Start
I don’t really know where to start, other than to start with the truth. This is the brutal, bitter, honest truth I first wrote down in late July last year.
I cheated on my husband on and off for five years. He found out on one of those brightest of bright sunny fall days in 2014, a day with a briskness on the wind that reminds you you’re alive. I was returning from a music class with our almost 2-year-old son. On that day, I walked into the house to the laptop open, showing (what I thought was) my private journal, his wedding ring on the mouse pad. That day, when no apology could cut it. That day, when he would show me a side of him — an angry side I knew had been there all along, a side that hated me, a side that wanted to strangle me, a side that wanted to make me bow down and suffer.
First came the tidal wave of shame and utterly palpable self-loathing that rolled so effortlessly from my tongue and the wondering if I could really keep on going. It was darker than dark, the darkest time I had ever experienced in 32 years of life and 13 years of this relationship.
The darkest until, of course, I actually bottomed out. I realized the person I was — not only within my relationship, but also within my entire life structure — wasn’t who I really was. I did a journaling exercise, which I crazily scribbled in crayon on a piece of torn blank newsprint, who I am at my core. Inside a circle, I wrote all the happy, positive, beautiful, radiant traits I encompass. Then the next circle outside from the center, I included all the things I’m afraid of that contradict and question who I really am deep down. And outside of that was all of the negative traits I broadcast to the world to protect the scared middle ring, hiding the true me underneath that, while liberating and genuine, at times was scary to show. I realized the outward-facing me was a bitter, bitchy woman with a short temper, a really thin skin, and a bad attitude about life. I realized I relied on outside approval to feel good about myself. Having someone else confirm I was in fact good enough was my drug.
That’s why cheating was such a high. The men I sought out gave me the selfishly instant gratification and attention I craved, confirming I was desirable. That people liked me. That I was good for something, at something. Cheating made me feel like there was something in my control, especially when in my “real life” (as I liked to call it), in my every day life, nothing was in my control. It was all in my now-ex-husband’s because that’s the life I cultivated.
For a long while, I played that victim role well. I was a doormat at home, I was a doormat at work, I was a doormat pretty much everywhere except when I “stepped out.” Then I was in control. And people liked that version of me, goddammit! I was fun. I was very drunk most of the time, but I was fun and (temporarily) happy. That faux happiness was fleeting and continued excavating a larger, deeper hole in my self-worth. One fuck forward, two giant steps back.
Every time I cheated, I was really just covering up the sadness and the loneliness. The resentment. The contempt. The fear. I swept it under the rug the fact I felt even less in control, and from that place, I developed severe, crushing crushes. They consumed me. They took over my every thought, and they swallowed me whole. I lost myself. Completely.
I look back at the things I wrote to myself during this time, from this off-and-on-again roller coaster five years in the making. I see the confusion and frustration. I see the constant need to reason and qualify actions so inherently wrong. Yet nothing ever felt like it was in place. How could it? I was living a lie. All the while, “real life” at home continued to crumble. I was either too naive or simply just refused to realize I had already begun checking out of my nine-year marriage not long after it had started.
I strive to not play victim now. I deserve my fair share of the blame, and I known full well I had plenty to do with our marriage falling apart.
But so did he.
I look back years before I started cheating, and of course hindsight is 20–20. But back then, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know I was being manipulated and gaslighted and controlled via my shame. I didn’t know by not standing up for myself in the moment, by not making my needs known, by not offering communication as a way to understand me, there was no way then for us to have a foundation to fall back on in hard times.
Hard times like when, on November 1, 2014, he discovered my original journal online with all of my thoughts and details about cheating on him.
Like when things escalated on January 20, 2015, and we scream-yelled at each other for hours, and it turned physical. He pulled my hair and pushed my shoulders and blocked me from getting away. The finger he kept pointing centimeters from my mouth, I bit it. Hard. The argument ended when I dared him to hit me and called him a chicken shit; he punched me in the face. After the swelling went down a day later, I covered up the bruising and split lip with makeup until it healed. I covered up the incident for months after. I was too ashamed to tell anyone.
Like when I hit rock bottom in early March 2015, and I was too sad to throw myself in front of a moving car, too exhausted to drown myself in the bathtub. He put his anger aside for just a moment to call my mother for me. And then he held it above me and martyred himself for doing such a selfless act.
Like when, at my family reunion on June 5, 2015, I sat by myself, crying on the second-floor porch at midnight, and I wrote down in a note to myself in my phone: “I’m done.”
Like when I signed a lease on July 10, 2015, and I moved out of the home we’d created together six days later.
At this point, actually, this is where the story changes. I stood up for myself and stood firm. I started making changes that needed to happen. I wasn’t being selfish and doing things all for me, like he tried to guilt me into believing. I was finally doing what I had to so I could survive. I thought I might die from the adrenaline. I was alive, not ashamed.
I have this song that I’ve been teaching our toddler son. It’s a song that I learned about a few years ago, one of those songs you hear once, and it affects you right in your chest always. The chorus goes, “As long as you’re not finished, you can start all over again.”
So that’s what I’m doing.
