It's been 10 years and it still hurts

Start writing... Sometimes it feels like just last week that you walked out that door. Climbed into your sisters truck and rode right out of my life forever.

It's been almost 10 years however I still don't understand it and you still won't talk to me to tell me why.

We were married for 19 years together more than 20. Ok so our marriage wasn't perfect. Who's is? We had our problems just like everyone does, but I never hit you. I never cheated on you. You did both to me. As a matter of fact, the only time in my intire life I ever considered hitting a woman was after you kicked me in the groin so hard with both of your feet that you lifted both my feet more than a foot off the ground. I didn't hit you but believe me I did consider it. I remember you complaining about the hole in the wall next morning. It was a good thing I hit the wall.

I still can't wrap my mind around how somehow I'm the bad guy here. When you left I climbed inside a bottle and stuck a needle in my arm. I wanted to die. That first month that you were gone every night I was out on the bridge just north of town. In the middle looking over, crying and thinking of how easy it would be, just a step and it would all go away. All of the confusion all the pain would just be gone. Then thanks be to the Great Mystery I would think about the kids or the grandkids. Some nights I would just think about how I didn't want to have to explain to the powers that be how I thought I could do the job better than they. Besides it would be just my luck I would end up parilized and a burden to our son.

When I finally admitted to myself you had been cheating on me, with our sons highschool best friend. You can't deny this not to me. I had just caught the two of you together in his bed. I heard from his mother how it started two years earlier. My God woman he was 15 you were 40. Doesn't this make you some kind of a pedifile?

Then I began to hear about your cheating with others. Things I couldn't no wouldn't believe. "Not my wife. You are sadly mistaken if that's what you think".

I was so deep into denile back then, less than two years into our marriage, that I got into a fistfight with my best friend. Completely destroyed that friendship. Why? Because he was the only one man enough to tell me what you were doing. He really was my friend and I beat him up for it.

I could be mistaken, I had been before, but I believe this to be the first time you broke your vows to me. With a man who was living in our house. A wanted fellon from Idaho who was homeless with noplace to go. The man eventually was the reason for us getting evicted from our home of 9 years. Do you remember that when I accused you how you convinced me it wasn't true? My honest wife that I knew would never lie to me lied so convincingly that I gave you both a heartfelt apology for my jeolusness. How the two of you must have laughed at me about that one.

I didn't figure all this out until after you left me roughly 17 year's later. When my sister in-law says to me one day. " Well yeah we all knew it was going on. He was living in your house we all thought you knew. We thought it was a thing." I asked my brother and asked why noone said anything to me and he said "Come on would you have believed us?" So you not only lied to me but you somehow convinced my family that not only did I know about it but was somehow ok with it!

Now I understand a little why you steered me away from the Red Road. You knew if I was on the right path and right with the Great Mystery, you never would have gotten away with the deception. Oh you didn't want to be with me allright. You just couldn't let me go for two reasons. One after what I had experienced in my life to that point. You knew there was no way I would leave our son. Two you couldn't be the cause of the breakup. No not sweet little innocent you.

The next time was with my new best friend. One who's wife was your best friend. Our son's were best friends. Everyone knew they were into the swingers sign. So was it just my best friend or did you cheat on me with his wife as well. I know we joked about her being my girlfriend and you being his. As far as I knew it was just a joke. It wasn't until they divorced that she came clean. That it was alot more than a joke. At least as far as you and he were concerned.

I have my suspicions about another life long friend of mine. That stayed with us for awhile because he and his 16 year old daughter were homeless. I'll never know there's no reason for me to think you would come clean with the truth now. Not after lieing to everyone for 20 years.

Then there's the boy you left me for. I don't think I'll ever understand this. I, we were doing the best we had done in twenty years of life together. I was working steady. Bringing home weekly paychecks of $3000 to $4000. You had a good job. Okay you made rouphly $1800 a month gross. It helped us more than some would think. We were in the process of buying the house we were renting. To outside appearences we were getting along better than ever. We had even sat together on the porch and talked of raising our kids here. About growing old together. About sitting on this very porch and watching our grandchildren playing in the yard. This not two days before father's day. The day you left. You knew when you were saying it it was a lie. Some silly little fantasy. Why you had to live that fantasy then. Perhaps so it would somehow make it easier to blame me for your fantasy not becoming real? I reckon this is one more thing I'll never know.

Now to be fair I wasn't the easiest man to be married to. I had a high set of standards for myself and my family. I demanded that you all adhered to. I know now that was wrong of me. At the time the way I'd been taught that's how it was done. I had an anger management problem. Partially your doing but I gave you that power so still my fault. In my defense I was taught that's how a man handled his emotions. He didn't cry or piss and moan. A man got angry. I will also have to admit I was drinking pretty heavily then. Part of the reason for this is the physical pain I was and still do suffer with daily. Part of it was a subconscious attempt to deal with what was going on. Partially it was your constant nagging and the mental and emotional abuse I suffered at your hands. Abuses that noone else ever saw or herd. Oh you were good at that. Nag and belittle me so noone but me could hear or see. Then behind everyone's back. Pick pick push on and on. Until I'd lose my temper and explode. Then you'd speak up so the world could hear. "See see what I have to put up with. I didn't do anything." I know now that it only worked because I gave you the power over me to allow it to. So once again my own doing. In all of this however even with my overdrinking and my anger issues. I never put my hands on you in anger. I never once spent the rent or bill money on booze. I never missed a day of work behind drinking.

