what matters and why

name

A name. Just a name. The way the first and the last fits together so perfectly. Same as it was the first time. A glass of wine, my friend at the door. She wants to get on my computer, insists she can work wonders. What I didn't want to know for so long is right in front of me. In less than five minutes. The wine helps me forget why I chose to ignore. Not for a little while. Five long months.

Questions that I can't ask. And even if I could, I would choose not to.

We get in the truck. I take my drink. Why start what you can't finish? She talks. I drink. I carefully study directions in some sort of state of disbelief. My stomach hurts like it never has before. We stop so she can pee. I had forgotten she has a baby sitting on her bladder. I'm oblivious to her expanding belly. It's all about me now. The truck, it's not where we expected. Our trip is unsuccessful, but the feeling stays. She leaves me at home, driving away with a sympathetic look on her face. Something is so wrong. I don't sleep. I'm up until my eyes hurt, searching through things I didn't know were possible to search.

The name matches a residence, and I find it in a random list of emails. The first and the last, the number that goes right into voicemail but clearly states an identity.

Later, the identity goes with a voice. One that tells me how my husband made her child laugh, and took care of her when she was sick. A weekend that they spent together, the amount of alcohol they drank. She confirms my suspicion that he confesses his love for her. Her apology goes unforgiven.

Why wouldn't he love her? Going into five years of marriage, it seemed that we had nothing left. Just a child, who was the reason for the marriage. We went through the motions, we worked together to raise our son, but our relationship was empty. The little passion that was there a long time ago had quickly slipped away. It might have been the miscarriage. The summer right before. I said nothing when he asked how I felt. Even before, we were struggling. I was unemotional, he wanted attention. I was independent, he needed companionship. It was inevitable that he would love someone else so quickly.

On Christmas eve, while he is dead asleep on the couch, I look through his phone. There it is, that name. Despite the fact that he has denied any contact. She's there, and now I have an explanation for the days he chose not to spend with his son. I watch him sleep and wonder why, after he has been made aware of the hurt that he caused me, how he can continue. Why I am so worthless and she is so important.

She's there a few months later, while I struggle with final divorce proceedings. She has completely taken him away, drug induced or not, and I am raising his child alone. She's there when I call, at his place when I stop by to talk. Even when he's says she's not, she's there.

In the past, my non confrontational personality has never allowed me to hate anyone. Now, I hate her. I hate him. I hate my friend for insisting that I investigate. I hate the wife of my husband's friend, who gave me more than one warning. I hate his family, who defends him despite his indiscretions. I hate my family, who is completely righteous and only supports me only because it appears that I am not at fault in the disintegration of our marriage.

Four and a half years. Every memory, down to the last detail.

Just a name. Such a normal day, how can one name remove me from my current reality so quickly?

Part of me wants to thank her. For beginning something so hurtful that eventually shaped my personality. Without that experience, I would not be who I am today. Yet a part of me wants to hate her. For completely destroying something that wasn't so bad.

That non confrontational part of my personality hasn't gone away. I will ignore the name, as if I never seen it. Like I never knew it existed.