Sometimes I’ll have Jeremy Kyle on in the background while
I’m reading Plato’s “The Republic” or studying the latest news of the FTSE
index in the Financial Times (honest) and I look at it and think “Jesus, where
on earth do they find these people?” and “Can’t you see he’s a lying, cheating
scumbag? Just leave him you silly cow.” But I have a new understanding for
women on there, desperately clinging onto people who clearly don’t care about
them, because I was one of them (not actually on Jeremy Kyle, I think my story
might be more worthy of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich, American talk shows are
always so much more shocking that their UK counterparts).
For the last three years I have lived in a constant state of
self doubt, confusion, pain and suspicion. I have questioned my every judgement,
whether or not I was a bad person for my suspicions, and in the last year since
the split I have also been struggling with the loss of two of the people I
loved most in the world. But all of that finally came to an end last month with
the admission from “The Man” (my partner of nearly twelve years and the father
of my two precious children) that he had been cheating on me with “The BFF” (of
nearly 15 years) for the best part of the last two years of our relationship.
So as it turns out “The Man” was not the man after all. And “the
BFF” wasn’t even an “F”, she was an imposter posing as a best friend, a sister
even, so that she could repeatedly come into my home and sleep with my partner
while my children and I slept upstairs (Jerry, I’m waiting for your call).
It’s fairly obvious when someone is cheating on you, we
weren’t given instincts for nothing. And when people you love lie to you, the pain
is like an invisible iron ball, chained to your ankles and wrists from the very
first moment of betrayal. You drag it around with you day in, day out, the
shackles cutting into your skin and causing wounds that weep when your eyes
can’t cry. Sometimes you build some momentum, you get reassurance in the form
of more lies and the iron ball rolls along behind you as if it wasn’t there,
but then you think you are safe to stop and take a breath and it comes crashing
into you, knocking you over, bruising you yet again. The iron ball stays with
you until the truth comes out, as it always
does.
I dragged that iron ball around with me for the last three
years. I was led to believe, by two people I adored, that I was a bad person
for having suspicions, and that made me question who I was at the very centre
of my soul. After the split I thought I could be free, but I was still attached
to the iron ball, no matter how many times I desperately tried to start afresh,
it was still there, weighing me down and preventing me from fully moving on. So
it is with relief that this “news” breaks. The love that I was clinging on to,
the love which was encased in this giant iron ball, has been released and I am
finally free. My wounds are healing fast, leaving behind them scars that will
remain as an eternal reminder of the lengths that some people will go to to
avoid owning up to the kind of people they really are.
I have never believed in regrets, but when something like
this happens, you can’t help but wish you could go back to the beginning and
start again, and wonder what would have happened had you made different
choices, different decisions, listened to your instincts about people, not let
others make you hate yourself, not been so naïve and walked away rather than
stayed, ultimately not allowed yourself to be part of someone else’s dangerous games.
But, even though I feel like some walking talking freak show of a talk show
guest, not being able to understand how the hell I wound up here, wanting to
stamp my feet and say “I didn’t deserve this”, I have two beautiful boys and (now
that the cream has floated to the top), a pretty amazing set of family and
friends, who have kept me smiling throughout the whole thing. I know that if
nothing else, I have done the right things, told the truth and always been a
good person which means I can carry this experience with my head high. Karma,
God, the universe, my kids, whoever judges us and decides what we deserve in
this life and the next, judge away, I have nothing to hide.
I haven’t written this earlier because I didn’t know how. I
was terrified by how monumentally duped I had been by two people I thought
loved me, devastated at the realisation that two of the most important
relationships in my life had been total shams and desperately ashamed at how I
trusted two con artists over and above my own instincts. But I have put all of
those emotions to good use, and have been busy removing the stench of their
betrayal from my house and my life. Being stuck in my home, at the scene of the
crime, meant that for a while all I could feel here was the poison they left
behind. But with a lot of hard work, and the love of my little family, me, Son
One and Son Two, we are quickly reclaiming this patch as our own, and for the
first time ever it is beginning to feel like home. My house may have been the
scene of the crime but unlike human beings, it can never betray me, and the
comfort I now get from that is relief indeed.
This will be the final post on this blog. I need to strip
away as much as I can from my old life and Write Or Wrong I’m Doing It Anyway
was part of it. This is the final piece in the process of closure. I will be
starting a new blog very soon, and I hope that you will follow me there, and
share my adventures as I get back to being me. But this blog will be here for
as long as the internet stands, just sitting there in the ether, and I could not
leave it as it was, like an unfinished book, where the killer is never found or
the loose ends have not been tied. This is a record of a part of my life, a
constant quest for honesty, and the truth must always come out in the end. So
this part of the story ends here, with the truth.
*****
Thank you all so very
much for reading this blog right to the end, I love you all. Be strong and
trust yourself. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S Any donations made to this blog from this
moment onwards will be donated to Relate. Please give generously and help other
families to stay together, thank you x
