Dreaming

I had a dream earlier this week about Nick. In my dream, I was trying to steal Amber's journal (Amber is the woman he cheated on me with). I snuck into their apartment and calmed down a big German shepherd who was guarding their place. I opened her dresser drawer and found dozens and dozens of journals. I was elated and a bit overwhelmed by my find. I tried to locate the journal she kept during 2003-2004 when the affair happened. I was skimming through her journals when I started panicking. The journals started fumbling out of my hands onto the floor. I grabbed one at random, stuffed the rest back into the drawer and left immediately.

I was just down the hallway of their apartment building when I heard them coming up the stairs. I hid behind a bend in the hall and watched them go into their apartment. I opened the journal to see what she'd written. To try and understand what was going on in her head when she pursued Nick and/or responded to his advances in those months preceding my discovery of their affair. I opened the journal and must of opened my eyes too. I was suddenly in my bed, awake, with a yearning to go back to sleep and discover the juicy secrets that lay in the red spiral bound notebook I'd stolen.

I want to know. I want to know what preceded the adultery, the deceit and eventual demise of my marriage. I know I am in a much better place now, but my subconscious still wonders. It wonders what I did, what he did and what she did. The only one who probably knows the whole truth is Butters and he just won't talk. I find myself searching for answers on the internet - maybe they have a blog, maybe a facebook or myspace account. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I look. I wonder. I wonder how they can move on in the face of what they've done, of who they are, of who they've hurt.

I know they deserve each other and yet my heart yearns for some kind of sentiment that they know that.

I had another dream, years ago now, about them. It was very soon after I found out about their affair. Again, I was sneaking into their apartment - I think I was hiding in the closet, wanting to see with my own eyes that it was real. To believe they truly were together. Nick, at the time, pretended that he was leaving me only because he didn’t want to be married anymore. I knew it was partly that and partly because he had this other girl in his pocket. I spent a few solid months working to expose this, which I eventually did. In my dream, I watched them interact from the slats in a hall closet. They didn't do anything spectacular. Again, there was a dog. He exposed my hiding place and Nick ordered me to leave.

When I woke I realized that I was now on the outside of their relationship. It was one giant step in recognizing that my marriage was over. It wasn't all about me and Nick anymore -- I was the third wheel; I really wasn't wanted anymore and I had no power to change that.

I think the dream I had this week is another step towards acceptance. It is acknowledging the yearning I have to see that they are unhappy and recognize what they did was wrong and hurtful. Even though I know these are not things I should be seeking, it's been damn hard to satiate the desire for them.

I stopped writing this blog because either Nick, Amber or a Nick supporter wrote a few disparaging comments on a blog entry I wrote a few years back. I became aware that unfriendly eyes read this stuff too. I also feel like people have this expectation, now that I'm married, that my divorce and the pain of it all dissipated into the atmosphere with my new husband. Or maybe I have that expectation of myself. Having your face ground into dog shit and then getting handed an ice-cream cone, doesn't change the fact that your face was ground into dog shit. There is residual pain that will continue to haunt me -- exposing it and sharing it diminishes its affect. Hiding it and pretending like everything is wonderful now that I am married does not. I accept that mean people read what I write too and I choose to let that go. I want to be honest here.

I am in counseling now. Not because of what Nick did to me - but because I have a hard time trusting people with my real self. The leadership team at Core Life Church suggested that I start it this summer. They’ve seen me running in circles, getting lost, getting angry - getting hurt. Angry at myself for letting it all spiral out of control, angry at myself for not reigning it in and accepting Tre's good and true love as a solvent for my frustrations. I’m angry at God for not being that healing balm that's promised in scripture and also at myself for not accepting that healing balm that's promised in scripture.

I need a place to share my life without a façade; a place to share my true self. This blog started out that way and it can be that way again. Come as you are -- broken, weary from the winding roads that brought you here; courageous and unafraid to expose things as they are and to deal with them in real time. I want that. I want to stop pretending.