Am I ever going to see his make and model of truck in silver and NOT have my breath hitch in my throat? And why is it that my mind and heart, both of whom have intimate knowledge of the horrific bagdouchery of this man, should STILL see fit to make me feel that tiny glimmer of excitement as it comes into view? As though somehow, none of this has really happened, and my husband is just returning from working out of town. The glimmer goes away in a second, but not before I feel enraged and sickened that it happened at all. Because it’s humiliating.    

In fact, it takes me back to a moment that is so bitterly painful that I can’t even begin to recount it without shaking my head and feeling disgust. Not at myself, but for what his cruelty did to me on that fateful day back in February. He’d just shaken his toddler off his leg, shut the door, gotten in his truck, and drove out of my life. Drove out of OUR lives. I was screaming and crying incoherently. I went to my knees, and threw up on the hardwood floor near the doorway to the kitchen. I began sobbing the kind of sob that doesn’t have any of the usual kind of restraint behind it. The kind you hope that no one ever hears, that no one ever sees. But my babies saw, and my babies heard. This sickens me. What did he care? He’d just driven away in that shiny silver truck, and he wasn’t looking back for anything.

I don’t know why fate conspired for this to be the one time someone used my driveway to turn around in, but it did. Through the curtains, I saw the glint of the sun shining off the windshield of a vehicle that had unmistakably just pulled in. It had only been about two minutes since Honey had driven away. It had to be him! My heart leapt. It didn’t matter that I’d just learned, in the span of 20 hours, that my husband was a sociopathic pathological liar, and had been having a 5 month long affair. It didn’t matter that this man had just blindsided me and left me sobbing on the floor with his 1 and 2 year old babies, to go move thousands of miles away to live with his stripper girlfriend and her two kids after 14 years of (what I thought and what I was told) was a great marriage with me.

No. My heart hadn’t gotten that message. My brain had, though, and it was fried. Which I guess accounts for why I went running, like an excited puppy who’s master had just come home, into my son’s room for a better look out the window at what I knew must be my beloved returning to me. In the blink of an eye, a rush of hope flooded in with all manner of ridiculous theories. It had all been a mistake. Yah, that must be it. He’s come back to say how sorry he is, how he loves me and that we should go to counseling. Again, I was crazed and beside myself. My faculties were shot.

So when I pulled open the curtain to see a blue SUV where a silver truck should be, my insides were crushed in a vice. I was crest-fallen and hysterical and humiliated. Again. A crying sound escaped me which I will never forget. It was a cry of complete and utter despair, not much unlike the kind you’d hear from a mother watching her son’s plane crash in front of her. It was the moment that I died inside.

I’ve been walking around dead for 7 months now. I stand upright. I breathe in and out. My heart is beating, but I’m not there anymore. That trusting person died that day, at that exact moment I realized he wasn’t coming back. Our protector. My husband. My advocate, my lover, my friend, my confidant, my beloved. I realized then, looking down at my innocent babies, that the cruelties of this world are not just out beyond the safety of our warm home. They can get inside.

HomeWrecker posts regularly on FB about her unfailing love and dedication to this man. In every way possible, she expresses her endless appreciation for his sweet disposition. For his humor. For his love for her. To her, I say this. I GET IT. He snowed me, too, Babygirl, and you’re being deceived. You can’t possibly know what cruelty this man is capable of unless you had seen with your own eyes how he ripped himself out of our lives like it was no big thing. And, he may not cheat on you right away, but he’s already in another love relationship, one you can never hope to compete with. And that’s with himself. I know you’d say that’s ridiculous, because he’s so humble. He’s incapable of the things you claim. Yep. I’m you, 7 months ago. I was his biggest defender on the planet. I’m sorry to report that this man is just a new iteration of every other man you’ve been let down by, with one very important distinction…

You’re never gonna see this one coming.