Awaiting Moderation...Sucks

Just a quick note about comments here.  Until now, I have been very liberal about comments.
I left it all open.  Anybody could say anything.
Like trying to get the emails from Jaymie...that wasn't workin' out for me.





I had to add the "awaiting moderation" thingy to my blog comments.
My lack of computer skills is well known, so I hope the damn widget works.  I won't be 100% sure until some of you post a comment or two.  
Please don't let this keep you from talking to me anymore!  I love hearing from all of you.
I will do my best to sift through the comments quickly and respond to all!

I'm bummed.  I so want this to be a truly open forum.
Unfortunately, it had to be done.  There are a whole lotta freak shows out there!
Sorry, Friends!  Hope & Hugs!

No Emails for Me! Damn it!

I left the Barona Casino & Hotel and headed home.  The past two days spent there in solitude didn't really do much for me.  Shocker!  In retrospect, I think we can all see, spending two nights at the place Richard spent numerous afternoons naked with Jaymie probably (Probably?? LOL!) wasn't a constructive use of my time.  I had hoped a weekend sabbatical would lower my level of rage or at the very least, clear my head so I could control the intense anger.
Once again...that didn't work out for me.  Damn it!

Nothing was working for me.  What I needed to do was admit how badly I had been hurt. Face the level of despair I felt.  Deal with the agony I had been trying so hard to ignore.   Nope.  I wasn't strong enough for that.
Instead, to avoid the debilitating sorrow, I hyper focused on the emails.  That meant moving forward was not an option.  I was stuck.  The emails were like a big, brick barricade and my only way through it was Jaymie.  She was the key to the lock on any chance of me getting through the brick wall.  In my intensely confused mind, the emails were essential to my recovery.  No one was gonna tell me different! I thought if only I could figure out WHY Richard cheated, WHAT Jaymie had that I lacked and HOW I missed all the red flags, I could maneuver through the massive marital maze, knock down the brick barricade and come up smelling like a rose on the other side, finally on the Road to Happy.
The map to begin that ill conceived journey was contained in the emails and to get to those, I had to get to Jaymie.

My first desperate idea was to sue Jaymie for Alienation of Affections.  For those of you that don't know what that means....Alienation of Affections is a tort, a legal civil action, brought by a spouse against a third party alleged to be responsible for the failure of the marriage.  It's usually a betrayed spouse suing the affair partner.
How's that for thinking out of the box/padded cell?
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Richard informed me that here in Californication, the court no longer recognizes this archaic law.  Damn it again!   Back to drawing board.
BTW, in case you're considering acting out irrationally after betrayal...states that still allow for this legal action are Hawaii, Illinois, North Carolina, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota and Utah.
Not encouraging you, just sayin...

When the legal system failed me, I went back to trying to contact Jaymie directly.  At first, I sent her pictures of all of us since DDay.  Richard, me and the kiddos skiing, at Sea World, in front of our Christmas tree, all smiling and looking happy as pigs in shit.  I was good at pretending. Reminded her that Richard had told her lies upon lies just to get her naked!!  Shredding her ability to trust her own judgement. That was called justice!
I thought for sure I could get her pissed enough at Richard to help me.
Yea...you guessed it...Damn it, again!
No emails for me!

My emails to Jaymie began to take on a more vindictive tone, referring to Richard as her "Cash Cow".  Asking if she was busy milking a fresh married man.  Truly traveling the lowest of low roads trying to get her angry enough to send me the emails just to get me to go away.   Being ignored did nothing to improve my mood!
Damn it, again!!  So frustrating, annoying and completely unsatisfying!!  No emails for me!

I had to know (Correction... I THOUGHT I had to know) if she was reading any of the email.  If the address I had for her was still up and running.   I got smart (No.  Not smart.  Increasingly dumb.) and sent an email to her from Richard's email address.  I copied an old email he had sent her before the affair began that I could still access referring to a happy hour she shared with him and the other office staff.
The email to her, written as if sent by Richard said, "Remembering this day.  It was good.  So was most of the time I spent with you."
Her response, "Have the decency to leave me the fuck alone."  Yippee!  That was all I needed!

