Alert!

Starting over! A chance for a new beginning; to make things right! Sounds good doesn’t it? Well how could I start a new life when memories of the old one continually flashed through my mind like a slide-show. Even those memories would have been bearable had it not been for the intolerable pain which accompanied them; the sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, leaving ragged, unhealed gashes that continued to bleed, forcing me to curl inward, to grip my ribs to try to hold myself together. When would this pain go away? What if this hole would never mend? If the raw edges never healed? I had thought I had it all. A fairy-tale life, a wonderful man to share my life with, a beautiful little house, a doll house cottage, Brutus, the best behaved black lab in the world and a loving, supporting family. A perfect life! Or so I thought, until Justin’s infidelities were such that they could no longer be ignored. After years of believing him and being made to believe that I was imagining things, I had had enough and decided to catch Justin at his game. I had proved to myself and my family that Justin had been cheating on me with my niece, only to have my wonderful existence come crashing down around me. Thinking of starting over is a good idea, doing it is another matter altogether, because the past is not easily forgotten. If you are lucky enough to make it through one hour without thinking of what you had, what you’ve lost, then, you are very lucky indeed. Regardless, one hour is very short when compared to one day, especially when one hour can seem like an eternity. Just the thought of spending the rest of my life fighting this obsession was totally devastating. Maybe someone should invent a patch to help naive women get past the pain of a broken heart. Ever so slowly I had started putting the pieces of my life back together. Work was a temporary plug, an ill fitting seal over the gaping hole, but I could feel the leaks which always developed and enlarged as each work day neared its end. The evenings were the worst. I had no appetite, so food items were never on my shopping list, but a bottle of wine helped to fill the void; helped to make me fall asleep or at least numb the pain so that I felt nothing. Between pain and feeling nothing, I chose nothing. The next morning would be similar to every morning when one gets up after drinking too much wine. Hours passed! Days passed! Was the damage permanent?