The Wild Crafted Wife

”Even if it cannot be Day…it cannot Always be Night”

2022. It is a new year. I have been fundamentally changed in every way from the year past. My life has been ripped apart and put back together with half truths, darkness and a Grace that only seems to find me periodically.

I played the pick me dance with my Betrayer for 8 months. I’m ashamed to admit it. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m ashamed of how I let him take my gentle,trusting heart and fill it with his poisonous rewritten lies about our marriage,done to justify his actions, then as that was not enough-he inflicted those poison filled re-written lies into my soul so I could shoulder the blame of his betrayal;to then use the last parts of me not bleeding and broken to sustain him as he emotionally and sexually gave what was ours to another.

He did this while pounding his chest like a king.

The king he was had long since disappeared. I had placed him upon that throne in my heart,in our family, years ago. I gave him that strength, power and confidence he had lacked his entire life. He took it and used it to burn me to ashes, to turn the family we created into withering, suffering, screaming beings with no end in sight. He left and only returned periodically to gather up those ashes, never was a thought given besides how his actions benefited him.

He had nothing to offer me or our family. I refused to see him for who he had become. I refused to see what I had allowed myself to become. I begged this destructive liar and cheat to love me like I thought he had for the past 16 years. I promised I would fix the broken pieces of myself so that he could return to being my husband, the one who vowed to cherish, vowed to love, vowed to forsake all others in favor of my heart. The irony was that this was him. I fell for the mask. My king was a joker in disguise.

Betrayal comes at a cost that the one betraying could never survive.

I couldn’t bear to face that truth. Because where did that leave me? What does that say about me? Where does that love go if it was nothing but smoke?

As if he knew what Love was.

As if I did.

Our children started to look at me like an imposter. Where did their Mommy go? Who was this shell left behind, begging for scraps..Pretending that the man who called himself Dad, who would pretend to be devastated that he “had” to be with another female, as he walked out the door and we cried silently watching him go, why did their mommy always let him come back in? Where was the strong Woman that had always carried us all through life with a strength few possess but to her it came so naturally? Never before had she withered in the face of any adversity. The foundation of their lives burned around them and they felt more abandoned than ever. I have more shame to feel as they tell me their thoughts. It is never ending .

I ask myself how I can forgive him. The disrespect to the ones you swore to love and protect. How does another inflict so much pain and continue to live life as if you had no other choices but the one you sacrificed us upon?

How do you not hate yourself more with every step?

Why is it up to me,the one left behind, to gather up the discarded trash of what was our idealistic lives and find some sort of balance again?

When I realized I must be the one to put the final nail in the coffin of our marriage, that the protection of divorce is the only way to heal, it was bittersweet. I hate myself for what I allowed him to take from me, my security,trust, naivety, my sense of self. Gone.

I sent a parting gift to her. My gift of divorce. You wanted my place so badly, you have it now.

After 8 months, I have finally risen from the ashes and am taking steps to move forward, to recreate my life, to recreate our family with truth and happiness that we can walk through fire;we can stand in the flames;we can keep our pain from turning us into that which we despise.

There are no winners in a game where the other players don’t know the rules. No winners in a game that is rigged against the faithful.

So I stopped playing.

A lesson I never asked for has sent me on a path I never knew existed. One that many have walked before me, and came out stronger, with a fierce loyalty to self that I had once only dreamed existed.

Here lies the Woman you betrayed. May she never rise again, for her weakness was not innocent, it was a symptom of a lack of self love, a lack of self respect.

The Wild-Crafted Woman blesses her and quietly leaves her ashes of trust, of ignorance behind with all the grace she can muster. She takes the hands of her little souls, and looks only forward to create a new life for them all now.

She, I, promise to never waver. To hold steady the course. To remember, to never forget the cruelty inflicted that burned up the lives of those that trusted beyond all.

Betrayal will not be my story. It will not be my childrens story. It is but a small chapter in our life, I will see to it.

I know now there was no other way. For the woman I am needed only herself, how else to find her but in the fire of old lives and dreams?

He will forever feel the heat, he will keep running, keep searching, for something he will never find again. His darkness will destroy him. It has already begun.