The 2.0 saga continues, using emails I sent to a childhood friend as a framework. We are at August/Sept 2009
...But now that you're here, I just feel like I'm constantly dreaming. Something's gotta go wrong 'cause I'm feelin' way too damn good... -nickelback so. let it be known that throughout 2009 i made some weakass attempts to end things with g until he decided what he was doing, i.e. leave her already. he would argue that he was addicted to me, he was trying to figure out how to do this, don't you want to see where this is headed?, etc and i was weak as dishwater where he is concerned - still am - and would forget any attempt to 'do the right thing' because frankly i did the right thing for years in my own marriage and it stayed miserable and stagnant and awful.
so fcuk the right thing, i'm thinking at this point, i'm in it for the Happy. and omg, was i happy.
So the week before the photo exhibit in g's kitchen, i had gone to Transition to pee in a cup and all required new job tasks prior to my move. My very best friend while I was living in Pastville, alyssa, is now in Transition, and i contact her and am going to stay with her the night before my employee health stuff and apt-hunting day. Alyssa is the reason I know Glenn & Lucy, she's the reason that living in Pastville was one of the happiest 6 years of my life, because she introduced me to this whole group of people and their way of life.
A psychological fact about AIS, as long time readers will recall: I cannot stand to be left out, stems from childhood horrors that will bore you, but just know that. It's one of the reasons I was so happy in Pastville to be part of a group of people who included me and always had events going on. always. it's one of the reasons The Husband's affair laid me out - it's the ultimate leftout. so. fact to know about me. stand by.
turns out the day i'm going to see alyssa, she & lucy talk on the phone, and lucy finds out i am moving back to Transition (a mere 1.5 hours from Pastville, much closer than the 4 hours away like Stepford) and has a DUCK. quack.
glenn texts me: 'be warned, she didn't tell alyssa any details- only that she hates you.'
well that's good enough, since lucy & i were friends before. so fuck, what to do? well, i'll just see if alyssa says anything. g says alyssa was his friend first years ago, so she'll be on his 'side' when it comes out about us. me, i'm not so sure of that.
so i spend the night at alyssa's - haven't seen her in like 13 years, we have dinner and wine and laugh and reminisce and look at old photos from our years in Pastville. she drops lucy's name a lot and also 'glenn & lucy' a lot, and i don't bite.
because: having seen more recent photos and hearing stories that night, alyssa & lucy are still pretty tight and that is not something i feel right about disclosing after i have been out of the friend loop for years now. I wasn't gonna disclose the whole 'i'm having a big fat affair with g' but more long the lines of they are not happily married like it appears... i don't know. anyway i never did say anything that night.
she tells me about an apt complex near her condo that is really nice, we hop in the car and drive the 5 minutes to see the location to add to my list (and buy more wine) and it's that apt where I'm typing from right this minute. i moved here to be near where she lives because we used to have so much fun together & we were excited to be friends again.
the next day, while i am out looking at apts, she txts me: 'i just talked to lucy, what happened?' - she's mentioning this a day after the fact which is weird. i guess since i never said anything last night, in my chickensh!t fashion, that she was poking to see what was up. i text her back that: it's too much info for a text that i will tell her when i see her in person next week, and that no matter what i do not want her in the middle. She replies: 'whatever it is will not effect my friendship with you or my friendship with lucy' This was so grown-up a concept I was awestruck with respect.
there is going to be a time gap between when i am to start the new job and when i'm supposed to move in my apt, so i'm planning to stay with alyssa, who offered, for one week. the night before i am to go there, she calls me. lucy is blowing up her phone telling her she is no friend to her if she lets me stay there, that's it's disrespecting their friendship, blahblah. so alyssa feels like sh!t and says, "if you are still talking to glenn i don't want to know, and i don't want to tell you you cant stay here the night before you are coming. so if we don't tell lucy, you can stay with me." i say, "no way am i putting you in the middle of this, not fair of lucy to do this to you, i will find somewhere else to stay, i'm so sorry". alyssa says, "i will make it up to you when you get to Transition".
i sign my lease a week early and sleep on a sleeping bag on the floor. We have another friend Tana, from Pastville days, who also is now living in Transition. I have been in contact with her prior to the move as well. SO - midway thru the week in the sleeping bag, I get a facebook message from tana informing me she has unfriended me, that she talked to lucy this week, and while there are two sides to every story and she is glad to hear mine, what she's heard so far sounds pretty bad and good luck to me.
