Fork in the Road

Happy New Year's

2012-01-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure that I don't know who he is any more. What kind of person can do what he did and come home to his family? Doesn't it really mean that he is capable of being two different people at any given time. I'm confused, I am leaning towards seperating. I am unsure how to go about it all. I'm unsure how to end this being 6 months pregnant. I am unsure if ending this 14 year relationship will do any good. I am already so damaged by what he has done. Today when I opened his email, there staring back at me was an untitled email from her....I opened it. It was a general message sent to the whole department "HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVERYONE! I hope this coming year is all that you want it to be." I wanted to barf. I wanted to write her back and say "thanks to you and my asshole husband this coming year will be everything I never wanted it to be. I express myself to him often throughout the day. He just responds that he loves me. He can't make it better. NOTHING can.

A word of Advice

2011-12-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

I hope you'll find this one funny because I do. A little word of advice ladies... Don't ever ask the man you love if the girl he cheated on you with has fake boobs? Most would only think to ask or maybe not even think it but know from looking at her. I have only seen Sara once as she hid in the corner of the dispatch office the morning after I found out when I so nicely took his friends at work cookies. She is thin, with dark hair and while I wanted to see what she looked like, I didn't get a great look. She should of had the balls to look at me in the face. Coward. I was more shocked and my first reaction was that she was ugly. Probably because her soul is ugly. Don't call me and deny it all and expect any respect. Knowing now that this little cunt has fake boobs has only made me start a cycle that I am trying hard to keep at bay. Hence why I am choosing to talk about it on here instead of to myself while looking in the mirror. I mean I am pregnant for goodness sake, emotion and hormones make me feel bad enough not to mention the giant watermelon breast this baby is giving me. Hard to imagine what it must be like to have a thin 24 year old body that has not carried around 3 baby boys, to have the ability to wear a bathing suit that didn't take a specialist to find, and then to brag about how flexible I am because I was in gymnastic...no wonder that bitch need implants. those girls that spend their life swinging from bars have no chest...fucking bitch! At 24 I was already a mother, already loyal to my husband already not her. Anyways I feel better how about you. I need that. On another note I had to go get tested for STD's today. I cried, it was the first time I have cried in 3 days. I refuse to punish my self though. Today I am living my life.

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."

2011-12-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today I kept busy. So busy that even though I was sick I pushed past it all so that I wouldn't or couldn't have time to think about the situation. When he woke up this afternoon, I was quiet. So quiet it was clear that my rage had just focused inward. We spent the afternoon discussing the details yet again. My mind needs every detail, my heart screams for it to end. I make him tell me everything. I want to know every conversation, every thing text ed and emailed. Every detail of their encounter away from work. I want to know so I can understand. But it's clear there is nothing to understand. He can't explain a lot of it, because he feels like it was a driving force inside him doing it. Like an addict destroys their life and then doesn't understand until their sober the true effects their addiction had on their loved ones. He's not an addict. He's a man with demons from childhood. A man who has turned his back on everyone that had ever showed him love. I have moments when I feel sorry for him. This is a crazy thought for all of you and I realize how it sounds. We all have issues. Most of us have had terrible things happen in our childhood. I didn't have a horrible childhood. I did have some horrible things happen to my family. But with each horrible thing, my family's love just got bigger and better. I have parents who have been together since they were 14 years old. Growing up I thought I was so lucky. Every one's parents were breaking up and mine were still together. I didn't know until the age of 25 that my parents relationship was at times...as bad as mine if not much much worse. My father drank to excess, my mother loathed him for most of my childhood. She wanted to leave him when she was one month pregnant with me after she caught him kissing another woman at a Christmas party. He came home and when she confronted him, he hit her in a drunken rage. What if she had left him? She didn't instead she stayed, sometimes even through hating his guts. They have survived the death of a child, loss of a business, moving across country and more. Today as I write this, they are two normal people, that happen to laugh a lot together and love a lot together. They'll be together forever because they have been through the worst of times together.
I bring this up because Mike said to me this afternoon, "It will be okay Candice. We will survive this" And I thought to myself, "HOW?" after he left tonight, I picked up a book. "Forgiveness" I know what it means to forgive and I know that I can. When I decide I am ready the last time it took 2 years if not more and so I also know how it feels to hold onto it until your colon rots itself out and you spend your life trying to get your health back. This time no matter what we do, stay together or move on. Forgiving now is what I need to do. NOT just for him. I need to do it for me. I read this...In despair, we lose all hope. I don't want to lose hope. If I lose hope and walk away, nothing in him will change and my kids will be handed his shit over and over again until their lives become his. Not going to happen. So tomorrow I will look at him and the situation with forgiveness. I will focus only on this step until we start therapy together. I have to stop the questions, the worrying, the movie that is playing. I must keep living my life to it's fullest potential...not allow this to ruin the best parts of me.

