The year that should have been my worst year ever.

This past year has been a roller coaster of emotion. One that I'm not sure I could even quite put down on paper as anything anyone would clearly understand or comprehend as what I truly feel it was.
I entered the year very confused with a husband who wanted nothing but to constantly fight and spend money on selfish things not concerned about rent, bills or making sure the kids had their needs met. This caused a lot of fighting. I grew more and more confused each day as he seemed to want nothing but to spend money on himself and his weightloss and his "special" program and foods. He was gone every single night "working out". I tried to support him and wanted to do it with him but he did not care nor want me to have any part of what he was doing.  I began to figure it out around his birthday when I tried to celebrate and make it nice for him it was more like the most uncomfortable date I had ever been on in my life and I was saddened because I was trying so hard to make it nice. The next day he got angry at me for washing his "new coat" he had supposedly gotten as a "gift" from an employer at a side job. He told me he was done with me. Over a coat? I thought!   I'd later learned "she" had given it to him for Christmas.
A few days of awful anger and fighting went by when I was sitting at work and looked at my cel phone bill online and noticed he had had over 12,000 text messages in the last month. Surely this was an error so I clicked to see his lines activity. I recognized the number repeating itself over and over right away. Almost every other minute for days and days on the phone bill. It was a number to someone I considered my friend. His best friends wife. I called him and it was not denied.
The weeks that followed my heart felt empty and lost and completely and utterly broke. I was broken. My family was broken. The family I tried for so many years to hold together and keep afloat in hard times....broken.
Id learned from him, his own mouth, that he had been cheating on me since we'd began as a couple. 13 years before.  He'd cheated on me numerous times with many people of whom I knew their names, knew I was with him, knew we had a child and then two children together. He admitted everything. I'm not sure if it was out of guilt or if it just made him feel like coming clean of everything would set him free...it certainly made him look even worse in my eyes.  Of course the scared, idiot, crying little girl begged him to stay to no avail. The moment he drove away with his bags was probably one of the worst moments of my life standing on the doorstep sobbing in a pool of salty tears. Moments later I collected myself and went next door to bring my children home. And from that moment on I knew that the only thing I had left to do was protect my children from bearing any of the pain, hurt, or sadness I felt.
I found us a new home I could afford on my income, we moved and began our new life. I slowly had to begin allowing them to go to his home to stay with him in the home he now shared with "her". Of course the kids knew her. She was our family friend. She was their babysitter for gods sake. She was the one there for me for nine months when I was pregnant with Jaxon and he and her husband worked god awful ridiculous days and nights at their security job. We supported each other. Now I simply see it all as a slow ploy to take my family away from me. I have no idea how long they carried on their affair. I only have solid proof on paper back to November of 2011.
I was the one that told her husband. He knew she was up to something but was blindsided by it being his best friend. We both were completely bitchslapped hard.
The kids seem to have adjusted well through it all. I mean, why wouldn't they;  they know her, knew her, heck they think she's great. Sometimes I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry about that. Sometimes I feel that's my sweet revenge that I know who is taking care of my children when they arent with me.  But he knows nothing about the man that lives at their moms house. My silent sweet revenge.
I remember when I was young and my parents divorced and my mother hated my stepmonster and father and I grew to feel the same because I didn't know anything about them other than what I heard her say. I never understood it until this happened.
I find myself daily trying to hold back, bite my tongue, take a deep breath and not say things I truly want to say about them infront of the kids. Sometimes it is hard and I'm sure I've screwed up more than I care to admit. I want my kids to know their dad. I want my kids to love their dad and not have complete nothing in their heart when the day comes that he is gone. Like I did. This is harder than it seems. It is even more difficult to share your children with people you completely despise and would never ever introduce your kids to let alone send them off with. This is a daily struggle for me as our arrangement as it stands now before legal proceedings is an almost daily sharing of our childrens time. I'm happy to be the one to kiss them goodnight darn near most nights. And wake them up with snuggles almost every morning. The nights and mornings they aren't here are the hardest. I find myself lying awake a lot worrying about them and hoping they are happy and safe when they are away. My heart is with them at all times when they aren't with me and has an unexplainable emptiness. When they are with me it bursts from how full of love it is.
Some people may find it strange how quickly I found love again. I don't at all. See, the thing is. I didn't have love for so very long and sadly I didn't realize it until he did me the favor of leaving. He didn't leave like a man. He left as a coward. But he left. He left me stronger and wiser and way more aware of what I wanted out of life than I had realized. He left me knowing that what I wanted was a man who could take care of himself. Who could live on his own and be his own person. A man who didn't cower at the thought of taking care of someone elses children.   A man who does stuff for her because he wants to make her happy and wants to take care of her because he loves her. I somehow fell right into this man standing literally right infront of me. I'm not sure how I got so lucky. It truly made me believe in fate and understand that love is not something you have to work at. I learned that being yourself is ok. I no longer have to hide my sillies, or my giggles, or my crazy ramblings. He somehow just understands me and loves me when I do it.
The fact that he opened his heart to my children and tries so hard to understand what parenting is and wants to slowly learn the best way to be a role model and figure in their lives means more to me than even he will ever know or understand. We have a huge learning curve that we are both continually working on but we manage to do it with love and that's the best part.
I wrote this because I'm sure many of you reading this feel as though 2012 was probably the worst year of my life.  I have to dissapoint you by letting you know it was not. 2012 was the year I realized what love really is. I learned what happiness truly is. I got my smile back. My true ear to ear little girl grin that I always felt I had to hide because someone thought I was being dumb and said I was embaressing him. Now I have someone walking with me that is probably just as goofy if not more goofy than I. Holding my hand and making my smile grow. Filling my heart with love and joy and helping me to realize I am truly worth being loved.
Here's to 2013.  Happy New Year!