And They Lived Happily Ever After

He loves me, he says. I'm his baby. Marrying me is such a wonderful thought, he says. Uses phrases like "rebuild our relationship". Empty words. This time it's different for me. Some sins you can't forget. Some sins you can't forgive. I wait for the explosion that will come out of nowhere. The rage, the screaming, the cursing. They always do. I know I will get burned again. I am prepared. This time I know that the world does not revolve around him. This time I know I won't die without him. My heart does not belong to him like it once did. I'm numb and yet at the same time I feel everything magnified by a thousand. I can't explain what I mean.

I almost slept with someone. Slept, how funny to say that when sleeping was the last thing that was going to happen. A revenge fuck? Trying to make it "even"? No. Nothing I can do will ever make it even. I wanted so much to just forget. The fallen hero stopped me. "Where are you? You re meeting someone aren't you? Tell me the truth..where are you and what are you doing there? Think of Baby Jason and Shelby!!" Using the names of the future children we had talked about having. Pulling out the big guns.

Did you think of them when you put an ad up on a fuck site??, I asked.
No.You did not.

He gave me his password to his email accounts as a way I suppose of proving his trustworthiness. See? It's all out in the open. There's nothing else. No other secrets. Stupid not to realize that I would actually look. Discovered he had also put an ad up on yahoo personals for two months last year. We were fighting, he says. Put an ad on Match.com as well. I guess we were fighting then to. Pulling back the layers of our relationship, discovering more lies, more deception.
Discovering that it wasn't real. None of it was real.
Let's not dwell on all that anymore, he says.
I love you, he says.
I laugh.
Is that me? I wonder. Is that bitter laugh coming from me??

Enter stage two. Anger. Not the kind that makes you scream and throw things, but that slow burn anger. Inside of you. Makes your chest feel tight. Try to swallow it down but it wont go away. Try to push it out of your mind, but there it is. It's made it's home in your soul.

Angry. So angry.