There are no answers to these questions so I won't dwell there because therein lies madness and I'd like to avoid that if I can. We have a five year-old daughter that we'll now have to figure out how to raise together and apart. Of course, this isn't what I wanted for her and that's the part that makes me the most sad. That she won't get to know both her parents the way I did mine, that she might have to live with strangers in her home and get used to these people and their quirks. It's not that I don't believe this can be done well and it's not that I don't know many, many people have done it before. It's not even that I don't think WE can do it. I just didn't expect to have to. And for that, I'm so very angry with him.
I'm also angry at my emotional volatility since I found out about all of this. I'm not a person who likes to feel vulnerable in front of others, I like to be in control and to appear confident even when I'm not. But these days? A friend told me I was awesome today. I cried. Someone asked me how my holiday was. I started to cry. I stepped out of the subway station to walk home. I cried. It's exhausting not to be able to stop that in its tracks. It's annoying to be at the mercy of this shit storm.
I also don't like feeling that this was done to me. I don't like knowing that I couldn't stop this even though I sensed something was wrong probably from very soon after it started. I could sense that he was pulling away from me and also from our daughter. He wasn't as patient, he wasn't as present. I'd ask about it and he'd say that he was just going through a tough time so I tried to be patient. I worried that something shady was going on but, even though I knew something was off, I really couldn't believe that he was cheating on me. That just didn't seem possible.
I've thought back to all the times I've heard of other people being cheated on for long affairs and I've always thought she or he must have known. Now I know how it happens. You might know something is wrong but you don't KNOW. And the KNOWING? It's something you can't always face. Because KNOWING means you have to deal and dealing isn't easy.
Well, now I have to deal. I have to find a way through this nonsense and come out the other side a happy person and a good mom. Those are my goals. I can't elaborate more than that because so much is uncertain right now. I think that will just have to be where I start.
I've called this blog Step Ball Change because, although I'm not a dancer, I took dance lessons as a kid so, you know, I'm familiar with the move. Step, because when his mom found out about all of this, she referred to the cheating as "stepping out". For some reason, I find this hilarious. Stepping out sounds like such fun. I feel like it should be done with a top hat. It sounds innocent and lighthearted and doesn't quite gel with the ugliness of the act. And yet I like it. He stepped out on me. The ball I probably don't have to define but since it's the best word, I'll do it anyway. After he'd stepped out, he balled her. She was balled by my spouse. The father of my child was balling a 36 year old goth with a tattoo of her dead cat on her thigh. Also, that has all made me bawl more than I've ever thought possible in a two week period. So ball it is. And change, well, the change has come and it will keep coming. I've only just begun this journey and I know it will be a long road. I'm tired just thinking about it. I'm also tired because when I first wrote that sentence, I wrote "we've only just begun". I still think of myself as a part of a couple. Only I'm not.
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