My Discovery Day (D-Day)

As I write this, my hands tremble. I look down at my arms and see goosebumps. My heart is racing. A rush of blood moves up to my head, my body feels hot, and my stomach tightens into a knot. Part of me wants to close my laptop and never publish these words. Part of me does not want to accept that what I am about to share with you is part of my life at all.

I struggle with vulnerability. I always have. Even in my closest relationships, I have found it difficult to let people see me when I am hurting. I have wanted people to see the version of me that is composed, kind, strong, happy, and put together. Sharing this story asks me to do the opposite. It asks me to admit, fully and honestly, that I am not in control, and that life has a way of challenging not only who we believe ourselves to be, but also the versions of ourselves we work so hard to show the world.

As I pull myself together to write this story, I set my pride and ego aside. I am inspired by Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability: that vulnerability is not weakness, but the birthplace of connection, creativity, courage, and authenticity. I did not always understand that. For much of my life, I believed vulnerability was something to hide or manage. But in allowing myself to share the imperfections of my life with you, I feel something I do not expect. I feel space. I feel breath. I feel a kind of emotional freedom.

I remember the details of that night with so much clarity. Every sound. Every smell. The lighting in the room. Where I was sitting. Where my husband was sitting. Where our dogs and cats were sleeping. When I close my eyes, I can transport myself back to that moment instantly. You would think I have a photographic memory. I don’t, but for that night, I do.

It was around 9:30 in the evening, and it was pouring rain outside. We had the windows and doors open in the bedroom to let in the fresh air and the smell of the rain. Petrichor. The scent that rises from the earth after a storm. It’s my favorite smell.

The electricity had gone out, so we had candles lit in the bedroom. My husband and I were sitting side by side, upright in bed against the wall. We do not have a headboard. We were talking about a couples therapy session we had earlier that week, and it was the most real conversation we had had in a while.

We had started couples therapy a month earlier because we were drifting further away from one another each day, and I could no longer ignore the pain I felt from that distance. I had tried to ignore it for a while, partly to keep the peace and partly because I hoped that if I waited long enough, it might pass. But it did not pass.

Something felt off in a way I could not fully explain, except by instinct. I felt it in the way he looked at me, and in the way he avoided looking at me. I felt it in the way he touched me, and in the ways he no longer did. His body seemed to close when I tried to talk about us. I missed my husband, and I wanted us to find our way back to each other, so I asked him to go to therapy with me, and he agreed.

As we continued talking that night, something shifted. His demeanor changed. He began to cry.

“I have to tell you something,” he said, his voice cracking.

He looked down. He would not look at me. His face was buried in his hands. I moved from where I was sitting and sat in front of him. I put my hand on his leg. I touched his hair.

“Okay,” I told him. “You can tell me.”

I remember feeling terrified. A thousand possibilities crossed my mind.

“I cheated on you,” he said.

I immediately stood up.

My body reacted before my mind could make sense of what I had heard. I was spinning. My heart pounded. I was dizzy. My stomach sank. I felt nauseous enough to vomit.

“What? When? How long? With who?” I asked. I wanted to know everything.

We had been married for only a year and a half. We were building a house together. We were planning to have children. In a matter of seconds, after he spoke those words to me, the future I thought I was going to have, no longer felt possible. I was heartbroken. I was devastated.

What followed was the most painful period of my life thus far.

The affair had happened in the months leading up to our wedding and continued for some time after. I knew who she was. She worked with my husband and had even RSVP’d yes to our wedding before ultimately canceling on short notice.

As more details emerged, I felt fire in my heart, in my blood, and in my eyes. All the moments when I had felt something was going on between them came rushing back to me. All the times I had asked questions about the nature of their relationship and been reassured that there was nothing. All the times I had felt like I was losing my mind, when in fact I was not. My instinct had been clear, but I had chosen to ignore it, repeatedly.

I remembered how insane and paranoid I felt during that time, when really my body had been leading me toward signs I did not want to see. All I had to do was listen to myself once. Just once. But each time, I had chosen to believe him over myself.

Why did I not trust myself?

That realization made me furious with him, but it also made me furious with myself. He had lied to me for nearly two years, and I had spent nearly two years overriding what I felt and knew was true.

He could see the bloodthirst in my eyes.

“Do you want to hit me?” he asked.

“No,” I screamed.

Our cats and dogs ran out of the room. They were so scared. They had never heard me scream like that before. I had never heard myself scream like that before.

I kicked a hole in our bedroom wall.

Outside, it began to rain even harder. It was that exaggerated, relentless kind of rain that drowns out every other sound on earth, which was oddly perfect because I could scream and cry without our neighbors hearing me.

I took off my wedding rings. I remember staring at them in my hand, completely disillusioned. This whole time, I had been living inside a reality that was so different from the one my husband had been living.

We had made vows to each other. We had promised to care for each other. Suddenly, our marriage, our wedding, and those rings felt emptied of the meaning I had given them.

The life we were building together no longer felt like the life I thought I had chosen. I felt scammed. I felt like a fool. As I sunk into the floor, my self-worth collapsed along with everything else, and in its place came an insecurity I had never known before. I no longer recognized myself.

After the screaming and the tears, something else came.

Silence.

I remember sitting on the floor feeling completely alone. Broken. In deep shock. It was too late to call anyone.

The man I loved so deeply, the man I had laughed with the hardest and shared some of the happiest moments of my life with, the man who told me he loved me every day, multiple times a day, and whose love I genuinely felt, had just hurt me more than anyone else ever had.

It felt like my mind was trying to reconcile two completely different realities at the same time. It did not make sense to me. Everything I thought I knew about my life, my marriage, my future, and myself broke open. I felt completely destabilized, like I no longer knew where to place myself in my own life.

I was paralyzed with fear because I did not know what came next or how to even begin to put myself back together again.