I know that you really don’t get where I am going with this. I am sure that knowing me, as you think you do, well you must think it is all a bunch of something out of nothing. After all, I am a respectable person, a mother and a career woman. I am sure you trust me implicitly. Bear with me, it’s hard to explain and I feel ill with the last few days of being stressed and trying to cover it up. You will have also noticed that I cannot stop crying. You will understand it when I have told you everything, not that I want your sympathy. I don’t deserve any sympathy.
The thing is, well, there are things that you need to know about me! I have told you about a friend I used to know before he moved away, Ian. Well you see, what I have never told anyone, oh God! How do I explain this?
Take a seat and I will start from the beginning:
Ian and I were very best friends, we basically grew up together. Well not from tiny, but the years that matter, the ones that really shape your life and decide who you are and where you are going. We were like brother and sister in many ways. We were always at each other’s houses; honestly from the day we met we were inseparable. To be honest I think our parents liked to keep us close as they didn’t want our friendship to progress in to anything other than what it was. He was three and a half years older than me, which is NOTHING, except for, it is when you are a 14 year old girl and you are always hanging around with a stunning guy of 17. My Dad really hated our friendship but any attempt to keep us apart failed miserably, so they took the line of ‘friends close enemies closer’ I think, and that was it, he became another member of our household.
We were completely obsessed with each other. My friends thought this was the height of amazing. Ian was gorgeous you see. They were all madly in love with this stunning boy come man. He was 5ft 11” tall, thin, but actually developing quite a muscular frame, he had the ‘classic’ pretty boy features that made us girls swoon, blazing green eyes and thick dark brown hair. It wasn’t lost on me how stunning he was, but I didn’t fancy him. I am less sure what he saw in me, and trust me, his friends were far less enthusiastic about my constant presence, but Ian made it clear that we came as a package, and he was so popular that no one dared argue with him. So his friends had to grudgingly accept this very young, and looks her age girl in to their group. I was a tiny 5ft, size 6, flat chested, slip of nothing! Not out and out ugly, but nowhere near good looking. I had dull mousey brown hair, dull brown eyes and freckles. I was not hot! I think he liked that I was funny, and I know that he enjoyed playing the ‘big brother’ to me and well who was I to object?!
We met on a funny old day. It was in the summer holidays. My Mum was trying to clean the house and sent me out to play; basically I was shoved out of the door after my early lunch and ordered not to return until dinner time. She did that all of the time in the holidays and on weekends my Mum. Rain or shine my Brother and I were shoved out of the door and told not to come home before dinner time. So we were left trying to occupy ourselves while trying not to be seen together. Trevor and I were never close, even at that age.
I didn’t have many friends at that point in my life. I knocked for my best friend Lucy and she was away at her Nan’s. Rebecca was on holiday so I didn’t even bother knocking at hers. Louis, who wasn’t my friend but who I fancied like mad wasn’t playing basketball so I didn’t stay and watch the boys for long. I went to the park for a bit but it was packed and I got bored of having to queue for ages in order to play on something for two seconds before someone else’s Mum or Dad had a go at me to give someone else a turn (namely their own child). I was so hot and bothered at that point so I sloped off towards the woods. I figured that it would be cooler there and a lot less crowded than the park. My Mum would have blown her top at me if she had of known where I went that day; we were always warned not to go to the woods on our own. Sometimes things had happened in the woods, I wasn’t sure what exactly because mum never actually said, but I was peed off with my Mum, so I went anyway.
I was right about the woods by the way. They were cool, calm and quiet. As soon as I walked in to the woods I felt the cool air lick around my overly hot skin, and listened to the birds singing with the cool breeze blowing; an air of calm washed over me. It was blissful. I spent ages exploring that afternoon, I was fascinated at looking at plants, flowers and creatures that I hadn’t really seen before and felt totally at peace. I came across a tree that had fallen in one of the storms we had had in the winter, so I sat down on it for a rest.
