The Aftermath
Well, now the story is out. I can now add cheater and sinner to my life resume. I am in emotional turmoil. This has changed my life and how I view everything. What goes up must come down and as soon as I went back to reality and this roller coaster we call life started its descent, I never imagined it would be like this.
I am an overthinker, an analyzer. I run through scenarios all of the time, good, bad, crazy, really fuckin crazy sometimes too. Like I had mentioned before I had thought about cheating before and how it would be when I went back to my husband (I have a hard time saying this, I don't know why because he is that, I married him after all). Am I good enough to conceal this? Can I go back to normal? What I was before? What him and I were before? Back to our comfortable and safe routines of life and family and work and responsibilities of being parents, monogamous to each other? Being what we have been brainwashed to be as far as the “norm” of family, relationships, what you should do with your life. You know, get married, have kids, maintain a home together. Ugh – I say this and I want to vomit because this feels so wrong to me, this concept of what you should be doing according to everyone else, but maybe with a different person it could be different? I don't know. All I know is I have always been one to push the boundaries, didn't like rules very much, never liked having to conform.
So, can you go back to who you were before you did something like this? After such a betrayal? I can tell you, the answer is NO. Maybe if what happened was just sex and there wasn't so much more to it, maybe? But that is not the situation I am dealing with now. Maybe for others they can, but for myself, I am not the same.
So, I went back to the place I have been calling home for the past 8 years, back to the person who has been my “life” partner for the better part of 17 years. Back to being the person I was before I met Irish. It has been hard. I am now a pretender. I pretend to be who I was before while I conceal from my husband and kids that I am no longer who they knew me as before July 3. I know Irish, we agreed no regrets? Do I regret, yes. I regret that I have been forced to face the fact that even though I pretend now, I was also pretending before we met. I had convinced myself I was happy, content. I have two beautiful children, whom I will never, ever regret, I have a lovely home, great friends and family who love me and a man I call husband and the father of our children who I know loves me and supports me. But I pretended. I suppressed a part of myself. I played this role that everyone wants me to be, but I was never ever my true self. Always doing what was expected of me. Pleasing everyone else. Now I sit on the fence, I see on one side, my past and for now, my present and I see on the other side what an alternate life could be. Now I need to decide, when I come down off this fence, which side I am moving forward with?