I just want to forget.......

Dear J,

This past week I have been doing a few little things that I know I won't be able to do once school starts. One of those things was to organize my storage unit. As I was doing that, I found a big box of pictures. It's always bittersweet looking through old pictures of our babies, and our family even just a few years ago. I sometimes wish I could go back in time for a bit. Those days seemed so care free. I can't remember being more happy in my entire life. Usually when I look through old pictures, I just want to pretend as though we were still living in that time. That our kids were still so little and the biggest worry they had was someone taking a toy from them, having to take a nap, or not wanting to eat their vegetables. It is almost mind-boggling what can change in just a few short years. This time as I was looking through pictures that were taken about 7 years ago, I noticed something that I have never noticed before. It was that even back then, your countenance as compared to the pictures of when we were first married until then, it seemed.......different. You didn't have the same sparkle in your eye. You didn't seem extremely different, but there was just a little something that wasn't the same. I realized that was the beginning of the end for us. You had your back surgery just a year before those pictures were taken. That was the year your mom first approached me concerned that you may have a problem with pain meds. As I looked through more pictures that were more and more recent, I could physically see in you the change that I was so blinded to then, and even just a year ago. Maybe it is just because now I know what was really happening (at least the basics) then. But as the pictures got more recent, the less you were in them. There were family trips to Arizona, Salt Lake, and New Mexico with just the kids and I. There were pictures of the kids and I going swimming, making cookies, playing outside, at school events. You weren't in them. The pictures that you were in, you looked withdrawn, not the same dad/husband that you were in earlier pictures. I had to put them away. I just didn't feel up to reminiscing about what was. My dad wanted to clean out one of the storage rooms downstairs that also has some of my things in it. I went to go take out all of my stuff and go through it so that he could more easily do what he needed to. As I was pulling a box out, from a shelf above me a folder fell on my head and papers scattered on the ground. I knew exactly what it was. I printed phone logs, emails, and Facebook messages from when I first found out my world was crashing all around me. I printed these for proof. You denied everything when first confronted. I needed proof. So I got it. The call logs showed proof of your relationship with the first known women you cheated on me with. Some emails were those sent between you and random women from websites that had such horrible names, I don't even want to write them. The other emails were sent between you and the girl you were being unfaithful with. She telling you how she knew what was best for MY children. Saying MY children's names. Acting as if she knew MY children. Writing poems about MY children. Some Facebook messages were from random women to you and from you to them with very foul and disturbing language and conversations. The other messages were between you and Her. They were beyond disturbing and explicitly disgusting. But what bothered me more than even that, was one message she wrote you about how horrible I was and how sorry she was for you and what you had to "deal with". The one where you sent pictures of MY beautiful daughter at her dance review that you were late to because of this other women, and her commenting how beautiful she was. I didn't read everything, I didn't want to, but the feelings that overcame me were almost unbearable, yet again. I thought I would be more calloused to things like that now. I guess I am a little, but the hurt is STILL there. That was two years ago now. That is when everything started to go downhill. That was the start of the hell that I felt was my life for so long. I just sat there dumbfounded as to why I would even want to try with you again after just those things happened. I did want to. I wanted to so badly. So I did. I did to the point that I was putting a lost cause before what really matters most, my precious children. I tried under very unhealthy and detrimental circumstances not only to myself, but more so to them. I did it, not because I wanted to be selfish, not because I was desperate, not because anyone told me to, I did it because I WANTED you. I loved you. I wanted our eternal family to be just that.....eternal. Only for you to turn right around and cheat on me AGAIN and lived a complete lie. I quickly ripped the papers to shreds. Then sobbing, I fell to my knees and pleaded with my Heavenly Father to PLEASE just help me forget. I need to forget these horrible, ugly, awful memories. I need only to focus on what is now. What is most important. What I want to become. Who I want to be. I know that I won't be able to erase it all out of my head immediately or even ever, but I just want to forget. I want to let go. I want to move on. I want to just hold tight to my precious angels, to the memories we have, to the love we share, to who I know I was sent here to become. I just want to forget........