Picking Up the Pieces

/imˈplōZH(ə)n (noun)

an instance of something collapsing violently inward.

This post is one that I have had to stop start/stop on a continual basis because it has been so gut wrenching to relive this day in it’s entirety.

What started off as a somewhat-average Wednesday would ultimately end in the most emotional devastating day of my 45 years. Worse than the day I learned of my cancer diagnosis and also worse than the day (just last year) when I had to say goodbye to my heart dog, Sydney at the young age of 8. This day would ultimately go down in history as one that no one involved would soon forget.

By this time, about 3 weeks had passed since C had dropped the divorce bomb on me. But I was still holding out a tiny shred of hope that perhaps there was a chance for us to work through things. This period of grief is known as the bargaining phase. Maybe a fresh start was just what the both of us needed. In hindsight of all that has happened, this statement is nothing short of insanely comical…and little did I know that my entire mindset was about to shift dramatically.

The day started off like any other day. T was staying at the house for the week so he could spend some time with his dad before he left for the Army. C was at the house sleeping in the guest room, T was in his room reading the Bible and I was working on some design projects and listening to music. As per usual, Murph and Bruiser were barking at every little thing and annoying C to the depths of his soul. I could hear him in the guest room (with the door closed) as he kept groaning about the dogs. His growing hatrid for them was becoming a constant since he had decided that he no longer liked the life that we had built together.

C and I had spent some time chatting early that afternoon, nothing productive, still holding his ground on needing “space and time”. By this point I had asked him on multiple occasions if there was anyone else and he had sworn up and down that he just wanted to “set me free” so that ‘we could both find our own happiness’. How fucking noble of him; such a grandiose gesture. I was still trying to swallow the idea of how he had gotten to the point of no return without talking to me first, and now he was already ready to set me free. Like how does one make such a life altering decision without talking to their spouse first? I had so many questions. All of which were about to be answered.

Truthfully, I still couldn’t wrap my head around how his mind had shifted so abruptly in a little less than a month. Remember, we celebrated our 5-year anniversary at the end of April and my birthday a couple weeks after that. In between there, we had date nights (both with our friends and just the two of us) we had been intimate on multiple occasions, we went and test drove the boat together, we had talked about all the future plans for that boat and how much we had to look forward to with it. I had also borrowed him $4K to help cover the cost of some very expensive accessories for that stupid fucking boat. So far as I knew, it was business as usual. So the shocking divorce request was something that I still couldn’t fully wrap my head around.

Early in the afternoon T had come out to say hi to me and love on the dogs. As he was doing so, he was somewhat quiet, and then he randomly asked me if I wanted to go to church with him that evening for the Wednesday service. Knowing my time with T was limited, I said ‘yes’ without any hesitation. I wrapped up work about 5:30, showered/got ready, and we headed out to church. Much of that service is now a complete blur to me given the magnitude of what was about to transpire later that evening.

I do remember it being a good message and I really enjoyed Faith Assembly, even though it was a much larger church than I was used to. After the service, we both went up front and met with the prayer group. I happened to start a conversation with a very sweet lady who asked me if I needed additional prayers. We prayed for several things together; my upcoming surgery, strength as I continued to mourn the tragic loss of my brother, and lastly for C. We prayed for him to find clarity and for him to find his way back to my heart. As we stood there praying, I happened to glance over at T. I could see a few tears welling as he tried desperately to conceal them. Without giving it much thought, I simply attributed it to him being really moved by the prayer team. I now know that his Texas-sized God-fearing Jesus-loving heart was breaking for the prayer request for his dad, full well knowing that it was basically a lost cause.

On the way back to the car he asked me how I was feeling. I told him I really enjoyed the service, the pastor and also our wrap up with the prayer group. He said, “I’m so glad, just keep leaning into God and he will always protect you.” The church is about 30-45 mins from our house and T was rather quiet on the way home. We stopped at Chik-fil-a near the house to grab some dinner and he was still pretty much silent. I asked him if there was anything wrong and he simply said, “No”…but I wasn’t buying his answer. Something was off. He was looking out the window and I could see more tears welling up. I thought to myself, “What the heck was weighing on this boy’s mind?”

At this point, I knew that T wasn’t being honest with me; something was eating at him in a big way. I’ve known the kid since he was 6, a bonus mom knows her (step) son. We placed the order and made our way through the drive-thru and headed for home. As we left the parking lot, my gut started to knot up and my mind was racing. Again, I asked T if there was something that was upsetting him.

To my surprise, this time he answered me. He said ‘it wasn’t his place to be involved but that maybe I need to have a conversation with C’. I asked him to elaborate on what he meant by that. He just repeated, “I think you and Dad need to talk.” I explained to him that we had talked earlier that afternoon and that I was going to continue to pray for him to find clarity. T started to cry. That car ride home was the longest 5 minutes of my life.

Let me just preface that T has a heart of gold. A Christian boy to the depths of his soul. One that does not believe in divorce and certainly not adultery. He is fiercely against both of these things. I am not sure what possessed me to start rapid firing questions at him once he began to cry, but something inside my head just clicked and I blurted out….”Do you know something you are not telling me? Is there someone else? Is your Dad having an affair?” My heart was racing so damn fast as I waited for him to speak. In my heart, I knew what he was about to say to me, but was really hoping I was wrong.

