Tuesday, March 14, 2006

My blog

Prior to June 2004 I had no idea what a blog was. I knew EH had started one, he showed it to me, but I didn't grasp the bigger picture of it. As it turns out, EH had become a blog reader too and had begun an online romance with another married blogger. Although they missed their chance to meet face to face (they tried!) the 6 months worth of email were intimate, emotional and disturbing. I can't even imagine what the phone calls were like.

After I discovered EH's online affair on June 15, 2004 I started a blog of my own to rant, scream and rage all the feelings I was overcome with. I spilled every ugly thought I had on my pages. EH's "other woman" read my blog and delighted in using her blog to comment, criticize and bitch about my reactions. Even worse, her blog archives were a full detail by detail account of her affair with my husband. There is truly nothing more painful in the world. It's hard enough to find out your lover has lied, cheated and betrayed but to then have the ability to "witness" almost every moment in writing is enough to decimate the heart. To hear her crow about her sex talks on the phone with him on days he had blown off me and my daughter or to read the words he wrote to her when he lied to me and assured me nothing was wrong was too much.

After the affair, I couldn't talk to people. I didn't want to share the horrible details with close friends or family members because I knew it would become awkward if EH and I managed to overcome it. It was infinitely easier to scream into the silent abyss of internet then to share my feelings with people around me.

I changed blog addresses about 3 times to try to shake my little stalker, but she always managed to find me again thanks to the chatty blogger community. Ultimately I just stayed put here and let her have her fun.

Once the rage simmered down to the less murderous variety, I began to blog about the recovery of our marriage. You can still comb these archives to see how te process went. One step forward, two steps back. One day I would profess my undying love and the next I would be drowning in hurt again.

As time moved on, the hurt channeled into other areas. I still loved my husband but I would write of my frustrations with him. His aversion to sex, his inability or unwillingness to help support this family, his failure to be any type of partner or provider. By the time I admitted that the marriage was over this past November, it couldn't have been much of a surprise. Even then, his "other woman" contacted me with her bitchy insights.

Today I can look back over these pages and understand things better. I can see the problems mounting and realize this was always coming. Once EH betrayed me, there was just no way back.

You see, we always had love. Deep, true and amazing love. The kind shared by a soulmate. The kind of love that changes you. Beyond that, we didn't have much. We had stress, financial problems, bad luck, drama and every odd in the world against us. That love was what always held us together. Once that love was treated so indifferently, so callously and with such little regard - it could never survive. The one amazing thing we had, the one reason we had to live our life together had been stripped of it's value and cheapened. I never could get past that. It was a bit like a terminal illness that lingered, offered occasional hope and eventually consumed my marriage into the great beyond.

I don't miss EH the way I thought I would. I do miss the "us" we had. That special bond that let us always know what the other was thinking, the connection that gave us insights into each other. We truly knew one another and it was wonderful. I miss being a family. I miss doing things together with our daughter. I miss sharing in her life together. I miss things I can never have again.

My life is in transition again as I start a new life with PC. I wonder what insights I will find when I reread these pages in the future.

PC is everything that EH was not. PC is entirely involved in our life to the point that I am often able to let go. PC just handles things and after years of being in charge of handling, I am more then relieved to sit back a bit. PC doesn't appear to love me with the same intensity EH did, but it's more a difference in person than in volume. I can honestly say that even through the pain of losing my marriage, I have found a happiness I never knew with PC. I have found peace, safety, protection and love. PC and I have a bond all of our own too. We seem to ride the same wave, so to speak. We alternate from serious to playful to sensuous to ambitious together and we ultimately balance one another. PC nourishes me where I once felt so drained.

The deeper bond will come with time and that's alright with me. Time with PC is not a hardship. The connection is there and the rest will fall into place.

When I blog now, I have less drama to report. Less flowery posts about love and marriage, because my beliefs on them have been rattled and I now look back and see how my dedications and prose were all desperate attempts to make it right again. I blog with less anger. I blog with less excitement.

Basically, it's dull.

If I were here for the purpose of entertaining you, that would be a problem but my intentions are solely for me to transmit thoughts, impressions and feelings to another place where I can sort them out. I learn from blogging.

In this post alone, I have learned how much pain I still hold. I have only to write about the marriage to find tears on my cheeks and a lump in my throat. I imagine I will carry that hurt for a long time.

The blog title seems somehow...inappropriate today. The Odd Wife is who I was with EH. Today, I am neither wife, nor especially "odd". In PC's world, I am merely silly but not exceptionally strange. PC is at least as odd ("silly") as I am, so I don't have the distinction.

I find myself ready to change the name of this blog. This time not to hide from a stalker or to rage, but to begin moving on. Moving forward. I won't close this blog to start a new one, but I do want to change title and web address.

I just can not figure out what to call it now.

I'm open to suggestions...

Posted by Red :: 1:09 PM :: | ---------------------------------------