2011-12-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

The next morning. Jake awakes and Luke follows. Mike and I are sitting outside. My husband has admitted that he started smoking. He's never been a smoker but he is now. Another thing I did not know. We go into the house and the kids are acting strange. Mike tells Jake that he has to work on Christmas morning now. And the water works begin. We're trying to figure out what to do. Act like nothing happened and spend Christmas together with the fear that my dad will reach over Santa's gifts and kill Mike. Or spend it separated. It's clear from Jake's reaction that we can't spend it apart. We talk about how to make it through this mess like a parent business deal. I feel comfortable having him around. Why allow him to leave and be alone. Not having to care for his kids. Probably going to the bars to be comforted by his friends. No WAY. I want him here. I want him to help care for the kids. I want him here so that anytime I want to I can take my rage out right there on him. Throughout the next 3 days I do this often. He holds me while I throw my punches at him. He holds me while I scream how much my heart hurts. He takes every insult I throw at him. And he just repeats." I love you and I promise I will never hurt you like this again. " I have not eaten, slept or showered. I look and feel homeless. Between the confessions and the constant staring at the phone records. I am consumed by his affair. I want to know how he never thought of me. How he could call her and then hang up and call me. How on just one night he told me he was going to work and instead drove to her and went into work 2 hours late so that he could be with her. How could he? How did I not call him that night like I usually did. what if I had? Would I have stopped them before they went too far. Why couldn't I have just called before it went too far? These thoughts are like poison. I know this. This whole thing is like a movie. I can't turn it off.
Three days before Christmas, he's home. The afternoon was filled with me and him going to our personal therapy intake sessions waiting for the 5th of January when we can see our old couples therapist . I've also gone to Theta to help with the angry feelings. I come home calm. I sit on the couch and he and Jake are next to me. Something on T.V is so funny that the 3 of us start laughing uncontrollably. For 10 minutes I have forgotten it all. I'm looking at him and he is starting to smile. He says "your home to me" Later we put the kids in the car and look at Christmas lights. They are asleep soon into the trip. And I feel like it is the friendship I have with him that I would miss the most. He is and has been my very best friend for 14 years. A song comes on the radio, and says it all. He reaches for my hand and I tell him...we'll see what happens there is too much work ahead to think or do or say anything else. We swing between these moments most everyday. We laugh, we are mom and dad to the boys. We talk about what needs to be done around the house and the bills that need to be paid. We talk about memories and we laugh. When he is not around...the thoughts, the poison the movie plays. This becomes the new goal. How to stop the poison so that I don't pass up the moments where the clarity comes in.
Two days before Christmas, he tells me he wants to go to church. Those who know me know that Jesus while I feel his hand on my shoulder is often someone I turn away from. The "I can do it by myself" attitude. I have not been and either has he. He confesses that he needs this to save himself. To fight the demons. My best friend stops by that night. I can see her disappointment that I am leaning towards staying with Mike. She tells me she might not be able to do it... be his friend again. I understand. The next morning she emails me and invites us to Church. Mike too. I tell him and he is over joyed to go. We go. I am really sick from a cold I have had all week. We have the kids and it's clear that the younger one won't sit for Christmas eve service. I go to the car with him. When it's over he comes to the car, and tells me he stood up to be saved. That he went and they prayed for him and our family. That if Jesus could help him to help his family he would put in all the work involved. I don't know what to think, I am happy he wants to help himself this time he did not ever do the personal work last time. However, I am unsure whether or not to trust him, or Jesus or anyone. This road is long, we have not even reached the fork yet. I can't even yet find it on the map yet.

