well, well. it appears my fourth affair anniversary came and went without my realizing the significance of the day. (my “affair anniversary” being the day tamara tabo (my ex-wife) told me she was having an affair with alistair isaac.) i just realized yesterday that it was mid-october and thus the day had already passed! it is kind of funny i wrote an entry near the anniversary date and mentioned her and the affair, but didn’t realize what day it was. perhaps this is a good sign for my future mental well-being?
fear not though, reader! i have two versions of the 3rd affair anniversary entry from a year ago which i never posted. now that all legal and monetary obligations of the affair have been resolved for over six months, i feel able to make the historical posts available. (at the time i didn’t want to jinx what appeared to be a rapidly approaching conclusion to all of the divorce-related issues.)
the two unposted entries were composed of an original entry, then an entry i self-edited in an attempt to avoid anyone complaining about the content of the first. i had prepended the self-edit with this:
[i went ahead and self-edited this entry before anyone had to complain and tell me they were upset about it. i’ve still got so much i could say, several of which i already removed…]
but as you can see from the archives for october 11th last year (2006), i ended up posting neither and just went with a “placeholder” which included an excerpt from an earlier affair anniversary post. i did mention i was planning on posting a follow-up entry once the divorce-related stuff was over.
today — over a year later — is the day.
below i have combined the two drafts into one, trying to show the full emotion of the first, but without maybe quite all of the acidic tone that was originally there. and still self-editing some of the revelations about the goings on with tamara and/or alistair. as much as i’d still like to lay it all bare, it just doesn’t feel right on some level. it’s the truth, and it hurt me — and screwed up a lot of stuff for tamara, me, and the divorce proceedings — but i’m not sure putting it out there would do much except make me feel better, like at least the truth was known. i’m not sure that’s a good enough reason on some of it.
i must say it is rather odd to go back and read this, as right now, today, i don’t have much of the zeal about the topic that i did when i wrote the stuff to follow. but what happened happened, and it is still what i felt at that point in time. perhaps it reflects poorly on me. perhaps it is irrelevant. whatever the case, it was where i was at and it is what i wrote, so here it is…
————< originally from october 11th, 2006 >—————
yes, it’s that time — the third anniversary of tamara tabo (my ex-wife) telling me she was having an affair with alistair isaac.
this anniversary appears to be a time of endings and partings: me and my retirement money (if her lazy attorney’s office can get around to shuffling a few papers…is that the sound of extra dollars they’re listening for?); me and the house (which should be selling on oct 16th, with me moving out by oct 23rd); alistair and his money (i think tamara ended up taking more from him than me, from what i’ve heard); and alistair and tamara (from what i hear through multiple sources).
i must admit aspects of their troubles have made my day on numerous occasions. (although i maintain feeling sorry for tamara…silly me.) one of the few true comments tamara made during those trying times after the affair was exposed was that she was fscked up, alistair was fscked up, and they were in a fscked up relationship — and that there was no way their relationship was good or would last. not that such a comment made me feel better about her having an affair, of course. but with a relationship founded on an affair, secrecy, emotional trauma, and perpetuated lies to family members, is it any surprise it would end? perhaps they both got what they needed from it though — [10.13.2007 — some true but mean stuff deleted]. but both only for a season. neither what they actually needed, and the loss of important things on boths sides in the end. (this is all based on what i’ve heard, but it makes me feel better to believe it.)
but yeah, it was three years ago today that she finally felt so sorry for what she was doing to me that she admitted she was having an affair.
i was at work, at my desk, on the phone with her when she told me. i’d missed the last bus home because i was talking to her about how she’d been treating me and what was going on. i needed to decide if i was going to ride local routes or if i wanted her to pick me up. for the life of me, i couldn’t decide. it’s hard to explain the gravity i felt was attached to that decision — to every decision — at the time. i just wanted things to stabilize, to get better. but they weren’t, and i didn’t know what to do. i was literally at the point of tears trying to figure out if she should come to pick me up or not. so eventually she asked me why i was doing this to myself. and i said “because i don’t have a choice.” she said i did. which confused me, so i said “no i don’t. i made my choice when i married you. i don’t have a choice.” and she said “terry, yes you do. because…i’ve been having an affair.”
i have no idea how to express how it felt to hear her say that. to hear the person i’d put all of my faith in, put my life in, who i’d suffered for and with trying to work toward a better future, who my whole world was intimately tied to, who had told me she loved me, who’d told me so much…and while i was trying to figure out for the life of me what i could do to maybe pull our unravelling life back together, to have that person be having a relationship and sex with someone behind my back. i had put my complete trust in her, i had given her my heart and soul, and she was scheming to leave me while fscking some [10.13.2007 — true but mean stuff deleted] behind my back.
something that seemed odd during those days was that tamara got really upset when i railed on alistair’s dad and his fake, social christianity — displayed in his flaunting his son’s adulterous situation at fancy dinners, and taking them to church with him. she said to leave him out of it, and that he was a good man. why? how did that make sense? looking back, it’s obviously because she and alistair hadn’t told him about that little issue of her being married and all. not even separated. i mean, actively sneaking around behind the back of her current spouse (that would be me).
okay, maybe i knew about this one for a long time. you have no idea how close i came numerous times to writing him a letter or calling him up or dropping by his place (since i’d been to his house before). maybe even dropping off a bunch of tamara’s stuff she left behind, with our wedding pics and an invitation prominently displayed on top. (man, that would have been sweet.) but i never did. and eventually i heard they told him (months and months later). but i’d bet there are a couple of things he still was never told about.
it’s horribly sad, but she didn’t have to make the decisions she made. it’s hard feeling too much satisfaction over her difficulties — especially when i think some of her inabilities to cope with life are out of her control in certain respects. but after everything she’s done to me and dragged me through it’s hard not to feel some sense of justice. i feel like i went so much further than i ever imagined i could in trying to reconcile (and numerous friends — mutual friends who knew what was going on at the time — agree with me). but she did make those choices, and so much more over these last three years. and unfortunately for me, i made the decision to emotionally and spiritually tie myself to someone who ended up doing what she did. and i am forever marked by the scars she left when she ripped herself away from me and took off.
[10.13.2007 — i’ve chosen to delete a paragraph discussing my perspective on her occupational transitions and how they seem to follow a pattern of increasingly relativistic and morally bankrupt fields. the idea is interesting, and i think there could be truth in it, but the paragraph is generally mean-spirited and i don’t see much way to save it from that. my hope, at least when my better self prevails, is that she is better these days.]
[10.13.2007 — the last couple of paragrahs — one about the idea of reconciling, the other about forgetting and moving on — were included in the 3rd anniversary “placeholder” post, so i won’t repeat them here]