After my Checking-Out-OW’s-Facebook-Meltdown, my friend sash wrote me another one of her awesome letters:

I’m sorry it feels so heavy on your shoulders.  Sadly, you ARE the only one that can work through your process.  Whether it’s letting go, grieving, getting even, or whatever…no one can do it for you.  Life’s not fair, eh?

We can stand by you and remind you that you are worthy.  He can do HIS work, seeking counsel, being accountable, etc.  That is the work only HE can do.  Sadly again, he might not do it the way you want.  I promise that you are not forgiving and forgetting on the timetable he would lay out either, so you’re both outta luck there.

I know that the pendulum will take you back and forth.  One day looking forward, working for reconciliation…. the next day, picking at the scab, peeling it off, maybe putting a little salt on it to remember how much it hurt so you can feel righteous again.

I’m all for lancing a wound that is festering.  Not so much for pulling off the healthy new skin.  And I feel kinda ****y saying this, when I just wanna wrap you all up and protect you from the ick of the world, but I told you that I’d speak the truth at you, so…

Her facebook page looks just like mine.  The picture isn’t obscene.  The postings are no more self-centered than any wall (um – it only lists stuff about her so, well, it’s gonna seem a little narcissistic).  Her husband (if that is his name listed on her info pages under “married to”) is on her current friends list, and she is on his.  It looks like there are some tender comments from him…

Your husband messed up BIG TIME and did an awful thing.  She carries a huge part of the blame and probably has some serious demons and issues.  I think I’d rather be stuck with him then stuck with her.  I mean, imagine the ghosts that haunt HER husband at night.  At least your husband started out as prey rather than predator.  You are right that it takes a special kind of self centered, egotistical, narcissistic world view to think “My immediate pleasure is more important that two families”

You aren’t going to find any answers on her facebook page.  There will be no “Ah ha!” moment that explains how this happened.  He wasn’t hypnotized or drugged.  He wasn’t under any curse (what’s the curse from Harry Potter that made good people serve Voldemort??).  You won’t find a secret code because there isn’t one.  The whole story is…well… what it is.

The good part is that you don’t get to rewrite the past, but you do get to write YOUR ending.  You work on your stuff.  You check in with him about his stuff.  You take a step forward.  You find the safety catch for some of those triggers.  If you just can’t stop poking at the pain, then you need to do like we would our pets, and find your own personal big plastic cone of shame to make yourself leave it alone.

You can do this, Lyn.  I know that you can.  It has still been such a brief time.  Keep hanging in there.  Keep venting in our direction.  The only thing that matters to us is YOU coming out of this whole and healthy and strong.  We (and I know

‘Neeky would agree on THIS part) care about you!!!

xoxo

sash

As I told sash, she’s right…her picture isn’t obscene.  I just hate her.  I hate her for looking happy and alluring when she is such a devious (and your words, sash,) “pathetic ****.”

But she did remove her husband relationship/whatever link. Apparently this was a sore point for a long time and he used to call and wrote my husband and whine about how she wouldn’t list him as her husband.  Then she did, when my husband told her she should.  Now, he’s off. Things must not be all rosy and picture perfect in permanent Purgatory.

I wasn’t going to go back to her phony page and I don’t remember why I did.  I’m not into self-flagellation, as a rule, unless I’m kidding myself.  I’m so stressed I can’t make heads or tails of what is where, or why, but I realized something.  I am starting to cry and feel things more deeply and I do believe it’s because I have stopped intellectualizing everything into paralyzed dog food and am just allowing myself to be human and feel the ****ed pain without explaining every iota of what I think about it.

I’m blurting things out, more.  Yesterday and then, today?  I told him how I would never “get over” this, it’s a permanent part of our life, now, I deserve so much better than what he’s delivered and I don’t know how he is going to “make it up to me” or get me to respect him the way I’d like to, again, but that’s his problem, not mine.
Love hurts.  Yes, it does.