To the woman who had an affair with my (now ex) husband while I was pregnant…

It’s been what seems a lifetime ago, but I still vividly remember those days, weeks, months, even years when your name was on the forefront of my mind, the tip of my tongue, at the back of my throat like something I couldn’t swallow.

When I initially found out, for the first time in my life, I wanted to physically harm someone – you. I’m not proud of it, but I imagined in great detail, slapping you across the face. And then close fist punching you on the same cheek that bore my scarlet handprint on it. I would spend hours of my day thoroughly visualizing your delicate features curling up in shock and pain, and it comforted me.

I knew exactly what you looked like, because I had met you only weeks before. It was a company softball game and I’d shown up with my one year old daughter in my jeans that I couldn’t properly zip any longer because I was 3 months pregnant. I remember the jeans in particular because I had to loop a rubber-band through the button-hole to keep them hoisted up on my hips. Even though I didn’t know the nature of your relationship with my husband at the time, I felt a distinct chill when you were introduced to me. Your light eyes calmly scanned me head to toe. You only half-smiled, while your platinum hair glinted in the late summer sun. I thought you were beautiful, truth be told. You were young, single, and well rested. I hadn’t lost all the weight from my first pregnancy, and was already pregnant again. I had permanent, dark half moon circles under each of my eyes, and pasty goldfish crumbs on the side of my leg and shoulders.

I cried the entire hour drive home from that softball game, though I couldn’t figure out why.

Over time, the desire to hit you morphed into the desire to publicly humiliate you. I devised a plan in my mind to arrive at the office where you worked with a bucket-sized serving of 7-11’s red icee. I would calmly walk up to you and dump the entire thing on your head. I’d say something deeply cruel and impactful, and everybody in the office would look at you standing there slack-jawed, dripping in bright red icee. The more intricate and elaborate I formulated the plan, the more comforted I felt.

There was little else I could do. After a great deal of deliberation I had “chosen” what felt like my only option under the circumstances. To stay. This part wasn’t your fault. But I resented you nonetheless.

We went to counseling for a spell, in a desperate attempt to make sense of what had happened and land in a soft place of forgiveness and understanding. We didn’t accomplish either. The counselor was a pastor at the church down the street. We would meet him once a week after hours in the squatty building behind the church that smelled of school cafeteria food and moth balls. One time the counselor told me matter-of-factly that as a “good wife”  I should pay very close attention to the stress level of my husband, lest he find himself in a place where this very thing could potentially happen again. I sat there with what was now an enormous pregnant belly spilling on my lap weeping loudly into one-ply tissue. It sounds pretty pathetic, doesn’t it? It was. I was.

Something shifted then. The anger I’d been fastidiously directing toward you (a woman I hardly knew) dissipated entirely, and redirected itself with laser beam focus solely, exclusively on my husband – where it belonged in the first place. I cultivated this anger into a finely sharpened point. I groomed it, slept beside it, spent entire days engaging with it, until I had honed it into an entity all its own. It became an inextricable piece of me. The ultimate outcome, of course, is that it ate a hole in me so deep and infinite there was nothing I could do to soothe it. For years this hole I’d created would open unexpectedly, and a rage and sorrow so violent and unexpected would emerge, that I would become entirely helpless until it ran its course through my body. It would often happen without provocation or warning. It would happen while I was washing my hair, or making toast; it would happen when I was driving home from the grocery store or preschool; it would occur on special occasions, vacations, and birthdays.

You’d never know it by looking at me. In fact, I’m always surprised and somewhat concerned when I look back at photos from this time and see a woman (me) smiling brightly for the camera as if everything in the world was just as it was supposed to be. There’s a little something off with my eyes though, if you look really closely.

The hole in me wouldn’t go away, even when I wanted it to. I couldn’t starve it away, run it away, drink it away, or be anywhere near perfect enough to fill it. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either.

Years passed. Life went on. And eventually, even my anger faded. At a certain point, I no longer cared if there was an attractive woman who worked in close proximity to my husband. I didn’t need to know where and who and what was going on every business lunch he took. I no longer monitored his stress level or studied his patterns for imminent clues of infidelity. I didn’t care when he went on business trips. In fact, I didn’t care at all. That was a problem in and of itself, as you might imagine.

What I did have after all was said and done, was a gaping eroded gash in my very soul that was sucking anything and everything of value deep into its center and eating it alive. And that needed to change. So for the first time, I started filling myself with things that actually nourished me. Things that made me happy, hopeful, peaceful, and strong. I filled myself with poetry, music, nature, movement, friends, and knowledge.

We were divorced for a multitude of reasons. It was never explicitly about you, or the affair. But it was never not, either.

I hadn’t thought of you for years, but just recently I stumbled upon an old journal from several years ago. In very concise and controlled handwriting, my past self expressed solemnly that I had become a mere shadow of the person I had once been. I admitted in writing that I was confused, depressed, and desperate. I believed I had completely lost the person I had been, and was supposed to be. All this time later it brought hot tears to my eyes to read perhaps the most deflating portion of that entry – that I didn’t want my daughters to get to know me when they got older. Because I wasn’t somebody I felt was worthy of knowing.

I did think of you then. I realized that what happened all those years ago isn’t something I hold onto with any sort of anger or resentment any longer. But it’s an event that has irrevocably shaped me and refined me into the person I am continually becoming. It was the first time my entire world collapsed and I lost everything – even myself. It was the first time I had to figure out how to save myself. And I did.

I am somebody worth knowing.

I heard your name in passing just the other day. I’ll admit, when the all-too-familiar and previously triggering cadence of syllables landed on me, the wound I’ve carefully filled over the years was seismically shifted in my chest. I instinctively put my hand over my heart, waiting, waiting, waiting… Protecting.

But that was it. A big shift, then nothing. No pain. No fury. Just an elongated exhale.

Years ago, after I’d stopped wanting to harm you; after I’d stopped wanting to humiliate you; after I stopped feeling angry toward you; after I stopped feeling anything at all about you… I settled on the knowledge that eventually life would roll over you the way life always does.

I instinctively knew that what you threw out in the world would most assuredly make its way back to you, if it hasn’t already. That, after all, is the poetic beauty and the very elegant nature of the world we live in.

All these years later, I’ve built myself into a woman worth knowing. All these years later, when I think of you, there is something that feels much like gratitude. You, after all, were the catalyst that reshaped the entire course of my life. And, this life is beautiful.