The day after

I am in total disbelief as to what happened yesterday. This morning, I felt as though I had just waken up from a bad dream and I was trying to convince myself that what did take place was all in my mind. About an hour later, I realized what had happened was actually my reality. The shooting pain started in my chest again and I was not able to shake it for nothing. My head felt like it was high in the clouds surrounded by fog so thick that I could not see in front of me. Lost and in need to find my way back, I realized that I was no longer myself and that the best part of who I was had been taken from me without my permission. I was robbed and wanted to get myself back and my life that once was.

It was at that moment when the anger set in. Who gave him permission to go out and betray his family like that? Didn’t he have any morals as a human? It totally disgusted me to imagine him bedding down with someone else and then coming to me after the fact, without me knowing what he had done. How does a man live with himself for so long and even more so, how can he lie to the one person who he claimed he loved?

All this should have hit me harder then it did. But much to my surprise, it didn’t. Perhaps it was due to the last three and a half weeks of him down talking me each and every day about my character or about me as a woman. My self esteem had already been shot and by this point there was not much more he could have taken from me. I remembered him mentioning problems in the marriage but if the truth be known, they were only issues that we had with one another. Issues that could have been easily corrected. He lead me to believe that everything was my fault and I even began to take total responsibility for everything. He thought these minor issues were marital problems? No, not by a long shot. His infidelity, now that is a marital problem and a major one. It is nothing like those small issues that he claimed would break up our marriage.

As the day progressed, so many things ran through my mind. What will I tell my daughter to convince her to leave the only home she has even known and move half way around the world? Where will we go? The only life I had ever known was in my home country. One I would now have to return back to after all these years. I have no family with whom I can depend or lean on for support and the few friends I had left behind faded over the years. At least I have my daughter who gives me the strength I need to move forward and I know deep down inside, I can make it anywhere.