Unfriended. In an empty apartment. in a sleeping bag with my iphone. damn. so i think: fcuk, i wonder if alyssa has unfriended me too. i look and sure as sh!t, alyssa is off my facebook friends list too, and she didn't even bother to tell me. Lucy is systematically trying to ruin my life - and not doing too bad a job at it, by this point.
So. to recap, i am in a new city where i know NOBODY now, on the gd floor of my apartment, eating microwave dinners with plastic forks I fished out of my car's glove compartment like some city version of Survivor, and the people who were going to give me a social life have disafuckingppeared and hate me. Awesome.
This is looooooong. And not even 1/3 of the story, but I'll get there. If you're bored that I go on ad nauseum with details you could give a sh!t about, sorry. It's my therapy. Grab a coffee. Or a vodka. Whichever. And be prepared to completely change your opinion of me & vote me off the island.
Remember now, I am culling this saga from emails, changing names/cities etc. So if you are a long time reader, you'll recognize the old story here as it changes into the new one.
Also bear in mind this narrative is a 2010 voice and speaks about 2009, i.e. this is not occurring now, although some parts are written present tense. And every bit of this story happened POST separation, The Husband had moved out of Stepford to Clean Slate.
Pardon the non-capital letters, texting-type abbreviations, and run-on sentences. When I am writing to keep up with the voices in my head, all bets are off. More to follow after. so...
i had an affair w glenn about 15 yrs ago, he was married, i was not. it was exciting and fun and wrong, but i knew it wasn't going anywhere. yes i was friends w them both, we were all a big group of friends who went out together all the time, we were in a supper club together, i was at their wedding for gods sake.
he was attracted to me from the moment we met, it was no secret. he would kiss me occasionally when we were out in a group, away from everyone, quickly and on the sly. it was fun, we were both flirts, and i just wrote it off as such initially.
we both remember well the very first time he kissed me, waaaay before this turned into anything real, climbing into a convertible mercedes around 2am with a huge group of people. it was dark, he was climbing over me and kissed me as he climbed past me. that kiss scared him how powerful it was, he said later. we both remember that event in vivid detail, for only having been about 2.6 seconds long, it was significant somehow all those years later. he wasnt yet engaged to lucy, but they were living together and had been dating for years
so we have this crazy fling, version 1.0 we call it now. he told me things he never shared with anyone; we both grew up in abusive households, have a lot in common
but 1.0 ends, i meet the husband, get married, move away. g said later how he was so mad at me for that, the irony. hello, you're married stupid. and after i ended it with him, he shows up one night at my bedroom window (pre-husband obviously). i remember i sent him away "go back home to your wife" and i remember how HARD that was to do.
actually his wife is the first person in our group i told about my marriage, bc the husband & i had eloped. i felt badly about the affair, but knew she would kill my ass if she ever found out. that's part of the reason i ended it. i thought the best thing i could do is just try to be a good friend to her. magical thinking anyone? we had a bday party for me about 3 weeks after we eloped to announce we were married - she was the only person i told our secret prior & she made the wedding cake forfuckssake. jesus i hate myself just typing all this stuff out. i suck.
anyway, she still has no idea about our version 1.0 - i almost wish she did, although at this point i don't think there is anything she could learn about him that would make her leave if she hasn't already.
so january 2009 or earlier, i find lucy on facebook and friend her, not glenn. that was on purpose. and then g finds me, through her page i assume, and friends me. i look thru her fb photos (many albums showcasing social and couple bliss), they look pretty & happy and are living this great life with money and travel and lots of friends, many of whom i know & were my friends when i was single. i am glad for them - sincerely very glad - and think all is well, and that he's moved past whatever it was that made him unhappy with her. I was just so thrilled to find that whole pocket of friends again from that happy, social time in my life: pre- soul-killing marriage.
