Rifts

Merryn & I got back to NY after a good 5 days at Clear Lake. But while it was relaxing to be there and nice to see family, there was a lot of sadness too. While I was there I found out that Tina and Jerry are getting a divorce. So are Taunya and JoJo. Kirsten and Tom are moving again, this time to the Cincinnati area, and Tom is bi-polar. Laurie and George got in a fight over Liam's behavior, and he said some pretty terrible things to her. She left Bryan the next day because of it, instead of hanging out for a few more days. And, as much as I love my parents, I see the difficulties in their relationship too, and it was hard to be around them sometimes.

And I hoped to come home and feel close to JJ, to feel that we had missed each other and were glad to be together again, and to get some affection and feel love...but instead I feel distance. While I was gone, I initiated every call and text message, and I didn't hear from him at all for the final 24 hours. I know he isn't feeling good, but he never, ever expresses anything like, "I'm happy to see you," or "It was quiet without you," or "I'm glad you're back." He doesn't ask me any questions about the trip, or about anything, or tell me anything about what he did while I was gone. We were sitting downstairs and I was eating a slice of pizza for dinner; he wasn't hungry. He wasn't looking at me or talking...Merryn was done and wanted to sit on my lap,  but I asked him to take her since he wasn't eating. He just took her upstairs and left me sitting there to finish eating on my own. Even though he typically isn't much of a conversationalist at dinner, this did feel kind of crappy because we had not seen each other all week, and I had just spent the week with family, talking, catching up and laughing at every meal.

But the worst feeling is this, that when I leave I feel overwhelmed with fear that he is going to cheat on me, or that he did while I was away. That's because he did already. He had an affair with Bupe, his friend Dan's wife, for a long time, maybe 2 years. The second year, or however long it was, overlapped with my relationship with JJ, with our first year of dating. I found out about it because she e-mailed me anonymously in Sept. 2010 telling me what had happened. I asked JJ about it when I read her message, and he told me about the affair. He acknowledged that it had overlapped with me but said it had only been 3 times near the beginning of our relationship. He said he cared about me and loved me and wanted to stay together. I told him I wanted to stay together too, because I had thought it had been a great year. And I loved him too. And I hated that she had approached me anonymously, and I felt then that he was being honest with me. And...I got pregnant just a few weeks later.

But there are aspects of that have continue to gnaw at me, even though I don't want them to. She said in her e-mail that she slept with him "whenever [I] didn't spend the night with JJ or traveled." She said that they had been hooking up for the entire year, meaning that they overlapped with me and JJ the entire time we had been dating. She said that she had "dumped him," not the opposite, and that this had happened that summer, not seven or eight months earlier, as JJ claimed. I wanted to believe what JJ said and I still want to believe it, but there are things that bother me. Early that summer, I had gone to California to be there when Isaac was born. While I was gone, JJ didn't communicate much then either. When I came back, I had this weird feeling when I got to the apartment...for one thing, the covers on the couches were missing and had been taken to the laundromat, something JJ had never done before, and it made me a little...curious...

Also, there were things I believed when JJ first told them to me, but I have questioned over time....a text message I happened to see in summer of 2010 that said "I love you too"...I asked him about it and his first reaction was to act puzzled, then he said, "You sent me that." But we both knew I had not sent that one...after a couple of hours passed, he told me that June, his ex-wife, had sent it sarcastically in response to an ongoing text conversation they had been having about canceling her EZPass. But 2 hours had passed before he told me this explanation. And he never showed me the text messages. This was before I knew about Bupe, and until then I had had no reason not to trust him or believe him, so I accepted that story. But after I heard about Bupe, I remembered this incident and started to doubt it, and I still have some doubts now.

On one other occasion, he deliberately misled me, and we both know it. And I also know of two occasions where he misled someone else, and I witnessed it. These occasions weren't the biggest deceptions in the world, but in the context I just explained, they felt pretty terrible. Any other times, I have no proof of anything either way, but it's evident that my trust in JJ was damaged, and as much as I would like to rebuild it there's a small portion that may never be recovered. I don't want to live feeling paranoid and afraid at all times, scared to even turn my back. We have to trust each  other, and most of the time I do, but there are times that my fears get the better of me, and tonight is one of those nights. I feel scared that something happened while I was gone, I guess because the sheets were in the laundry when I got home. It's not entirely a rational fear, but it's not entirely irrational either. All I know is that it is messing with my mind, and I haven't slept a wink. And it's 4:10 am.

It's a night where sleeping next to JJ would have reassured and comforted me a little, but instead he went to bed much later than I did, and Merryn is between us as usual, and he apparently couldn't sleep well either so he moved down to the couch....