It lingers

2011-12-27T10:18:00.000-08:00

It's June. My son is about to get out of school for summer vacation. It's been one month since I miscarried. Mike has asked me to try again. I have refused. I am unhappy. I am depressed. We are fighting more than usual. And I am thinking about asking him for a divorce. My grief is overwhelming me. I want him to feel the same. He doesn't. July comes and I talk to my boss about the what if's if we divorce. He tells me that in marriage there are dangerous times. Times when one is not happy and all it takes is a smile from another and you start thinking about what could be. I don't feel like this about anyone so I don't get this. But it feels like a warning. We were in a dangerous time. I can say all I want that things were great. They weren't terrible. But things were lingering around like smoke in a closed up room. At some point in July, I tell Mike that I am feeling sad about our marriage and that I want to fix it not destroy it. We start talking more and communication feels like the way out of this. We spend most days telling each other we love one another and that we will start looking to our future. No more kids, focusing more on us than anything else. I am falling deeper in love with him just like that. Like his words have snapped me back into our love. My 30th birthday comes around. We plan a big fun kid free night out. We achieve it. The next day we go on a week vacation with our kids to a condo on the bay. We spend each day on the beach and each night holding each other looking out over the stars. We act like we're sixteen again. I can't believe that just months ago I was unhappy. I vow to keep working on us. He does too. We return to our normal lives. Two weeks later, my period is missed. A few days after that I am feeling sick and I know. A little stick blinks "pregnant" and I cry. I tell him. His face turns down. We cry together. Fears of miscarriage play a role. But it's more that our plans have been changed. We had just come to this amazing place of contentment of working on communication and our marriage. It would all change. Throughout our relationship things linger. Things will be bad and then get good. Sometimes I don't even know how it happens. I just know that it does. This leaves a lot of room for lingering feelings. The pregnancy makes me so sick that the time we spend together is him caring for me and the kids and the house. We vow it won't change our plans. But it already has. Everything that has ever lingered comes out when you are unhappy. I can see that while his bad choices aren't mine. I will have a lot to own up to. Communication has never been more important. Communication has never been my strong point. I have wonderful friends. friends that call and I let the machine get it because it feels like too much work to communicate. Then I feel lonely because I have shut everyone out. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this if I am to stay with my family.