g starts IM-ing me on fb, first w her in the bkgd, totally benign, 'lucy says hello', etc. and then one night when he is in another city on business. he travels for his job and was at a hotel. that night he says he has thought about me every day for 15 years, would see me tomorrow if he could, we reminisce about how crazy it all was, the mercedes incident and the affair itself, until sometime past midnight. it was all very flattering and i had never forgotten him - but did not imagine i would ever see him again.
he starts texting me next. so i send him a soft-boundary email: you are still married and we can only be friends. he says okay, backs off for a week or so, and then we are texting again when he is on a trip to Dallas. that damn connection is still there, just the fun, smartass humor, completely-on-the-same-wavelength connection.
he wants to come see me in stepford, just take me to dinner. i say: are you going to tell lucy? he says: i didn't really think about it. i say, no. no. no. no.
i put him off for about 3 weeks or so, then:
"please," he says, "i just need to see your face." -I bolded that line because it that is the sentence that pushed me over the fence. he had a gift for phrases that pierced my soul, that was just the first of many.
~then i say, "oh come on then".
he was so excited it was engaging. beyond excited to see me. when? how soon? what day? what time? where do you want to eat? after years with someone who didn't even look up when i walked in a room, his enthusiasm was refreshing and nice. like opening a springtime window in a stuffy room.
so on wed, february 10 of last year [2009] he comes to stepford. i meet him in the lobby of his hotel, we hug, he is literally shaking all the way to his core. i felt it. he tells me later he was pacing so hard in the lobby that the clerk asked if he was meeting someone important and he said yes.
we go to eat sushi and are talking so much the waitress has to come back 3 different times bc we keep forgetting to look at the menu.
after dinner we go to a bar to watch the bball game. we are at the bar watching the big screen, i'm cheering my team, we are talking, and he leans over and kisses me. and i know this is trouble bc it is crazygood. i let myself be talked into going back to his room for the 2nd half of the game.
i tell myself i am not going to sleep with him, but i am really bad at that, and i do. and it is beyond amazing. best there ever was or will be. several hours later i leave for my own house. he doesn't sleep all night, he texts me the next day. i see him the next week in 2 more cities, and again his body shook when i first hugged him in greeting, and i was touched. and he tells me he loves me and always has.
and so it begins. again. version 2.0
we chase each other over 2 states once or twice a week for the entire year and i fall madly deeply in love with him like i have never loved anyone ever. EVER. omg just typing this is making me cry. i need more meds, lol
we stayed in hotels in each city we visited - yet went out to dinners, to concerts and sporting events, things we could never have done in 1.0 bc people knew us in our former town and we couldn't possibly be seen alone together. 1.0 we hid. 2.0 we played in public. this was an improvement. we could go out as a couple. the hiding comes later.
between january and september of 2009 we have over 38,000 txts between us (thirty. eight. thousand.) if that tells you anything about our constant contact. he erased as he went, for obv reasons, i saved them all and now have them ported over on my computer. they are my letters in a shoebox for when i am an old woman. to re-read & treasure. in my mean nasty phases i want to print and bind them and send them to her wrapped in ribbons
march 2009: she is looking through all his credit card receipts and sees that he came to stepford. blows a fuse because she knows i am there, and it is nowhere he travels for work. that's the first we start lying and covering up: he came to stepford to talk to me about things, bc we have always been able to talk - and that part is true. we did talk about his marriage and how he tried to leave about 6 months earlier, she lost her mind, the counseling they did that he eventually continued solo (very familiar), she never wanted children and he did, and why he's unhappy and living in the guestroom. and we talked about my marriage and what all went wrong in it etc.
of course the fact that we are having a crazy love affair is Omitted.