I wasn’t sure of the time but I started to feel a little hungry and thirsty as I sat on the tree. I was just wishing that I had of worn my watch when I heard someone coming through the bushes. I wasn’t scared at all, just sat on the fallen tree and watched him slowly work his way through the growth, and appear on the path blinking as he made it in to the bright light. It took a minute for him to spot me sitting on the branch. Now ordinarily I had always been a pretty shy child. Hence the fact that I wasn’t exactly surrounded by hordes of adoring peers. It was quite common for people to forget I was in the room at a party and teachers complained about me not joining in with class debates, but yet when this complete stranger appeared on the path that day, blinking like Bambi, I found myself laughing and crying out “He can see! Bless you Lord he can see” in my best ‘wild west’ accent. Ian roared with laughter and bleated about how dark it was in the woods. He strode over to me, plonked himself down on the branch as he threw his bag on to the floor and then promptly gave me a massive lecture about being in the woods on my own! Apparently a girl had been assaulted by an old man in the woods the year before and Ian informed me that he had never been caught so it was apparently only a matter of time before he would strike again. I wondered why Mum hadn’t just told me that, I might have listened to her if she had told me that. I explained to Ian why I was there, he agreed that the parents in the park had taken the pee out of me and told me that they wouldn’t have dared do that if my Mum had of been with me. It turned out that it was only three o’clock, so I had at least three hours before I could go home.
Ian told me that he had been at football training but sloped off from his friends in to the woods to escape the heat, apparently it was 32°c and being English we weren’t used to the heat. He said that he had regretted going off when he went too far in and got lost so he was very glad to see me, and more than happy to share his food and drink with me in exchange for me to show him the way out again. We ate, drank, chatted and laughed for hours. It was 8pm by the time I got home. Mum was less than impressed with my time keeping that night. I ate my cold dinner quite happily though; it had been such a wonderful day. Both of my parents were even less impressed when Ian knocked on the door for me the next day, and the next. I honestly don’t know what it was, but we were firm friends from that day on.
I realise that I am making this sound a little like a romance, it wasn’t like that at all, and we both went out with other people. Ian had a ‘string’ of girlfriends on account of the fact that he was very good looking and generally lovely. He went for the really good looking girls who were out to have a laugh and who were a little loose morally. I was always really intimidated by his girlfriends; they were all so pretty and had the type of feminine curves that I would have killed for. I always felt like such an ugly stick when stood next to them. They never lasted long though, he bored easily it seemed. They lasted a lot less long if they were dumb enough to be mean to me. I MUST have been a hugely irritating feature in their relationship. The smarter girls went out of their way to befriend me, they would treat me as though I were his kids sister, take me shopping, buy me sweets and generally try to work out how to ‘fit me in’ while keeping me out of the way of their man as much as possible. It didn’t matter how they played it, they were gone long before the cheap perfume they had bought me was finished.
I didn’t date until I was 15. Louis Smith. I was mad about him for two years before he paid any interest in me. Looking back now I actually think it was all the talk about me that finally made him look in my direction. You see as soon as I returned to school after the holidays I basically became a kind of celebrity. Girls who wanted to go out with Ian basically fawned over me, trying to win favour, even those in the 6th form fought for my attention in the hopes that they would get in Ian’s good books. Younger girls, and girls who had failed to get with or stay with Ian hated me, and kept bitching about me and spreading rumours, and it was the same with the guys, some were curious about me and kind of ‘hit’ on me in case it turned out that there was something great about me that they were missing out on, while others were suspicious and spread rumours about me being a tart. Ian got in more than one fight with boys at my school for saying that I had had sex with them when in fact I really hadn’t slept with anyone. So the long and short of it was that, not only did Louis finally look in my direction, but we were together within weeks. I have to admit that I loved the attention, even though quite a lot of it was very negative, but for years I had been overlooked and ignored, so to finally be the centre of attention was fantastic to me. Everyone knew my name, and I once caught Trevor bragging that I was his sister, so you know, it felt really good. I felt like I was finally someone, like I was alive.
