And on That Imperfect Day We Threw It All Away

This would never happen if we lived by the sea
-Billy Bragg

The Price I Pay 
Dichotomy. Black and white. Manichean choices. Zero sum game. Life can't be like that in all circumstances, and really should rarely be that way.  For example, there is no iron rule that states if I found out you had been cheating on me for 3.5 years, with all the attendant things that went with it which I have described before. While my life and career have tended to force me to live in the gray, this affair exists in black and white--no double entendre intended. The cancer is the wild card.  Her possible demise from this particularly relentless and cruel cancer makes what should be a definite bright line (at least in my eyes), incredibly fuzzy.

My rule isn't "though shalt not commit adultery." We have been together 30 years.  When I moved to California, that rule was broken first by her--albeit while she admitted it then, she has since denied it.  We separated over it.
Zero Sum Game

Then in mid-May 2012, before Jenny moved down to California in August, but after we agreed to try and reconcile, I met someone and had a fling that ended when the family arrived. We worked through that. We went to therapy for a year. I chalk those bad choices each of us made to the ebb and flow of a marriage stretched to the breaking point.  

In the instant case, this isn't a dalliance or a momentary lapse.  This is so much more than that.  And I am sure I have said that before, but it is eating me alive.  It is still happening. I have to remind myself. It's easy to forget given that she is often sick and sometimes incapacitated.

Today I am thinking about this because the gaslighting continues apace. Recall that she told me recently the affair is over because now that Eric's the pinché motherfucker's wife know's (thanks to me) and thus Jenny can't see him.  Notwithstanding this obstacle, Jenny calls me today, after finishing an errand with her sister, to tell me that she is going to work to see the principal, and oh, maybe Eric the pinché motherfucker, but primarily the principal.  You couldn't pitch that story and expect anyone but a rube to believe it.  Why even say that?  She is going to see her man.

Having vented, I am now putting it in the box with the rest of the detritus from this broken marriage, and am returning to making sure the time the children and I have together with her is not spent in strife, and that she is living a good life.
It is the small things that tend to hurt the most. Several times a day I see her in long discussions with Eric the pinché motherfucker.  On the couch, in the bath, on her bed, she always has her phone in hand.  It is obvious when she is talking to him, as the angle of the phone changes markedly when she realizes I am in line of sight. But it is as constant as tinnitus.  I feel feckless, an angry bull in the arena, stuck with banderillas and no exit. Unfortunately, I am more Ferdinand than Merrill Lynch, when it comes to my bovine nature.
  

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