After a few moments of painful silence, he said to me, “M, I don’t want to be in the middle of this, but I think you need to ask Dad that question. You two need to talk. I’ve already said too much.” With those words I knew. His demeanor had changed, it was almost as if he was now carrying the guilt of his father’s shitty decisions, and how they were about to destroy me. I asked him what he knew, point blank. I told him to stop dancing around the question at hand and to please just be honest with me.

As he continued to cry and with the utmost look of embarrassment for what his father had been doing, he began to share with me what he had accidentally discovered the day prior. It was by no fault of his own that he had found what he did. T was in his bedroom and decided he wanted to watch a movie on his dad’s laptop. And so, innocently enough, he opened the Macbook, which, I might add had zero password protection or security of any measure. ROOKIE mistake there you idiot, come on dude!! How dumb are you? He was not being cautious or covering any of his trails, he was bound to get caught. And there is a part of me that actually thinks that he wanted to be caught.

For those of you who may not know it, Apple has this handy little feature that allows you the option to seamlessly sync your iMessages across all of your devices so you can easily pick back up on any conversation no matter which device is nearest to you. By default, this feature is turned on automatically for all devices and you have to manually disable it within iCloud settings. I am not sure if C is aware of this, or if he was just plain careless. Regardless of how this SNAFU came to be, this is how T discovered the extensively pornographic iMessage exchanges between C and his 30 year old whore at work.

Upon pulling into the driveway I did not say a word. I did not grab my drink nor the bag of food or even my purse. My heart was racing so insanely fast and my stomach was knotting. I barely put my car into park, turned it off and made an immediate beeline for the laptop that was in T’s room. I walked in, grabbed it and walked across the house to the master bedroom where I shut and locked the door behind me.

As I sat down on the bed and opened the laptop, I was immediately overwhelmed with a 2-month history of very explicit nudes (from both of them), over-the-top love bombing proclamations, masturbation videos, and the plans they were laying out for the future together. They were sending each other links for houses that C should buy, and how they were so happy that they had found each other. I was instantly sick to my stomach. I set down the laptop and ran to the bathroom to throw up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My whole world had essentially imploded. It was right there in plain sight. The most recent (of many) dick pics sent to his work slut. What in the actual FUCK!!??

The man (and I use that term loosely) that I had spent the last 12 year building my life with and also the same man who said that he would NEVER EVER cheat in a million years, had in fact been having an affair for almost 2 fucking months! I scrolled back to the top. The messages started on May 8th. The significance in that date, is that it is my fucking birthday (!!) I still can’t wrap my head around the complete recklessness of his behavior. The night that he “couldn’t get off work” for my birthday was in fact a blatent lie, he was actually texting her nonstop as they worked the same night shift together. Classy move you selfish asshole!

As I scrolled back and read through the entire conversation from start to finish I had the unfortunate opportunity to see all parts of the 30 year old busted girl with giant saggy tits and nipples the size of dinner plates. Now, let me also preface that I am not catty in the slightest bit, and truly do appreciate the woman’s body for all it’s beauty. But, if C was gonna cheat on me, couldn’t he have at least made sure that she was even somewhat attractive? Come on man!!! What in the Actual Fuck??!!

As I continued to get sick and scroll through that conversation in it’s entirety, I had the ‘joy’ (barf) of seeing ALL parts of her anatomy from head to toe, and EVERYWHERE in between. I must say, capturing a photo of one’s asshole from that impressive angle must have taken some very thoughtout camera placement with multiple takes. Probably the ONLY thing that I will EVER give her credit for. The two things that I was most disturbed by in this entire situation are that she is a mother (and I also use that term loosely) to a 1 year old baby girl, and that she nonchalantly referred to his “wife” as if second nature like it was the running joke between the two of them.

I also discovered that I had clearly been the brunt of many inside jokes and topics of conversations. From him texting her while sitting on the couch next to me watching a movie. And how I was so stupid to not realize what he was doing, and how busted he would be if I was to find his phone. Well dickhead, that’s called trust and it is what every marriage should (in theory) be built on. I guess our marriage and vows weren’t build on that though, so that must make it okay. I do remember that movie night and did notice him being on his phone quite a bit, more so than usual. I thought nothing of it because he was always texting with the guys in their group chat, and I had no reason to suspect that his texts weren’t anything but that. In hindsight, I feel like such a fucking idiot. He did it right under my nose and I was entirely too trustworthy to suspect a thing.

I spent the next hour on the bathroom floor pining over every word in their chat history. It was both devastating and heartbreaking. They were looking at houses together, they were dropping the L word daily, they were sending nudes like it was their job (and probably while on the job), they were planning meet ups at dirty hotels every weekend so they could fuck all night, they were meeting before/after work so they could hook up, they were sending selfies back/forth all day everyday, they had synched up their night shifts at work. They were totally and completely infatuated with each other and I continued to get sick every few minutes as I read through it all.

As I sat on the bathroom floor crying harder than I had ever cried before, I couldn’t catch my breath. I was essentially crying to the point of nearly hyperventilating. I was trying to process how in the fuck my somewhat ordinary day had taken such a dramatic life changing turn, and furthermore how in the hell the last 12 years of my life had been taken from me by some home wrecking whore that walked by his desk at work. June 20, 2024 would essentially become known as “the night of implosion” for our marriage and our vows, and everything that I had known was gone in the blink of an eye.