You however tell our children and anyone else who might listen. That I drank up that $3000-$4000 a week. This isn't humanly possible. 3 to 4 thousand dollars a week worth of alcohol? I'd be dead. There's no way I could have held that job. Any job far as that goes. You never mention the money you smoke up with your marijuana addiction. To the tune of not less than an ounce a week. That still doesn't account for it all. Where that money all went? One more thing I reckon I'll never know. I suspect you were squirreling it away somewhere. I have no doubt that leaving me was a long thought out plan. You did buy 2 vehicles very quickly after leaving me. That's pretty good with only a $1800 a month gross income.

I will give you that though you did think it through. First was to ruin my carrier. Easy enough you held the purse strings, why not you went to school to be an accountant, you simply quit paying my union dues. The job kept me on the road alot. You also quit telling me when they would call for more work. These two actions very effectively ended my carrier. One reason for this was that as a union member I had a team of lawyers on retainer for both issues on and off the job. Another was you wanted me broke, destitute, with no job and no friends. Much harder to fight you and or get custody of our son.

I am also completely in awe of how you have convinced people. Some of whom lived threw it with us and know it's not true. Yet somehow you've got them all believing that that boy was 18 and you had already left me before you started dating. It may be true that you went on your first "date" after he turned 18. However the night you left he was 17. His mother tells me it was two years prior to that you guys had started whatever you call that. Now it's been a minute since I was in school but my math figures that to mean he was 15 when the two of you started committing adultery.

You already being an adulteress must not have concerned you but you lured him a child into an adulteress relationship. Not judging not my job. I certainly would like to hear what the two of you have to say to The Great Mystery on the day you do answer for it.

You haven't so much as spoken to me since the night you got in your sisters truck and left. It was 3 years from that time that you let that child put you up to filling for divorce. That day was the hardest time I ever put pen to paper. As you know it goes against my morals for one.

You see even after everything your lies, your ignoring your vows. Even after you distroid our children's father and I was a good one ruined thier idea of me. Somehow once again convinced them it was all my fault.

I reckon that to was easy enough. They only get to know the one side of it. Because I never have never will bad mouth my children's mother to them even if it is true. You on the other hand have no problem bad mouthing me to them. Using lies to do so. Seeing as I was already drinking rather heavy and then made the bad choice of using drugs to help me deal with it all. I had made myself a pretty easy target.

Come on all in all I was a good husband and father. We've both known worse. You even with everything you did to me. The lies, the adulty, the turning my children against me. I still love you. I meant every word of every poem I wrote for you. Every time I said the words, I love you, I meant them. Real honest love. Love beyond condition without question and everlasting. I will always love you.

One more thing. It could just be a copping mechanism for me. I quit the drugs and the drinking. It's been 2 years now. To be honest they weren't working anymore.

I am an ordained Minister now. I'm not writing this thinking you well ever read it. I hope you don't. Wouldn't do any good you would just deny it all and somehow find a way to turn it all around in order to use it against me and I truly have forgiven you anyway. For me this is a vent. I'll never get to say any of this to you. A vent and if someone somewhere sometimes reads it and it helps them somehow. That would be something.

Anyhow I believe it was probably something along these lines. When we met you had just come home to Washington from a physicaly abusive relationship. Your sister, thinking you were considering going back to that, introduced us. I remember when we talked about it. Her and I. I remember her saying how she wanted to show you that there was still good guys out there. Real men that didn't physicaly abuse women or children. Guy's that had jobs and kept them. I remember thanking her for putting me in that category.

Any I think that one of those guys your sister discribed was just what you saw. You watched as your daughter began to love me. As a father. I don't think you ever really did. You saw a safety net. You thought he'll take care of us. You got pregnant, promising me a son, knowing as a honorable man I would do right by you. I did and when the kids were all grown up you threw me away like a cheap used up lighter. Your vows meant nothing after all how many times did you tell me you don't believe in God? On top of that you never loved me. It's not really your fault. Actually it's a sad thing. I don't believe you know what love is. Not real true love. You weren't shown it much growing up, if ever certainly not at home. Might have seen it in a couple of your syblings. Problem with that is even if they felt it towards you. The didn't truely know what it was either. Not until leaving the house. I know what you think love is but that's not it. At some point there you may have thought you loved the idea of me. Perhaps not even that.

But you see I do love you. Real, true, no conditions, no question, never ending love. That's why 10years, a hundred even a thousand. It's always going to hurt because I have always loved you and I always will forever and a day, no shit.

Thomas Plourd