If Louis thought that ‘getting’ with me would help catapult him in to Ian’s circle, and believe me they were the most popular guys in the neighbourhood so that probably was the hope, then he was wildly mistaken. Ian hated him. I quickly learnt not to tell Ian if Louis and I had an argument after the second time Louis was ‘jumped’ by a group of boys he didn’t know after school and was beaten up. I was smart enough to realise that both times that this had happened they had been preceded by my telling Ian that he had argued with me or been mean to me. Louis turned out to be a pretty rubbish boyfriend. He loved to put me down and make me feel insecure about myself. He would hint that I was a bit ugly, fat, boring or whatever, which I really was, well apart from fat. He tried to paint the picture that I was very lucky to have him. He flirted with other girls all of the time and rumours were rife that he did way more than just flirt with quite a number. But I just couldn’t just walk away from him, even though he was a massive disappointment. I had wanted him so much, for such a long time. It was too hard to just walk away from him, and to be honest I didn’t want to make people think that they were right when they said it wouldn’t last, which by the way everyone did say that. So I did my very best to keep Louis and Ian apart as far as possible because every time they were in a room together for more than 10 seconds Ian would end up losing his cool and there would be a massive bust up. It was massively stressful but to be honest, secretly I think that being the teenagers that we were, we actually quite liked the drama!
When I was 16 I found out that I was pregnant. I took the test in the school toilets. I was in such a state when those lines showed up proving beyond the shadow of doubt that I was knocked up! I cried through third period, over my lack of a period, and then snuck out of school at lunch break. I walked to the college that Ian attended but I couldn’t find him. It was the longest afternoon of my life as I sat outside of that college waiting for Ian’s day to finish. As soon as he spotted me he knew that something was wrong. He took me to the Cafe. I can still picture his face when I told him my news. As the child I was then I couldn’t name the way he felt, I can now. He was crushed. He still managed to cuddle me and tell me that everything would be o.k. He was the only person to do that by the way, the only person I knew to offer me any comfort or reassurance.
Ian’s Mum demanded to know if the baby was his, and was relieved when I was able to assure her that there was no possible way that it was. My family asked the same question, but were less thrilled with the answer, especially when Louis denied ever having had sex with me and insisted that the baby could not be his. His Mother gave him her full backing, which was gutting as she herself was a single mother, so she should have had sympathy for me and my child’s situation. They moved away before my son was born, so my poor Levi has never seen his father. Ian did tell me to lie, tell everyone that the baby was in fact his but I refused. I didn’t want my poor baby to grow up believing that Ian was his Dad when I knew better.
Is that where you think I am going with this? That Ian is his Dad after all? That isn’t the case. You have no idea how many times while I was pregnant and in my Son’s first few months that I wished and wished that Ian was his father. I would never have allowed my son to grow up father-less for nothing. Especially as I know for a fact that Ian would have been a wonderful dad. He would have given us both a great life. I haven’t mentioned it until this point, but you do need to know that Ian’s family were filthy rich. In his own right now, at this moment in time, Ian is a millionaire. It had no relevance to me as a child, but it is relevant to what I need to tell you so I have to mention it to you now. Not only was Ian filthy rich, (even as a child he always had more cash than he knew what to do with thanks to his father’s generous allowance, and later the highly paid job in his father’s luxury car selling firm), but he was generous beyond words.
Life got really hard for me when my son was born as I am sure you can imagine. I sat my exams pregnant. I got fantastic grades, but college wasn’t an option at that point. My parents barely spoke to me, unless it was to chastise me over and over again for being so stupid, for throwing my life away and for bringing shame on the family. I was sent to live in a council flat on the worst estate in the area straight from the maternity ward as my parents refused to allow me to live in their house with a child. Well, to be honest it was my Dad who was demanding that I move out and ‘lie’ in the bed I had made! I am sure that my Mother would have allowed us to stay if it had been up to her. She did like having a baby to fuss over. I really wished she would fuss over me instead but I had disappointed her greatly and she let it show.
