Way Worse

It was a good weekend, until it wasn’t.

It was the usual: he went to work on a Saturday morning and I did a workout. I squeezed in a session of poi spinning out in the sunshine. We went out and did the weekly shopping, only managing to buy two extra, non-list items, and spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch. We finished the night with a viewing of Goldfinger. Sunday morning we cleaned up the kitchen a bit. He did the laundry, and I baked an experimental cake recipe. We played a round of Boss Monster and watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones.

And then, just like that, it turned to shit for me.

We had the TV on, mostly for noise, and eating our nightly snacks of yogurt and cereal. Without cable, we only receive nine or so channels, and there’s no point to starting a show at that time of the night. Why start something that will be cut short when we go to bed? The latest episode of Good Girls was on, and two of the main characters are talking after one of them discovers her husband has been unfaithful with more than one woman.

Annie: I mean, if you if you know someone is already a cheater does it make it that much worse? I don't know, I'm just asking.  And it's not a love affair, right? I mean, it's like a a preexisting condition.  And is two worse than one? And is three worse than two? Again, I have no clue. I'm here for you.  You don't have to answer.

Beth:  It was just a warm body.  Anyone but me.  That makes it way worse.

There. Three little words. Twelve letters. Anyone but me. Three words, and it was like a punch to the gut. The line summed up everything about how I felt two years ago when I found the condom wrapper in the bedroom trash, or four months ago when he told me, roughly estimated, the extent of his problems. Part of the pain two years ago was the fact I had been trying to fix things for almost a year. I felt like the same time I was trying to fix things, he was trying to just tape a poster over the hole and hope no one noticed.

By last November, I was feeling that while it could have been better, our marriage was vastly improved over what it had been. If our relationship needed to be described in some way, it would be one of those inspirational quotes that’s shared all over Facebook and Pinterest about kintsugi, a broken bowl repaired and whole again, but still recognizing the damage. In November, the universe, like a cat, decided to knock that bowl to the floor and break it one more time.

In some ways, it didn’t hurt as much as it did the first time. I mentally shrugged and thought “he did it again”, the same way we might say “welp, looks like I left the coffee pot on again.” Finding out the extent of things, how it wasn’t one person but a LOT of people he was talking to – was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it wasn’t love or an affair of the heart. On the other hand, there were so many that he was chatting with. SO MANY. I don’t have the numbers, and I don’t want the numbers, I don’t need to know those numbers. I can soothe myself with the idea that if he fell out of love with me and into love with someone else, that other person was himself.

And that’s what I keep telling myself. It wasn’t me, it was him. All him. You didn’t do this, you didn’t cause this, you tried to fix this. Unfortunately, there’s times where everything hits all at once. All that emotion builds up and spills out. He looked at me the other night and remarked that I looked like I was about to cry, and then suddenly I was a snuffling mess of snot and tears.

Today, I don’t even remember what the hell I was crying about. Sometimes, the thought that there’s been so many reasons I could be crying is way worse than whatever the reasons actually are.