Once burned…

I’ve had all I can take.

He doesn’t care about me and has been putting me behind his other women for months now. I hung on for so long because I wanted to believe. 

His wife found women’s panties in his backpack and immediately started texting me, asking if I had been with him. She told me SHE was having sex with him and he was only good for “meth fueled sex” anymore. This is a man that gave her everything. She’s as devastated as I am.  I think I’m more devasted only because he finds her attractive enough to be able to physically have sex with her and he didn’t me. I’m just so humiliated. I want to die.

They may have been my panties. I’m not sure. But, if they were, someone else was wearing them and it wasn’t me because I’m not in his life enough to have my panties find their way into his backpack. No Sir. That’s not probable.

Maybe there is a fourth person in this shit show of a love quadrangle.

The humiliation of him going back and forth between his wife and girlfriend I can no longer tolerate. Even the suspicion is more than I can bear. And he lives with his wife now and she TOLD me they have sex so there IS no suspicion, only fact.

He has hurt me so much that when his wife’s text popped up on my message program, I expected it. I expected the pain and I braced myself for it. I thought it would hit me in my face like a tornado.

But instead, I felt rage. 

White hot rage over what he has done to me and to himself. I know it’s not fair because addiction is a disease and I know he has suffered enough with his wife to NEED substances to feel better, but does he need to have sex with other women because of addiction? I don’t think so. I think who you sleep with is a conscious choice and he isn’t choosing me.

I can forgive addiction but how can I forgive his repeated infidelity with someone so dangerous and facetious towards me? Both or either of his lovers blame me and want to hurt me. They say so openly and plot how they are going to do it. They threaten to expose me to my kids. 

That’s all bad enough, but how can I forgive him for not only going back to his wife but engaging in marathon sex with her? Jesus. It’s more than I can swallow. 

My rival of 15 years. The same woman that refused to give him any sex is now doling it out in hours long sessions. And he’s right there lapping it up like it’s liquid gold or something.

And she’s going to call me every time she feels like taking her pain and anger out on someone when she has lost control of him.

I don’t want to open my heart up to feel anymore hurt or anger or betrayal or fear. 

For the first time in my life, I’m totally alone in my heart. Nobody loves me and I have nobody to trust on a romantic level.

It feels empty. 

But that’s nothing compared to the pain of knowing my lover is suffering from the terminal disease of addiction and this time it wants to take the only man I have ever loved. First it was alcoholism that took my life partner and now methamphetamine has robbed me of my soul mate and it feels like I have finally bled out. 

I’m dried up. 

I want to hide away where there is nobody to depend on except me. That way, nobody can ever hurt me again. 

I will be bullet proof because I can love myself better than anyone else can love me at the moment. 

It took a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of tears and a lot of pleading with the universe or God or whoever to just let me keep Roger as I have always known him, strong and sure. It took a lot of pain to get to where I am right now, ready for self love, because my main form of medication, Roger, has a new life without me. He doesn’t want or need me anymore and it took me so long to realize it. It just hurts so much to accept the idea that he’s going to keep on hurting me, even if he says he won’t. It is like trying to believe and trust the devil…and the devil will chew up your heart and spit it back at your feet.  

No matter how much I want to, I can’t go backwards in time. I can’t make it how it used to be or love someone that no longer exists because finally, the pain of all this has overridden the desire to secure his love and be his only lover.

It’s like touching your finger to the end of a burning match. If you do it enough times, you learn to be careful because the pain lasts for so long and you’re reminded of it every time you bump the end of your finger. 

Roger is the flame at the end of my match stick and I keep reaching for him only to get burned. 

Now I am defeated. I hurt so much that I have stopped reaching out for him.

I have all I can do to lie still in bed at night and wrap my own arms around my own raw and wounded body. 

And I don’t want to cry because the tears hurt my tender face. I don’t know what to do except lay here and allow myself to hurt and grieve for the man I have to let go of.

And maybe at some point in the night, I will wrestle with my decision, because there is one thing I am sure of…

The arms that cease to reach for love will never feel its embrace.