Ian was a life saver, Mum did help with a few essentials but Ian actually took me out and bought so much for the flat. He threw out the second hand cooker and fridge my parents had allowed me and bought brand new ones. My parents were so angry that I allowed him to waste their money but it wasn’t like he gave me a choice. He just strode in to my home and took it over, just like he strode in to my life and took it over in the first place! Dad expected me to wash our clothes by hand but Ian surprised me with a brand new washing machine and he even bought me a TV!
Sorry it always makes me cry when I remember him turning up with that huge bloody thing! He had two friends lugging it while he carried the video player (yes it was videos all the way back then) and the ariel. It was three weeks before Christmas and he was wearing a Santa hat! That was for Levi’s benefit no doubt but he was sound asleep when they arrived. I laughed and cried for ages on the doorstep at the sight of him and his wares.
I couldn’t even find the words to thank him. That was always my problem when faced with Ian’s generosity or loving nature, I could never find the words and I always felt so unworthy of his kindness and friendship. His friends basically shoved past me grumbling about wanting tea and being knackered! That still has to be one of the happiest days of my life to date. We ordered Chinese food; Ian wouldn’t even let me pay even though he had done so much for me. His friends drifted off once they had stuffed their faces and Ian and I stayed up watching the films he had also bought me on my tatty second hand sofa until we both fell asleep on it. We held each other tightly all night. We didn’t take it any further but that was the happiest night of my life and that was the first night that I felt truly safe in that flat. Nothing and no one could harm me as long as I had Ian’s strong arms wrapped tightly around me.
If I am honest with you, I really fell in love with Ian that night. I didn’t know it at the time. Despite my relationship with Louis I had never been in love. I just had this mad, crazy ‘feeling’, and I won’t lie, it petrified me. It especially scared me because that was the night that I realised that Ian was in love with me, he always had been. Finally I could see what the rest of the world could see, which made me feel pretty stupid to be honest. But I worked very, very hard at ignoring it. Louis had hurt me beyond belief, and well you can kind of see that my family hadn’t been the best and most loving environment in the world. Not that my parents were cruel or evil. They were just, well; they just weren’t the most affectionate people in the world. I know how stupid it sounds but I had this irrational idea that if Ian and I got together it wouldn’t work out between us. Then I reasoned that I would lose him from my life altogether, so it made more sense to keep things as they were and just pray that we would at least have our friendship forever.
As a woman now I feel so much shame realising how much it must have hurt that wonderful boy/man, seeing me grow another man’s baby in my body, struggle to survive on my own and continually refuse the many, many lifelines he offered me! How must it have felt to be him?
Sorry. I don’t mean to cry like this again. It’s all I have done for the last few days really, cry and cry. It’s just that he was so bloody lovely to me, and I have just treated him so badly! What must people have said to him about me? They must have thought that I was playing him, using him! They must have warned him off of me and called him an idiot. But it really, really wasn’t like that. You see, I honestly didn’t know how he felt about me until that night, I was 17 then. By that time I was so jaded and scared that I honestly buried my head in the sand. But selfishly, and it is only now as a woman that I understand how selfish it was, but I just couldn’t lose him from my life. So the logic I employed was to pretend that I didn’t know how he felt and to bury my own feelings too. If it makes you feel any better I had to endure the torture of watching him date woman after woman. I did ‘see’ one or two guys myself, but they were all idiots looking to hook up with someone who they thought they had a fair chance of bedding. If I didn’t cotton on and dump them they would sleep with me and then dump me like a hot potato as soon as they were finished with me. So life was just about as shit as it could get for me at that point.
