You Want It Darker

Entry 1

In 2015, when Leiney first showed signs of depression, our world was rocked. The suffering she was going through was painful to watch and experience. I was just about that age when I went through my first bout of clinical depression, so I could

feel her pain. At the time our kid fell ill, I was struck by how many tools Jenny had in her toolbox to help Leiney. She knew who to call to do intervention. We pulled together as a team to help Leiney, but Jenny, because of her profession and job, knew what to do, and got Leiney the professional services she needed. I remember spending days with Leiney, taking time off work and caring for her, snuggling with her on the couch, and watching television. We watched Deadpool on our big leather couch together--her first R-rated movie. 

What strikes me about these memories is how hard Jenny and I worked as a team. I always was the one who stayed home with Leiney those many days she was too sick to go to school. There was a lot of good stuff going on in the family dynamic, pulling together to help our baby. While we had our rough patches after her refusal to go to California, her subsequent affair and the separation that followed, it felt like things were better between us as we rallied to care for Leiney. Or so I thought. 

I know nothing.  I learned yesterday that Jenny started having the affair with el pinche coincident with Leiney's onset of depression. I know this because I saw her admission about it in writing, thus giving me a ,more accurate timeline, which nonetheless may still be untrue. It may have started even earlier as a mere dalliance, back in 2011 when I was going off to California. That's when she suddenly decided that she

couldn't leave the job she repeatedly professed she hated, overnight it became a career rather than a 
curse. She also began claiming that she made a proviso about where I could work in California--only the northern not southern section of the state. Let's call these two issues what they were, lies, for whatever reason. I was puzzled at the time about her complete switch on both issues. I never suspected an affair, but it has crossed my mind on multiple occasions since the day I discovered she was cheating with el pinchè back in September of 2020.

I am, for whatever reason, devastated by the discovery of her admission. The feeling of betrayal is indescribable--but not as hard as feeling so clueless. The lies. We were married 23 years. She had an affair with Jason that lasted 3-6 months, and an affair with el pinchè that lasted about 8 years if you believe the timeline started in 2015. No wonder she didn't stop when I found out. She had built a life, however fantastic, with this P.E. teacher. I think about all the times she went "over to Jennifer's" or claimed to be working on a Saturday, or hell anything she told me she was doing, and I trusted and believed her.

It's now almost 5 in the morning, I've been up an hour. and I am not sleeping any more. This despite, or perhaps because, of the darkness.

Entry 2 5:33 a.m.

Willow climbed on the bed after I finished the last entry and snuggled with me, a rare occurrence. She has a sixth sense, this dog.

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