Today's post is inspired by a conversation I had with a very dear and very wonderful friend of mine. She has talked me down out of many an emotional tree, and for that I can never thank her enough.
About 16 months ago, I found out that my husband had been having an ongoing affair with what I thought was one of my friends and who definitely was a co-worker and had been for five years. My husband and I had only been married about a year and a half at the time, and I was deeply in love with him and convinced that he was my knight in shining armor after a 20-year-long bad marriage that felt more like a jail sentence than a loving union. When I found out what my husband had been doing, it almost killed me. Literally. I had to start taking tranquilizers, I found myself lost in my own neighborhood without any idea how I had gotten to that street or how to get back to my own house - I was a strung-out mess. My husband was remorseful and wanted another chance - because my own past was quite checkered and I'd done my share of bad things, I felt that, karmically, I owed it to the Universe to grant that one chance. My husband and I have been picking up the pieces ever since. His infidelity is still a dominant thought in my mind, however, and I'm not sure that I will ever be entirely free of it. The unwashed slut that was my co-worker and supposed "friend" hi-tailed her ass out of this company and went to work for another law firm here in town, got herself fired after three months for gross incompetence, then started working at a local beauty salon as a hair sweep-up and phone girl, then started selling parquet wood floors, then, lo and behold, found herself back here in downtown Seattle where she took another job as a legal secretary in a lawfirm.....next-friggin-door. So, after months of healing and feeling better and better.....thinking that it was all done and being so very happy to be moving forward.....I saw the "creature" (that's what I call her now...."the creature" and use the term "it" when speaking about it, rather than the feminine pronouns of "she" or "her."
I had been aware that the day would come when I would spot it....I just didn't know when, and for 15 months had been very fortunate ineed. However, the time had come and the spotting was done. I found myself fighting off shock and dismay. A cadre of emotions welled up inside me and were put down. I felt physically ill - dizzy, short of breath. Everything was fresh again. Everything was new and terrible again. I began to think of all my progress as having been a sham....I flailed about for answers. Days went by and I headed down into a black hole of depression and absolute RAGE. This is where my conversation with my girlfriend Chris comes in.
I had the brilliant idea last night that what I really needed to do was to have some closure on the other side of the equation of the betrayal that I was a victim of a year and a half ago. I needed to find out how someone could pretent to be your friend and could look you right in the face and say, "Maryellen, you know that I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you," when she sees you falling apart over the fact that you believe your husband is pulling away from you. I believed that answers for questions like, "how could you do this to me? We've been friends for five-friggin' years?" would somehow help me in my healing and recovery process and perhaps, just perhaps, put to rest some of this enormous rage that I have to wrestle with on an almost daily basis. However, there was something inside of me that told me this would not be a good idea. To send and email to the creature soliciting reasons behind why it could be so cruel, would alert the creature to the fact that I was still thinking about this stuff. This knowledge would, in some ways, give "it" power over me - and I didn't think I wanted to do that. So I called Chris to help talk me out of my newly planned course of action.
She asked me what I hoped to gain by emailing the creature.....I told her "closure" - and we talked a bit more, and she said that she didn't think I would get the answers I needed or was seeking. She said that what had happened and how the creature was able to do what it did was due to the simple fact that "evil exists in the world, and she (the creature) operates on the basest level of instinct and the most gutteral sphere of human nature." And that's true. It does. I didn't see it because I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume goodness in people and, unless they show me differently, will continue to assume that goodness for the duration of our association. Never in my life have I been so grossly and rudely awakened to the possibility of evil and treachery so great. I am not going to go into the details of their affair here, but suffice to say, it had a hard-nosed counselor near tears and sitting on the edge of her chair saying that she simply did not know how I was going to get past all of it and come out to a place of forgiveness. And counselors just don't say that shit. They pretty much know how things are and that splitting up a marriage is one of the hardest exercises to which you can subject the psyche that exisits in the modern world.
So, anyway....yes Virginia.....evil exists in the world. And sometimes it slimes you. You cannot reason with it....you cannot plead with it....it has no more sense or congnisense than a lobotomy patient who endlessly masterbates all day. Evil such as the creature is cold, calculating and a slave to the self-serving attitude that causes wars. All you can do if it has touched you is to try to wipe it off and move on with your life. Move on and love. Love everyone who will love you back. Spread that love around. I try....I am trying....as I write these words I still struggle to understand even while I know there is no understanding what happened to me....but I try.
Heavy writing today, huh?
Blessed be, and may this never, ever happen to you. But if it does, may you find a way out and to the other side where there waits forgiveness which will set everyone free.
Az
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