Don’t get me wrong; Levi and I were doing just fine. He was growing up wonderfully and was the major light in my life. Mum loved him and Ian worshiped him. He was blissfully happy and thankfully unaware of just how much of a mess his Mother was making of her life. I was also working as a secretary and was bloody good at my job, so there were some good points.
But honestly, I was so lonely and depressed. Emotionally I was wrung out and hung out to dry by the age of 18. My fear at raising my son on my own and disappointment in how my life was going built up in to a huge wall of hate where Louis was concerned. It grew every time I had to decline an invitation to go out because I had no childcare, and trust me that was often. My friends were always out having fun or throwing parties, it took months and months of me not being able to join them before they stopped asking me. The wall hardened every time my son was sick and I had to nurse him better when I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing. The rage exploded on the afternoon that my son cried because a fat, stupid, ugly, snotty nosed little brat at his school kept teasing him and making him cry because he didn’t have a Daddy! I confronted the fat, ugly, snotty nosed Mother and she basically told me to ‘fuck off’ and pointed out that it was true, Levi didn’t have a Father! I wanted to kill her! Instead I took Levi to the park, and then out for a burger. I tucked him up in bed that night and then downed a bottle of wine and cried, and cried and cried.
Ian turned up late that night in a panic as I had been ignoring my phone all night, you need to realise that we spoke at least five times a day, every day so he instantly knew that something was wrong. I would have ignored my door too but he had a key by that time and just let himself in. He demanded to know what on earth was going on but I didn’t dare tell him. He would have battered that fat cow! So instead I poured out all this other stuff that I didn’t really know I had been feeling. I told him how tired I was, and how boring my life was, how inadequate I felt in every bloody way. I sobbed that I was lonely. That I was sick of working all the hours that God sent, but still being broke at the end of it. I wailed about my frustrations with my weak willed mother. I hated that she wouldn’t stand up for me with my hard hearted father. I shouted and yelled about my hate for my Dad, that he didn’t really bother to see my Son, and that he had thrown me out of the family house and then my hate for Louis. At some point my dad and Louis combined, morphed in to one monster and caused me to hiss and snarl! Then I just sobbed in his arms while he silently stroked my hair and allowed me to just get it all out. That was the second time we fell asleep on that sofa, holding on to each other for dear life, and no, we didn’t have sex. I was in an awful state and Ian wasn’t the sort of scum that would take advantage like that. He was so much more than that.
When I tell you what happened next you are totally going to be able to predict what I have to tell you so I am not going to drag it out too much, you won’t really need too many details. The very next day Ian booked us flights to Florida, we flew two months later, three days after Ian’s 22nd Birthday. He sorted out and paid for our passports, the hotels, flights and everything. Oh my goodness that was the most amazing three weeks of our lives. The beaches were stunning, the food was amazing, and everything was perfect; so perfect that I didn’t ever want to come home again. Yes we visited Disneyland and yes, we were married in Vegas.
I know I have confused you with that news, I can see by the look on your face that you didn’t really see that coming, well neither did I at the time. You didn’t know that I had ever been married? The thing is and the whole point of this is that I have NEVER told a living soul. How so? Well, this is the really shameful part.
We were married in this really tacky chapel, the Elvis impersonator didn’t conduct the ceremony, but he was one of our witnesses. The whole thing was just so stupid; I mean Levi sat on the floor eating a chocolate bar during the ring exchange as I had to put him down! We were there; it was the day before we were due to fly home and we just did it without even thinking about it. Well, I didn’t. It didn’t even feel legal to me; it was more like playing ‘dress up’ than really getting married.
Ian and I did agree to consummate the marriage and so we slept with each other for the first and final time. It was beyond wonderful between us. He was an amazing lover, but afterwards as he slept soundly a huge part of me started to feel like it was very, very wrong. I don’t know how to explain this to you. It is so hard to explain something that you really don’t understand yourself. I don’t know if because of how we were with each other that perhaps it just felt a bit incestuous, or perhaps my previous experience with Louis made me think that it was all going to go wrong and that Ian would change, start being horrible to me or something. I don’t know what exactly it was but I felt like I had ruined everything. It’s no good to me now to know how stupid that was. I wish I had known it then.
