I'm on roll...

So the floodgates have opened, memories are coming back thick and fast, memories of the used to be me,me.
I am in awe as I recall some of the things I did, way back when. I was no pushover and I didn't, back then, suffer from skin falling off and hurting bones, not even indigestion. I was quite marvellously healthy, also terrifying.
I have been told countless times how intimidating I was and I used to find that so hard to believe because I really was nice, even back then. I just didn't suffer fools gladly and there were just so many fools around me, sheesh where did all those fools come from?
Anyway, being a dumped wife, a woman who discovers she has been lied to and cheated on is really horrible. It hurts most terribly but the worst feeling, the really most awful part is that feeling that you have just been taken for the biggest fool.
I could absolutely understand that the first one had maybe stopped loving me, he certainly didn't fancy me anymore ( until he left and then suddenly I was desirable and hot and nobody else was like me, apparently) I could get all that but I never did understand how anyone, who proclaimed any kind of feelings, who had an ounce of human kindness could so blatantly lie, look me right in the eye and day after day lie, about everything. When the initial pain had become a mere wrenching of every nerve inside me as opposed to a physical ripping asunder, I took my mind back to the beginning of our marriage and let it wander its way to the here and now and Oh Dear Maritals, how could I have been so bloody STUPID?? Of COURSE he was cheating then, and then and especially THEN...how had I ignored it all? Still, here we were and now I had to find a way to carry on and somehow make this frightening new life I was being thrust into work and so I began.
I tried to be marvellous and grown up, I wanted the boys to see the first one often, I longed for them to be as unhurt as could be. It was so hard.
One day the first one came by and he said that he had to go away on exercise, for 2 weeks but he would be sure to call every evening and speak to the boys, which he did for a few days, every evening, as promised. He would say how hard he had been working and how tired he was and he would be back to see them in just another 8 days.
Then my phone rang and it was block busters " Hello Mrs idiot of massive proportions, Mr laughing in your face didn't return the videos he rented, is he there?"
"Oh, he isn't I'm afraid, he's away for 2 weeks, on exercise....perhaps someone from the base used his card, let me call the guard room and check, I'll get back to you"
"Hello guard room, this is Mrs thrown aside, funny thing, block busters are saying that lance corporal turdface has some videos, can't be him though because he's way isn't he? I know he is away because he has been calling from far away and not seeing his children...for 6 days now"
"Oh Mrs gullible wish you were my wife because you really take the cake when it comes to believing complete crap, he's bot away, he's here on camp, has 2 weeks leave and is having a splendid time ...walking right past your house when you're not looking, probably when you have your head in your hands weeping, you know, on the way to his girlfriends house"
" Oh. I see. Thankyou so much"
And that is when the sadness left and a blinding rage took over. A blessed, soothing rage that felt so good, so healing and so overwhelming I was forced to act upon it. I enlisted the help of 2 friends, one to babysit and the other to drive my poor weeping wounded body around the town we lived in.
The first one had left me alone with a gaping wound right across my body, with 2 little boys, saying he was away on exercise when he could have been looking after them while my poor body had a chance to heal. He had been lying and laughing behind my back while I tried to look after 2 toddlers with my abdomen gaping open. Can you begin to imagine how massive my rage was? I bet you can't.
So, first stop was the guard room, where he was a) working and well known and b) had to sign in and sign out every time he left the base. It was the law, he had to do that.
I went there and I said
"Hello, I am Mrs not about to be lied to anymore, wife of Lcpl Arseface, can you tell me where he is please?"
"No, sorry"
"Let me try again, first though, let me tell you that I am on the edge, Lcpl thinks he's onto a good thing has been lying to me, I have dealt with him cheating on me, coped with him speaking to me like a piece of crap and now he is lying to me, which I will not take, tell me where he is or I am going to make such a fuss, such a very loud fuss that you will be forced to call him just to shut me up, you will also have to call your superiors because you won't know what to do, believe me when I say that you will wish you had told me where he is and don't say you don't know because that would be lying and you so don't want to lie to me. Ever. Tell. me. where. he. is."
