Page 2 of Serendipity

Maybe that doesn’t bother his new girlfriend. That he was still having sex with me, I mean, while also having sex with her.

Maybe she’s more understanding and believes what he told me. That men aren’t meant to have just one partner. They have too many sexual needs that can’t be satisfied with just one person.

When he told me he’d stay married if I let him keep his girlfriend, and maybe even bring her into our bedroom as well, I flipped out.

That was my bad, apparently.

I shouldn’t have thought that was weird.

I should have been honored that he wanted us both.

All those statements made me roll my eyes and want to shake some sense into him.

He underestimated me.

I gladly kicked him to the curb, though I wanted to kick him somewhere else first.

The kids were the casualty.

They heard everything.

Our oldest, Corbin Rae, was home from her sophomore year of college. She was taking the other three out to lunch. Cash forgot his phone at home, so they came back. When he heard us arguing, he ran out to the car and got the rest of them inside.

They saw when I threw a lamp at his head.

They heard him call me fat and boring.

They heard him ask me for an open marriage and to have a threesome with his girlfriend.

They heard him say hateful words that didn’t just sting, they wounded.

And when Brett was done slinging his hate, behaving like a man I’d never met, Cash told him to get the fuck out of the house.

I didn’t scold him for using the f-word. I was too surprised. Not just by Cash’s anger or his word choice, but at what just happened. Our other two, Brock and Boone, stood shell-shocked, holding onto Corbin Rae as she cried. Cash, who’s set to graduate high school in two months, and Boone and Brock are a junior and sophomore, respectively. Teenagers who shouldn’t be witness to their parents fighting so violently or spewing words of hate the way we did. They’re old enough to understand life, but young enough to be wounded by it.

But here in my bed that I once shared with my husband, I can remember every single minute of that day six months ago. The anger, sadness, fury.

It was a heartbreaking day. Not just for me, but for our children.

They haven’t spoken to him but for a few minutes in those six months. Six months since he walked out of the house with only a duffel bag. I briefly wondered why he didn’t take all his clothes but then realized it was because he had a whole life set up already with the other woman.

Standing from my bed, I strip off the bedding, ball it up and march out to the garage and stuff it in the garbage can. Then I return for the comforter and the pillows. For the next hour, I remove every trace of Brett from our – no, my – bedroom. Pathetic that it took me this long to do this, but grief and heartbreak had overwhelmed me. I couldn’t take this step. Not until the papers were signed. Papers that I never imagined I would ever sign, but I did with tears streaming down my face. Divorced from a man I devoted my entire adult life to. Forty-five years old and for the first time in those years, I have the promise of a clean slate. A do-over.

Our garbage can is overflowing by the time I’m done.

When I walk back into my room, I look at it with fresh eyes.

For the first time in six months, I feel like I can breathe. I scan the room, almost giddy with excitement and the chance to start over. Brett may have wounded me six months ago, but he didn’t break me. I’m determined to come back stronger and more confident.

“New mattress,” I say out loud to myself with a nod. “New bedroom furniture. Maybe a whole new house if the kids agree.”

Time to make it mine. Not just my bedroom or my home, but my life.

Time to show my children that we can stumble along the way but even when our world turns topsy-turvy, we still have the chance to recover.

But we never just lie down and let the world kick us in the ass.

We fight for our life and the life that we deserve.

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