Again I don’t know how to explain to you what happened next because I still don’t understand what happened next even 15 years later, so please don’t ask. You see on the flight home Ian said that he was so excited to tell everyone the news, and that he wanted to buy us a home and that I could quit my job if I liked! He told me that he hoped that we would have a baby soon. Me? I bloody freaked out! I begged him not to say anything, made him swear on my life that he would never tell a soul. I practically ran back to my flat, I buried my head in the sand and I cut off all contact between us! That was agony because Levi was always asking for him. Ian was patient at first, he honestly thought that I would calm down and we would end up together. He was such a positive person who always believed that things would work out in the end.
Then I met Josh and threw myself at him. I was pregnant within six months of dating him. You know how rotten Josh was to me. He hit me, cheated on me and generally treated me like crap. Don’t ask me how on earth I chose him over Ian, I have no idea. I was six months pregnant with mine and Josh’s daughter the last time I saw Ian. I was walking back from dropping Levi at nursery. I had the day off from work so I walked home and Ian was standing outside the block. Josh was at home sleeping so my heart was in my throat when I saw Ian standing there. I explained that he couldn’t come in so we went for a walk. He told me that he was leaving, moving to America, and that he wouldn’t be back. I didn’t believe him! I thought it was a trick. I honestly believed that he was trying to force me to take action, beg for him not to go. I couldn’t do that and honestly I didn’t think he would leave me alone even though he was so cold to me. It was so strange seeing him look at me with disgust; I was much more used to that from my parents than I was from Ian, as he had never done it before. He wasn’t exactly nice to me either by the way. He named called, he said that I had used him; he berated me for bringing a man who hit me in to my life and in to Levi’s life. He told me that I deserved everything I got from then on and truthfully he looked at my growing stomach with pure hate. He was right of course, I did deserve all the crap I was getting and all that which was still to come. I didn’t argue with this angry man who was filled with so much hate for me. My tears of shame were silent and I stared at the floor a lot. Then he was gone.
Josh was mad as hell when I turned up later that day having picked Levi up from school. I had stayed out all day, thinking and crying. I hated myself for what I had done to Ian, Levi and to myself.
Josh and I broke up before Anya’s first Birthday. I finally got the nerve to end our relationship when one of the women he had been cheating on me with called me to tell me that she was pregnant. I wasn’t heart broken or even upset for myself if you want me to be honest, I was glad to be shot of him. He went to live with her for a bit, but she threw him out when he hit her. Apparently she wasn’t the type of pushover he had become accustomed to through me. I did envy her for that. He saw the kids on and off for a few years, but when I endlessly refused to sleep with him he just lost interest and stopped coming at all. Anya has never met her half sister, so thanks to me they are doing pretty badly on the family front my poor kids. It was sad for them when he stopped showing up for visits but to be honest even the kids were glad when they didn’t have to put up with him and his awful temper even though they missed him in some ways. Not that he ever touched them. I wasn’t as weak as my Mother. I stuck up for my kids no end. They have no cause to doubt my love for them, I love them with passion and everyone knows it!
But that is the reason why I haven’t dated since Josh. Do you understand it now? I couldn’t keep allowing my kids to see a procession of men parading through the house, and the men I chose were about as awful as you could get, Ian excluded of course. I started therapy a couple of years ago after watching a documentary about women who can’t allow themselves to love; I thought that perhaps it might help me sort my issues out. If it is working then it is slow progress, but there again I haven’t even told my therapist about Ian yet. Perhaps I should. Perhaps it would help.
You know something though; it has just this second occurred to me that when Josh and I registered Anya’s Birth I never declared that I was married. I think I sort of forgot as I had pushed it so far out of my mind, I would have been too scared to tell Josh anyway, he would have battered me! Is that legal? What does that mean? I honestly haven’t thought about it before. I just got on with life and pushed that day far away from my life as I know it now. Oh my God! Will I go to prison?