So. Next: july 4th weekend they go to the beach, but are staying with different sets of friends, he with boys, she with girls. like it's high school. same type arrangement over valentine's day earlier that year. his friend b lives at the beach, and was a friend/acquaintance of mine also. [sidebar: b got married in may 2009 in the carribean - g goes to the wedding & tells b about me - texts me from the wedding and runs up astronomical cell bills on his company. he tells a few friends about me throughout the year. that he loves me, doesn't want to hurt her, etc.]
so anyway, we are at july 3rd. he and i are txtg constantly that night, and one of the last txts i send is that my heart is at home with him. he erases up to that txt, was drinking, passed out asleep. she goes into the house (?), gets his phone, finds that text.
the next day i am at work and my phone rings, it's a beach area code so i think its g calling from b's house, i answer. it's lucy. "do you have time to tell me what's going on btwn you and my husband?" "no. i don't" she tells me about the text she found on his phone, that i of all people should know better (g had told her about the husband's affair) i say: i'm at work, that i have no problem talking to her, just not today, & hang up. i had every intention of at least telling her that g was miserable & needed someone to talk to. immediately i contact g. who asks me to pleasepleaseplease not talk to her, so i ignore a later text and phone call. and add her phone number in my contacts as "don't answer"
she has both sets of parents waiting at their house when they arrive home from the beach the next day in an Intervention of sorts. He is to get off facebook and have no more contact with me. she sends me a scathing, mostly inaccurate email about how awful and hypocritical i am, that she should have known when he came to stepford AT MY INVITATION (not!) bc i have cheated on every boyfriend i ever had (untrue! but i had no intention of correcting any of her errors with a reply), and she made me my wedding cake for god's sake, etc. and i need to get my hyprocritical bible-quoting ass to read about the sanctity of marriage, etc. you know, who can argue? i'm wrong as fcuk on paper, no question, but i love him. complete role reversal.
she unfriends me, and quits fb. he deactivates his fb acct. i cannot tell you how much i miss him on the facebook. we used to do our song lyric statuses for each other and send each other funny flair. it's no fun without him. anyway, i digress
we are so insane that a mere 3 weeks later, the weekend of july 24, she goes back to the beach for a weekend with her friends, and i drive to Pastville (the beloved city we met in, and i wish to this day i had never left it) and spend the weekend with him. we stay at a hotel, but i go to his house a few times. i thought he would hide me, as in version 1.0 but we went to the movies, and out to dinner, and dessert. it was one of the best weekends we had together, ironically. full of love and future-talk and fun.
august 2009: she jacks his phone again around 2am and finds photos i have sent to him. NOT the olan mills variety portraits, mind you. (and let me just say, that's been new. i haven't trusted anyone enough to do that stuff before. we sent pics back and forth this whole year) and the next morning i wake up to a vicious voicemail she left at 2-3am about how hideous my various body parts are, and she tells me not to fcuk with her.
so at this point, it all looks to her like i am just a filthy whore who is chasing him. this too blows over somehow (!!) - she really did not want to live in reality - and we are still staying in hotels all over 2 states declaring our undying love etc.
wed, september 2, 2009 he is playing golf that afternoon and poker at night, texting me how much he loves me while i am packing to move, etc. around 1-2am my phone rings, it's him. he returned home to find out she went thru his stuff yet again and found a flash drive he put photos on - again, not the olan mills variety, and he has apologized a zillion times for even saving them. he had switched jobs two months prior and before he turned in his blackberry in july, he transferred the photos from it to a flash drive. said he couldn't bear to delete them. and of course he should have.
bc what he came home to was an empty house with photos hanging all over the kitchen. she printed and taped them everywhere. [hello, the lifetime original movie is calling and wants its script back!] -and it wasn't just me in the photos this time. it's both of us. so - he's done, he packs his stuff, he gets in the car and drives 4 hours to stepford. arrives at sunrise. we spend 2 days together, she doesn't know he's here w me.
he goes back the 3rd day to discuss what he thinks is going to be a separation. haha i wish. what i have learned about g thru all this, and it started right around here: when he is stressed out like this and under extreme pressure and questions, he shuts down and disappears, which he did for about a day or so. not at all who i thought he was in all my prior knowledge of him. he txts me not to use that phone, she is busting into everything, to contact thru yahoo messenger or email instead, blahblah.
he's in a hotel and on friends' sofas for the next week or so. she calls and leaves another fun voicemail that since i fcuked with what was important to her, she's going to fcuk with what's important to me, that maybe she should send these photos to the husband, that she has his phone number (a surprise), and would do whatever she needed to ensure that i don't see my kids again, etc.
