Loss

I remember my Mom telling me after her Mother passed away how she would pick up the phone to call her when something would happen.  Holding the receiver in her hand she would remember her Mother was gone, the realization hitting her all at once.  Almost forgetting for a moment with the daily chaos, but there it was… the pain of loss.

I understand that now.  I can’t even begin to put a number on how many times since all this came out in January that’s happened to me.  Just going about my daily routine, diapers, playing with toy trains and fielding tantrums… and I almost forget.  I hear a song, or smell a smell, or see something… and there it is.  It stops me cold in my tracks like an invisible bat to my face.  I feel like the air gets sucked out of the room in a millisecond and I’m just stopped.  This IS my reality, this is my real life.  And I just sink instantly into the darkest place within myself.  The tears well up in my eyes and my fingertips tingle.  “How could he hate us so much, to hurt us so deeply” I wondered.  “Us” the wife and child that loved him.  We were the two people at home that trusted him with everything.  I trusted him with my body, time, energy and pure true love.   The only things in this life I have to offer from me, truly from within me.  You cannot buy the “gifts” one person gives to another they are gifts above money.  He took those fragile pure gifts and broke each one, and actually never even turned around to see them shatter as he tossed them over his shoulder as he strutted down the street.  Further and further away from what really matters in life.

Here I am, after I super glue myself back together.  I kneel down with my little hand broom and dust pan and sweep up all the shards.  One thing that has been surprising to me throughout all the “crazy” is I keep finding little diamonds or some days just a piece of glitter in all the mess.  People that were never there before, or some that were and I didn’t know.  I have this plastic grocery bag full of broken pieces but I have an ever growing pocket full of beautiful, shiny treasures I would have never collected if I was not here sweeping.

My husband has fed me “salt” for seven years.  Heaping spoonfuls of lies and deceit given to me to cover his ever growing sex addiction.  I was told lies from the beginning, because the addiction began way before I entered his life but I didn’t question.   I didn’t know then, what I know now.

 I can never go back and do it over and save him or us. I am changed forever, so I need to have it make me better.  I need to make it something that is worth the pain.  To learn to heal and to help others as well as myself.

Salt, when ingested in major quantities will be toxic, but it’s also a purifying agent.  I am just beginning my personal recovery from his sex addiction.  Ironic isn’t it!  I want to take the “salt” that has ruined my life and I want to learn how it will make me stronger.  I don’t want to break under his burden.  But I am not sure how to do that because I am broken.  He took a filthy crowbar to my life, my dreams and my little family.  This blog will be my real life experiences trying to navigate a problem that is sadly way too common.