The upshot was they didn't tell me where he was, they weren't sure that they were allowed to tell me but what they would do was try and locate him and get a message to me, at some stage.
"Thank you, that would be great and because I know you are so busy and because I hate to waste your time, I will be back on the hour, every hour until you tell me that you have spoken to him and told him he needs to get to my house very quickly, if he knows what is good for him and if he doesn't want everybody in this town to know his every sordid mistake. See you in an hour"
And I did, go back, every hour, on the hour and repeated everything, word for word, with more determination and many more swear words.
It was only on the 3rd visit that I was calmed enough to notice that behind the poor private I was interrogating there was a row of heads poking from behind a wall, with eyes bulging and incredulous looks on their faces and I realised that this saturday evening in the guard room, on duty was not as dull as it normally was and that when the first one did return to base and signed his lying name in, he was going to be torn to shreds by men who would never let him forget what a forceful wife he had left. Strike one. The 4th time I went back, I was met by the camp commander who told me that he had taken it upon himself to find my errant husband and that I could take his word for it, turd face would be home within the hour.
"Oh thank you so much Officer better not be lying to me, I so appreciate that and just to show you how grateful I am, I will be back to thank you in person, in an hour if lying pig head hasn't shown his face. Night then"
I was way too riled up to just sit at home and wait, so in between harassing the guard room in Wiltshire, I had my friend drive me first to the pub where lying husband and his chatty girlfriend had met and fallen so deeply in love that they both left their spouses to cling together in blissful adoration and understand each other to death.
First one had got a part time job in said working man's club, Rowena ( strumpet that understood the first one like I never had and had watched my pregnant belly swell with the child that had been conceived somehow, even though of course we didn't 'do that' anymore and I didn't understand him or care for him at all) anyway, she worked there too and as they washed the pots after closing every night they knew that they should be together for ever, ( which turned out to be 3 weeks)
I went there and because all the regulars were there and by now knew what had happened, it went very quiet when I walked in. Splendid, all the better to hear what I had to say. I actually just asked them if they knew where the first one and strumpet were staying. I told them a few more things too but they weren't very exciting although I did get an address. Which, of course I went to. It was very late by the time I got there and it was all dark. I knocked anyway, loudly enough and for long enough that some of the neighbours looked out of their bedroom windows. As they were up anyway, I told them who I was looking for and how the tall man with the little woman with eyes like a cow who was called Rowena ( I hate that name even more than I hate the name Dean, so much hatred, it's amazing I can still function!) was actually my husband and he left me with three babies ( aged 10 weeks, nearly 2 and nearly 4, yes I know can you believe it?) and one of them ( please forgive me) was sick and needed his daddy to come and see him immediately, even if its 2am. The neighbours tut tutted and promised to keep an eye and ear open and send him home with a flea in his ear the second they saw him.
He arrived at the house just before midnight, just before I was due to go and see the camp commander again. He was suitably horrified at the lengths to which I had been in order to find him, not nearly sorry enough for lying so blatantly, although when I handed him a cheque from an insurance company for a sizable amount and told him to endorse it so that I could put it into my account and he wouldn't actually have the audacity to expect any of it would he? He felt a bit more sorry then. ( oh and when he got back to camp...even sorrier, then, when he was told along with cow eyed Rowena that they were not welcome to stay in the house that was their little love nest because well, you know, the neighbours and all....Ha! Very, very sorry.)
I don't feel that kind of rage anymore, I think I am burned out, I almost felt it with the landlady and it was almost welcome, feeling indifferent and weary isn't nearly as exhilarating as feeling rage, it's sad to be emotionless, almost like being not alive anymore.
It's easier though, not to feel such rage, it was all so wearing to be charging about trying to make him pay for doing this to me. I wasted all together too much time on him after he had gone and wouldn't you just know it, as soon as I stopped feeling so strongly and trying so hard, the moment I actually just got on with my life and began to be happy, when it didn't matter at all to me where he was or what he was thinking. You know that is the moment he wanted to be a part of it and missed it all and called all the time. Naturally.