Novela da jornada da restauração de Yvonne ❤️ Capítulo 2

Chapter 2
“Better Off Dead”

For a while now Ian seems distant. At first, I did not put much thought into it because sometimes he still has flashbacks from working as a police officer and this would sometimes send him into long periods where he was quiet and not very attentive to us. Then suddenly he would snap out of it and tell me about it. So you don’t follow me down the rabbit hole, later on, I will tell you about one specific very dark period.

This dark period went on longer than usual and then I noticed that when he smiled at me, his eyes did not smile. He avoided me as much as possible and when I would come into his study, he would suddenly close whatever was on his computer. I, of course, got suspicious. Next, he suddenly had to work all hours of the day, which also at first I did not take notice of because both of us were dedicated to the work we do so that was nothing new. All the signs on their own would not have alarmed me that much, but when I put all the circumstantial “evidence” together, I knew something had to be wrong. Ian had taught me how to be a good detective after all—he just did not know that what he taught me would be used against him one day. 

My training was used against Ian the night before his birthday, a Friday night. Ian went to bed early. I waited for him to fall asleep and then I took his phone without his permission. Would that be stealing? No, I planned to give it back and after all, we were married so this constitutes community property, right? So…hahaha, yes you caught me, you can see through how I justified what I knew I shouldn’t.

Taking his phone, I went into the living room, still not sure of what I was going to see, but maybe already knowing. Ian must have trusted me because he did not have a password on his phone. I remember the cold feeling that came over me when I saw all his messages with another woman. I felt angry, betrayed and so many other emotions as I was reading, horrified, a plot to end our marriage. 

It was very well thought out and their plot would have worked, if not for the fact that I was my detective husband’s sidekick. The plan went like this: Ian and Elize, both of whom were married at the time, would divorce their spouses stating “we don’t love you anymore and the marriage is not working.” Then a few months after both are divorced, they would fall in love and thus no one could say they had betrayed us. I get it, simple and effective and no one is the bad guy. I would probably have done the same in their situation. 

Elize wasn’t his first betrayal. Years before Ian had an online affair with someone, but when I found out, he broke it off and apologized to me, and promised it would never happen again. But it happened again, this time when I was pregnant with Owen. This time I got a letter with his promise that it would never happen again and he would never betray me in that way again. Well, here we were 5 years later and I thought the same thing was happening again. This is how the argument was supposed to go. I wake Ian up: “Ian, here’s your phone back, can we please talk in the living room so we don’t wake up the kids?” Ian, distraught, because he knows he has been caught, sheepishly comes into the living room, sits down next to me, and is ready with another promise that it won’t happen again, “Yvonne, I am so sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I am sorry, please forgive me. I don’t know how I will ever make this up to you! For as long as I live, I will be the best husband you can ever hope for!” Then I would be upset for a while and he would do all he could to keep me happy. 

From what you read earlier in chapter 1, you know that is not what happened. Let me get out of fantasyland and tell you that I did confront Ian and told him: “Ian, here’s your phone back, can we please talk in the living room so we don’t wake up the kids?” What actually happened was that Ian came out into the living room and the look on his face told me this was not going to go the way I imagined. 

Ian looked at me with a cold, distant look, the way I have only seen on his face when we were talking to a suspect. No feeling, no sadness. He was just a wall, with me on the outside. Instead of saying he was sorry, what he said was: “I did not want you to find out this way, but you know now so you know that I love her and that I don’t love you. I did not mean to fall in love with her, it just happened.” How many times have I heard those words spoken in movies and rolled my eyes, now I was the recipient of those same words I scoffed at. 

I remember out of frustration and anger, I hit him on his chest and all he did was just look at me with pity— like he felt sorry for me. But not in the same way you hurt for someone who is hurting. More like he knew this was a process I had to go through and he was not going to make it more difficult for me. What he did not know, that made it even worse, was that I would have rather fought with him than see the pity and indifference in his face. Those two words, pity and indifference probably should not go into the sentence together, but those are the words that described what I saw on his face. I turned around and went to bed and later Ian joined me and we both just waited for morning to come. Both pretending to be asleep so we don’t have to talk to each other. 

By nature I am a very optimistic person, but, for the first time in my life, I felt utterly and totally without any hope, no hope that this situation, could be salvaged. I knew we were over the moment I saw the look in his eyes. No amount of coercion or manipulation was going to solve this problem for me. For the first time since childhood, when alone, I fell to my knees and prayed to a God that I did not believe existed. I had nothing else I could do. My marriage was over and I knew it. I could not see a life for myself beyond that. If my marriage was over, that would automatically mean my life was over. That was truly the darkest day of my life. Never before or after, have I experienced so much pain. At that moment I could understand how someone could die from emotional pain, what is it called? Brokenheart syndrome? That was what I had and I thought I would be better off dead. 

As I was lying in my bathtub with my head under the water, wondering if it was worth it to come up for air. Wondering how long I can keep my head underwater before the urge to breathe would force me up, or if it will force me up. Wondering, could there be a way that my body would just relax and not panic and I would just breathe in the water like it was air, and then it would be all over? As I was pondering this, the faces of my two precious children appeared before my eyes. I could see the questions they would have, the hurt they would grow up with. They were innocent in all of this and I had no right to do this to them. They would need me now more than ever and I could not let them down. I could not let my mom down, my mom who raises all five children on her own yet I never heard her complain once. How I wished in those moments that she was still alive and here to guide me through this, but I was alone and had no one to go to. 

Completely shattered into a million pieces, I felt like a piece of pottery. Do you know anything about pottery? What's important is that when working with clay if you don’t shape it the right way and there are air bubbles in your work, so as soon as you put it in the fire, it shatters. Over the years, I had been formed with so many air bubbles that had accumulated so now when I was put in the fire, I shattered into a million pieces.

Before me, there were two choices, all of the pieces of my life could be swept up and thrown into the trash. I could just give up and throw my life away. That was the easy choice, the choice to take my own life and just be done with it. I could just stop existing. Would it even matter to anyone? Would anyone actually care if this happened? At that moment dying would be easy and living would be hard. I wanted the easy way out. 

Instead, I got up and started collecting the pieces of my life shattered on the floor wondering how I would put it all back together again. 

Now, all these years later, telling you the story, I realize that my utter devastation became the salvation I was looking for all my life. 

A lot of you reading this may not understand why I was so devastated. You look at divorce rates in the world, you will see that I am definitely not singular in this experience so, of course, you say to yourself she will be alright. Of course, she can just go find someone else, but it wasn’t that simple. This was not what was planned for my life but for you to understand the whole picture, I need to take you on a guided tour of my life along my restoration journey. 

What I hope my journey will do is show you that there is life after divorce and not just existing, but an amazingly abundant life without needing to move on with someone else. But before we get to my abundant life and my happily ever after, you should know a few things about me. First needs to be how I met Ian and how I could not chalk up how we met as a mere coincidence.

“Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life…shall find it.”