown up."
And then I was fucking laughing!!
My friends ROCK!!
Comments