Thank You For Leaving Me.

“It was Valentine’s Day.

I had just found out that my husband of ten years had purchased a gift for another woman.

All day, I was numb.  Surreally, I drifted through my day with heaviness in my heart.  I hung onto denial like it was my last friend in the world.  I couldn’t bear the though of my world disintegrating.  It just couldn’t be.  He wouldn’t do that.  There had to be an explanation.

With a strange kind of calm that only complete shock can produce, I asked him about it when he came home.  His convincing denials and the sincere look on his face almost had me believing him.  For a flash, I thought I had manufactured this deception in my head.  If I did not have tangible, physical proof in my hands to the contrary, I would have believed him.

The look of innocence on his face was familiar.  I was shocked at how believable he appeared and wondered how many times in the past I had fallen for his lies.  Clearly, I had just not wanted to see the truth.

After he had exhausted denial and he realised that there was no escape from the truth, he admitted purchasing the gift for the woman who had haunted our marriage for years.

Over the years I would question him on things that didn’t feel quite right about his relationship with her and he would look at me as if I was losing myself in an overactive imagination…

Now with his admission, relief came from knowing that I wasn’t going crazy.  There had been something behind my suspicions these past three years after all.

Even though the truth was glaring, I couldn’t believe that my marriage was over.  I asked him…no, I begged him, in desperation, for us to get marriage counseling, attend couple’s courses or anything else to “save the marriage.”

In a very evenly keeled tone, he told me he was done.  He had already spoken to a friend and would be moving in with him.  My voice rang shrill inside my frantic mind…YOU HAD A PLAN?  YOU WERE GOING TO LEAVE ME?

Surprisingly, there was no yelling nor was there any drama.  Lord knows we had done enough of that during the marriage…

It was like I was watching a movie in slow motion.  I felt like I had been given an anaesthetic and was witnessing everything, but I wasn’t really a part of it.

I was poised and strong.  The beginning of an act I would play for a long time.

A lot had changed in an hour.”

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Taken from Farhana Dhalla’s book “Thank You For Leaving Me – Finding Divinity in Divorce“