What brought this all up? Why am I telling you this? Well, Ian is back. He wrote to me. I haven’t moved and it was easy for him to find me. I got a letter last week asking me to meet him today; I have hardly slept since I received it. I recognised his writing immediately so I didn’t even open it until after the kids were in bed sleeping.
I knew why he was writing. I have waited many, many years for that letter to arrive. He wants a divorce. He has finally met someone after 15 years and he wants to marry her! He is offering me a very generous settlement. Of course he could sue me for adultery, I have even told him to. I also offered to see if we could annul the marriage, after all we have never lived together as man and wife and I don’t deserve anything from him. He won’t agree to that though, in fact he hit the roof when I suggested it to him. He wants me to walk away with something, and in return he wants to walk away with his own pride intact. Obviously he is still kind and generous to a fault. I will give him what he wants no matter what. I will do everything I can to make this as easy for him as possible. I owe him that much at least. We both know that I owe him far more than that, but it is the only thing that I can do for him now. What if I could turn the clock back? Seriously! You need to ask?
I still cried when I read the letter, I still sobbed on seeing the word divorce, and yes, selfishly my heart broke when I read that he wants to get married.
He gave the address of what I thought was his home here in the UK. It turned out to be the address of the house that he bought after we were married, when he still thought my madness would pass and we would be together. Can you believe that he has continued paying the mortgage and even hired a woman to go and clean it once a week? She did a crap job judging by the dust in the house, but I bet she figured that no one ever checked her work and he didn’t warn her that he would be arriving.
The house is lovely by the way. I couldn’t help but stand in the kitchen and wonder what my life would have been like in that house, as Ian’s wife. That has to be the hardest moment of my whole life, standing there, facing all of the ‘what ifs’ in a life that I should have lived but that I threw away. The house has a huge Garden, three bedrooms, a dining room and oh my goodness why am I doing this. I cannot accept it. Neither can I accept the generous settlement he offered me. I realise that he isn’t only offering this to me to be nice. I am stupid I know, but even I can see that he wants me to accept the house and the money, because the thing is, if I do, I have to finally tell my family what we did and then what I did. He wants to finally tell his family too. He has kept our secret all of these years; then again I guess he felt too foolish to admit that he had married the most stupid, ungrateful, disloyal cow on earth! I can’t imagine that he was really looking to brag about it. He left his father’s firm; he left his whole life and the bloody country because of me! It makes me feel sick now to think about that.
Sure he has done really well for himself, as if there was ever any doubt, but I came face to face with the hurt that I caused him today. You could plainly see it in his eyes when we were standing in the house talking. They are still stunningly green, but they were hard and cold when looking at me. I bet he doesn’t look at his fiancé that way. Isn’t it stupid of me to be jealous of her, I mean it, seriously I have a nerve but I hate her for having him. He moved to Florida when he left; it brought a lump to my throat to learn that he moved there.
Sorry to be crying again. Seriously it seems to be about the only thing that I can do right now. It’s just seeing him again, seeing what I did to him, and you know how much I must have hurt him. I keep shaking my head because I am trying to shake it all away again! This is the first time I have really been confronted with what I did. I have never really thought about it. Even in my darkest days I haven’t allowed my brain to go there, to remember him and what we had was too painful, so I just stopped.
So now I have to tell my family and even my children what I did. What a fool I am and how I hurt the most wonderful person in my life, kids excluded. Someone who didn’t deserve to be treated that way at all. I’m not sure how to even do that, where to begin even. How would you do it? What would you tell your parents and your kids? I feel sick even thinking about it, even picturing my Dad’s face makes me want to run away screaming. What do you think my Mum is going to say? I know you think I am stupid, and you are so right-I am. I know that I have to face this thing and deal with the fallout, but that doesn’t make it any easier to do.
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