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Every day I wake up, and for the first moments I feel peace. I have my family, and what a gift they are. My husband and my girls give me all the love I need.
And then I remember. I remember the feeling when I saw the first suspect text message between you and him. You said ‘I think I just need my yoga teacher back’. Good, I thought. We were not in a good place, for a range of reasons that you will never understand (despite what you think you know). But it looked as though you were backing off and I was prepared to stop digging and let things resolve themselves. I resisted every temptation to confront you both, threw as much love as I could at the situation, and focused on the future.
And we got on with our lives together. We bought a house and decided to have a baby. But then you started turning up at his classes again. Messaging and calling and offering him that special brand of attention a man falls for when he needs validation. The kind of attention a woman who has absolutely no stake in the game, no responsibilities with this man, no life to organise, or kids to parent, or bills to pay can give. For someone who hangs her hat on how intelligent she is, your strategy with my husband was remarkably cliched and transparent. Not to him, obviously, but I knew exactly what kind of person you were from the first time he told me about the student who had opened up to him after class that day.
I remember the feeling when I knew you had crept back in. The hidden messages on his phone. When I knew he wasn’t where he said he was. When he called you, drunk, at 3am because he was obviously trying to spend the night with you. I was 10 weeks pregnant at the time. When I knew you’d been in my home by the bottle of wine you left behind.