I Was The Other Woman

This has been one of the most difficult weeks of my like.  I can think of nothing more painful, other than the loss of my sweet friend Steven.  You see, on Monday I learned that my former boyfriend got married.  Big deal, right?  Well..... by former boyfriend I mean we decided to just be friends SEPTEMBER 10th.  "Get rid of girlfriend" must have been on the pre-wedding checklist, along with order flowers, and get a ring.   I am not sure how he thought this was going to play out.  His attempt to keep this from me consisted of deleting me and everyone we knew in common from his facebook page.  He didn't count on old fashioned word of mouth.  

As his lies unraveled this week, I learned that he has been engaged the entire duration of our relationship-more than a year.  Us planning a life together, him telling me he loved me everyday, making love-it was all just a....what?  Game? This isn't high school anymore....ya, he did the same thing to me then.  He was texting me to arrange a meeting a half hour before he said his vows.  I saw him 4 times after he was married and he never mentioned it and of course his wife had no idea he was with me.  He is a broken man, who has now created two broken women and some very confused children.  What is sad is there is a good man under all of his damage.

I keep getting asked "how could you not know" which really doesn't help the pain and humiliation that I am feeling.  I didnt know because I trusted him then.  In retrospect, yes, I should have seen it, there were tiny signs. Not letting me tag him in photos of us on facebook, an excuse every holiday, me not meeting his family when they came to town,  most of our time together being during the day-he was a master at explaining away everything......yes, I should have seen it. But I didn't, I have joined THAT women's club...against my will.  The story is out now, at least all I want to know.  His pastor knows, his wife knows, his family knows and now he has to be accountable.  

So I have spent this whole week trying to JUST BREATHE....minute by minute.  Trying to ground myself when everything is spinning out of control.  JUST BREATHE.....JUST BREATHE.  I realized that I had been carrying this low level anxiety in my gut for a long time.  My intuition trying to tell me things weren't right-that's gone now.  I suppose one of the lessons from this is to LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN to intuition. TRUST it.  ALWAYS. . 

I don't know what the future holds, its too hard to look in that direction right now.  It's also too hard to look back, so I am practicing just being PRESENT.  "Just this, just this" is my mantra right now.  I am practicing self love/self care as much as possible, drinking too much wine, praying, painting, walking,doing yoga, calling on my spirit guides and my tribe sisters for strength.   Somehow under the weight of all of this I am beginning to feel lighter.  For this moment, I will JUST BREATHE..