The Path we must Walk

2011-12-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

I have decided that what I really need in all this is an out let. A place I can write what I really feel, about the path I'm on and how I am going to walk through it.
So here I sit. Alone. It's early and my house and my heart look like a battlefield. I want nothing more than to be snapped back into my old life. Transported back to October of this year. I want to be standing in my kitchen making dinner and when I hear him say "I have a ride along tonight with the new dispatcher" I want to stop him right there, kiss him, tell him he's special and that his wife loves him. Instead the reality is I kept working, never looking up, pretending I was so busy I couldn't be bothered with his work life. That's the first thing I want to do right now in this moment. It was a few days after Thanksgiving that I knew something had changed. I am pregnant with our third child, a boy we'll name Trav. Jake and Luke are time consuming as is, but I am noticing their cries for their father. He's home, but absent. He sits on the couch most days after waking from the night shift. He is busy on the laptop, and his cell phone is never around. I wonder for a moment...could it be? Could he be absent, lost in his computer because it's happening again? No...No we've been through this...a girl at work, flirting with him, exchanging sexy text messages and emails and pretty soon their meeting for tacos and kissing in a parking lot. No..we've done this. Our marriage has survived and things seem really great now. 4 years later I no longer check his email, dig through his phone I trust this man I have loved for 14 years. Mistakes happen, once learned from they don't happen again? Do they? The giant gash in my heart has healed nicely since then with a big gray spot of scar tissue. A scar so large I didn't know there was room for more breakage. HE had to know there wasn't more room for breakage. But instead I decide that I would keep my eyes open and just see if my husband would return, return to the man that played with his kids and asked me how I was. For 2 weeks I am plagued with dreams of him with another woman. I awake crying uncontrollably, drowning in my own tears. One morning he walks into our room and sees the tears I tell him. "You left me, you bought a house with a woman, she was pregnant...you gave her my dream home" he laughs..."Your pregnant my dear, hormones do funny things to women" and walks into the bathroom. It's now mid December and our 14 year anniversary is coming. We plan a sitter, so we can go out to a fancy dinner. I buy a new maternity outfit, I want to look as good as you can at 5 months pregnant. As I am getting ready, he walks out of the bathroom. He looks at me and nothing is said. No "you look great" just compliments himself. I tell him he's hurt my feelings, he leaves and let's the sitter in. My heart screams at my head "something is not right...you must ask" During dinner we sit by candlelight and make small talk. Mostly about the up coming birth of Trav, and all the things we must get done. At dessert I take his hand and say "I hope you start acting like yourself again soon, I hope that it's not what I think it is and that you'll come back to me" He laughs and tells me I'm acting crazy. After dinner we ride back in silence. We're headed to a Christmas party and I'm aware that he wants to go have fun and not talk about our marriage. I again approach the subject. "if you are I will find out. I can understand that sometimes friendships go too far, and pretty soon your having feelings you shouldn't be and that you can at any time stop it and return to our marriage." I have given him his out, but silence is all I receive in return. Sunday goes by and he's almost giddy to get to work that night. He's acted this way about heading to work for a few weeks now. I have decided that my approach is not working. Before he leaves I tell him..."Have fun with your girlfriend" he leaves. Something tells me to go online and check his phone bill. I log on and the computer freezes. Monday I awake feeling sick and spend the day in bed. Tuesday morning he arrives home from work a little later than normal. It's Christmas break and the kids and I are sleeping in. He doesn't come to bed. He sleeps on the couch until I wake up. When I do I wake him and ask him why he didn't come to bed. He says he didn't want to wake me. He'll see me this afternoon and he hopes I feel better. I have a ton of Christmas cookies to bake for his work. So I get started knowing I have to pick up my 11 year old cousin at 1:30 from school. At 1:15 I pick up the computer and log on to the cell phone website. Again it freezes, and I leave the site up on the computer. That afternoon I am busy with all the kids decorating cookies and preparing dinner. After my cousin leaves, I am busy with baths and bed time. He leaves for work. I don't even know if he has kissed me good bye. The kids go to bed early and by 8pm I return to the computer to check my email. The cell phone site is up, and it ask me to login again. I do. I see the number, it's there so many times. My hands start to shake and I pick up my house phone to call it. It goes to voicemail and I hear "Hey you've reached Sara, leave me a message" I hang up the phone and my heart feels like it's fallen to the floor. Sara...Sara...who is Sara? I pick up the phone again and listen 2 more times. It's only 8:08 and he has just started his shift. My hands are clammy, "Mike?" "Yes" he says and I ask "who is Sara?" It's quiet for a moment. He explains she is a dispatcher, he often has to call her from his cell phone while working so not to busy up the radio with small business stuff. But I explain that he isn't calling during times he is working. He tells me he'll be right home. My heart is broken open. The scar tissue broken free and blood feels like it's running onto the floor. The Christmas tree sparkling, and I fall to my knees and scream "How could this be? Again!" I keep calling her, no answer. This time I leave a message. "Sara, this is Mike's wife and I know what you have been doing. I am pregnant, I have 2 wonderful boys at home. We are a family. Stay away from my family." He arrives. My anger takes over, as he walks to the door from his car I start to clap...the way you would if you were proud of someone coming home with a promotion. His head is held low, and he tells me to stop. He sits next to the Christmas tree and I listen to what he tells me. I don't remember any of it. I am shocked. I ask what he wants to do. Was he planning on leaving now, or waiting until the baby came. He says he never planned to leave. He was confused. I asked if she was okay with our family. He said she felt guilty and wished he was single. But that she would be okay with his kids. He tells me he has feelings for her. I push him further. "can you see yourself with her? Do you love her?" He tells me he has feelings and that he may be falling in love with her after 3 weeks" I tell him,well I love you flaws and all. 14 years seems like too long to be thrown away for a 3 week affair, that he is the father of my kids and that I will do anything for him. I instruct him to call her. He walks outside and 4 minutes later he returns and tells me it's over. Before he can tell me any details, Sara calls my phone. She tells me that she never did anything other than have a friendship with my husband that she does not want to lose her job and Mike is crazy if he thinks their friendship was more. She would never disrespect another woman by having an affair with a married man. I tell her I have the emails and phone records... she keeps denying it all. I'm not stupid and I hang up. His phone rings, I tell him he better answer it on speaker. He does, she cuts into him wanting to know what I have. Why he didn't deny it? What is he going to do?She will not lose her job over him. I fly into a rage...like the one from the movie Unfaithful. I know that at any moment I could stab him. I grab a knife and start to chase him around the house. He is scared. I stab the knife into the coffee table in front of him. It stands there still vibrating into the wood. I ask him to get out. And he walks out the door. It's 5 days before Christmas, my family has been torn ed into pieces. My heart feels heavy and I lay on the floor and sob. The night doesn't end there and over the next 30 hours I am awake and he has returned. There are so many conversations and confessions that I am unsure how to process. I walk around dazed. Unable to be a mother to my kids, my own mother steps in. There are moments where we talk and I think I can fix it all. His demons. This dark side of him caused by bad people and bad family life. There is no excuse that makes it better. There is nothing he can say or do that helps. I have nowhere to go. I must sit in the skin I am in and figure it out. I don't want to end this relationship. I am told over and over again I should. Something tells me that 4 weeks of an affair is not enough to end a relationship. He pledges to do whatever it takes to save his family. And me. Well for the time being my heart is on pause. The next steps will decide which path in the fork in the road I will take. I am unsure I am ever doing the right thing, but I also know that unlike before I did not cause this. That I take very little if any blame in this. This is not my flaw. While I wish I could be in denial. I am not. And because I am not I must stay and figure out if this is fixable, or if I must walk the path away from our family.