- they don't have kids together, btw, which is entirely evident in her saying that kind of sh!t to me. the husband's affair partner has a boy my daughter's age, and i never in a million years would have threatened that sh!t. you just don't do that.
but if you're not a mother, i guess you do. another bone of contention in their marriage. she's on so many psychotropic cocktails (he says, and she was when i knew her years ago. but who hasn't been at some point?) i guess she was never 'ready' to have kids, he always wanted them, and resented her for it. i knew back when they were both my friends that kids were not on her agenda. it was just some unspoken knowledge. g & i had talked about how we wished my kids had been his. he asked if i would have another baby. we talked about what we would name a baby boy, he picked the first name and i picked the middle name. sigh. but anyway.
and thus ends part one of version 2.0, feb to sept 2009 - i'm sure if i were reading this as an objective 3rd party i can see all kinds of holes and red flags and would beat my own ass for my idiocy. what i cannot properly convey in these words is the very real feelings between us. he met my two best friends in stepford during this time, who both loved him, i remember one said we glowed together. and that we were meant to rescue each other.
he would text those friends directly and tell them how much he loved me, that i was the only bright spot in his life, and that if he married me it would be forever. of course now they love him a lot less, and want me to walk away, but we are getting to that part Yes, yes, yes, I know. You think I don't? I KNOW, man. Judge away. This whole blog since 2006 has been the horror of discovering my husband's affair, what led up to it, the war-torn aftermath. And now I have been on the other side of it.
I have both perspectives, in sharp relief: I am the Sybil of extramarital affairs. Now can be called as an expert witness on both victimized wife and co-conspirator. Welcome to my world. Hate me yet? what did lucy call me? bible-thumping hyprocritical ass. that's about right i guess. unintentional hyprocrite, party of one.
And during the events that unfold next, I knew so many times how lucy felt with each discovery, or imagined scenario. How she flailed wildly about to keep her life as she knew it Under Control Dammit. To have her hands on all the flying parts. To not lose the appearance, the superficial, the framework. And to a great degree she was more successful than I was. But in other ways she failed miserably. And I so wanted to sit down over coffee with her and give her advice about the whole bloody mess. I fantasized about it so many times. Because here I am with all this hard-won wisdom and I'm dying to give her that perspective and of course I cannot possibly. How arrogant of me. The conflicts of my soul.
Because, in the end, it has nothing to do with her. And you cannot force anyone to behave how they don't want to. Or keep them away from the person they love. Well, you can. For a time. But then they will just go underground.
Even if you don't think you are able to stick around, bc I am now a nasty two-faced POS in your horrified slack-jawed opinion, please do. But be mindful of my request in the previous post: be gentle. This whole story has an ending like The Sixth Sense.
Heartache & Chaos, your first item up for bids on the Price is Right
"Consider yourself lucky. Better to be haunted by the ghosts of good memories than the ghosts of bad ones" -Nip/Tuck, season 3, episode 8 I'm completely remiss in telling y'all WTF has happened to me over the last two years. Lots of reasons...lack of time & some fear involved spring immediately to mind. Honestly I would almost delete this blog and start over some days. The girl who wrote this blog in 2006-2008 isn't me anymore.
Well that's not true, some of what I wrote I liked and agree with. Just in retrospect/hindsight...I've lost a lot of my religion/faith, and to see that girl write with such hope and desperation for the savior to - hello, SAVE the mess she was in - makes me sad. And pissed off.
An old friend from Stepford came through my new town (searching for a nickname for current city, please stay tuned) and we went to dinner. "Have you been to church?" she asked at one point.
