The Final Cut

Entry 1    10:55 a.m.

Her time is short. The nurse says a few hours to a day.  I am struggling. All the love, all the joy, all the pain, all the suffering and hurt we have endured or inflicted upon one another is now moot. She sleeps, seemingly endlessly, with real eternity just a few breaths away. I am without words. I am without hope. I am screamingly lonely, sad, bereft and bemused. I don't know up from down, or where my center is.

I love Jenny. Our marriage has not been perfect in my estimation, but I didn't know how terribly understated my measure was. I thought Jenny loved me, and I am sure she did in ways that matter. Her own words (nevermind her actions), however, betray any belief that she truly cared for me for a very long time.

And, goddamn it, I have been grieving her loss for 19 months. My only solace in her death is that she won't create any additional record of her intentionally and knowingly hurting me, lying to me, proclaiming her love to someone else, destroying me, all while neglecting our two beautiful daughters.

The new information I have discussed in this journal in the last week would devastate the children, they will never see this journal, never know the truth, the depth of the betrayal. And while I am lost, I will find my way, I will find a new compass, and with my girls hew a new path forward out of this dark thicket of clinging bramble with its sharp thorns and treacherous roots of deceit and deception.

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