And without hesitation or filter I simply replied "I'm pissed off at God"
She immediately laughed. And she could, having lost her teenage son two years ago to cancer. She has all kinds of street cred with me for living through a hell like that. I cannot imagine. And she goes to church. At times.
The only place where I still have an 'attitude of gratitude' with God is about my children. Even though I think he does not give one sh!t about me most days, much less the desires of my heart - let's not even get started on that one - I do thank Him daily for my children, their health, their resilience in this divorce and subsequent moves and adjustments. They have fared much better than I have emotionally. And thank God.
I would have been found hanging from a shower rod long ago but I didn't want to damage my children with their mother's suicide. Plus, intermittently, I have had hope for better. Foolish investment of my heart, it turns out, but hope keeps you breathing. Keeps you putting one foot in front of the other. Even when all you are doing for months at a time is crying on the way to work, crying on the way home, and crying yourself to sleep. Wake up, rinse & repeat.
I have long ago given up the bullsh!t idea that I'm truly going to get a happy ending. But again, long buried hope will occasionally raise its head from under the rubble, and I want to see if it might be true. So I get up and go squint into the dark. And so far I don't see it. But my fcuked up brain keeps fooling me into trying one more day. Over and over until there are several years in my rearview...that show anything but a gd happy ending. But we'll get there. And you will judge.
Anyway!
I found a series of emails between myself and a childhood girlfriend where I relay, in pretty straightforward terms, what I have been reluctant to write about here: the past two years. This way I won't have to reinvent the wheel, and editing and bringing those stories over will help us get this big old truck out of the garage and in the air for a spin.
I do ask a favor though. Please, if you would be so kind: do not kick my ass. I cannot take it at present. I am broken in half, crippled by heart pain. I'm writing for therapy, because real therapy is not in the budget, and I need to process the most serious drama I have lived since The Husband's affair first unfolded. There is good drama and bad drama and OMG-CanIJustDieAlready drama, and I've had all three. The latter as recently as a week ago tonight. So be warned. Please. If you comment, even if you hate me at the end of the story, I promise you: I hate me too. Mostly. So be gentle.
And here's a heads up on where this tour bus is taking y'all: here, here, and here.
So, if you have now refreshed your memory be advised that from this point further: You have to be this tall to ride this ride. And Facebook is of the devil. "Bobby, some things are like a tire fire, trying to put it out only makes it worse. You just gotta grab a beer and let it burn." -Hank Hill, King of the Hill
Just wanted some sort of reference to post in the sidebar where I can come update, or add to, as needed.
People~
AIS: um, hi that's me, if I ever refer to myself in 3rd person & how I signed all comments in response to readers.[comments were mucked up in the post-apocalype of May 2011 deleting/republishing, but were an integral part of the blog and will be painstakingly restored to their corresponding posts as I am able. I love my readers, they were/are crazy insightful and awesome]. "The Background Check" & "The In-Between" in the sidebar tells you a lot about me in a few posts ===>
The Husband: duh. "The Husband's Story" in the sidebar contains his guest posts [back when he was willing, for a hot minute, to work through it] and some background on him.
Glenn/G: my downfall. "The G Factor" in the sidebar exposes Versions 1.0 & 2.0 (still being documented).
Places~
Stepford: where I lived for nine years & broadcast the blog from 2006-2009
Clean Slate: where the husband spent his childhood, where his parents still live. He moved back here part-time in 2008 when he was finally re-employed. And moved full-time in 2009. He is once again unemployed as of 2010 (thanks, economy!), and remained there, unemployed and oh-so-entitled, until Summer 2012 (saga to be documented).
Pastville: the city I lived in as a happy singleton 1992-1997. The place where I met The Husband & spent Year One of married life; the city we almost split up over because I didn't want to move away (we actually typed an amateur separation agreement, I was so adamant). The city I still wish I had never left.
Transition: where I moved in 2009, and tried desperately to find The Husband a job in the vicinity, so kids could be close to both of us. I still live here, he is now 3 states away. So much for that.