Now that I knew she was getting the email, I doubled my efforts.  I decided manipulating her wasn't the best approach.  I was upping the ante.  Coercion seemed like the way to go.
The lovely Dr. K kept telling me, I needed to focus on healing at home.
Why didn't I listen more in counseling???  Damn IT!

Trigger Talk

Triggers are evil.  The truly awful thing about triggers...triggers can be anything!  An event, an inanimate object, a certain day of the year or just a time of day!  A person, a color, a location, a freaking smell!  A song, a commercial, a scene in a movie, a stinking billboard that never seems to come down and it's right in plain view on your way to work!  The list is endless and infuriating!

Whatever "IT" is, if it serves to raise your blood pressure, makes you pause, swallow hard, suck in a breath and hold it while gritting your teeth...you probably got yourself a trigger.  Any damn thing that precipitates a reaction, visceral or otherwise, is probably a trigger and they haunt me.

If you're anything like me, you've created lots of little tricks to avoid the triggers and you've worked very hard to beat the suckers down with a big stick.  I call my early efforts in that regard DTs.  It stands for detoxing and detriggering.  I thought immersing myself in triggery places would desensitize me to the pain caused by them.  (I just LOL'd at myself) You know, like if you're scared of heights, you might take a hot air balloon ride?  That doesn't translate so well into dealing with adultery aftermath.  But, I thought facing my fears would make me tough.  (Still LOLing!)
I went to Richard's office right after DDay.  Had him do me right where he did Jaymie for the first time.  (I'd better laugh at myself or I'm gonna need some Pepto real quick) I even drove my ass to the Marriott where Richard stayed with Jaymie on the night of DDay.  Got out of the car, walked to where Jaymie's email to him said they smoked a cigarette before they went upstairs to screw (if you wanna read that letter, you should grab the aforementioned Pepto first, but here's the post...Rough Night...For Me Anyway. ) and stood there smoking my own cancer stick while imagining Richard with Jaymie, naked in one of the rooms above.  Facing my fears or emotional cutting?  So not helpful!!

My little weekend away to Barona was an exercise in DT-ing and fear-facing.  I agreed to let my mom get me a free room at Richard's afternoon cheating love nest.  This email is how Jaymie described one of the afternoons Richard picked her up for a trip to Barona.  Almost sounds innocent.

Jaymie Simpson  to Richard

show details Oct 7, 2010

I'm still thinking about you..
I'm resting in my rocking chair just letting my mind relax. And thougts of you come in slow waves. Like the effects of wind across a lake. Primarily I'm thinking about being with you yesterday. Holding hands in public was a little too much fun. The big lemon.. Getting swept away from lemon grove and tucked safely into your car. And just hanging out with you was great. I'm glad you liked my books so much. Incredible facts about earth :) ;putting my bag together was fun enough, but unpacking it with you was fantastic. You appreciate everything I want to show you and teach you. I know how you add all the new bits into your total picture of me. Not neglecting anything. Falling deeper in love with each new detail. That's special.. No one else is like you. I doubt you understand, because doing that comes naturally to you. But it is a rare quality and I love you for it.
Your Jaym

BTW...another nasty ass trigger..that Big Effing LEMON!  I have to drive past that damn thing at least once a month going to a warehouse in Lemon Grove where I pick up merchandise for my store.  Gotta go there tomorrow, as a matter of fact. When I see the lemon, in my mind's eye, I see Richard scooping Jaymie up in his arms and swinging her around in slow motion with the giant lemon in the background.

Fuck that Lemon!!  I'm here to tell you...I refuse to be ruled by Triggers!!

That weekend, I spent a lot of time by the lake at Barona where Richard and Jaymie walked, holding hands in public.  I slept in a room that could have been the exact one they used to commit their sins against me.  Probably wasn't the exact one, but the rooms all look the same so it wasn't tough to imagine the two of them rolling around naked on the ugly bedspread.
I was weaker then.  The triggers had control.

Today, my DT-ing skills have been honed and I am proud to say, even though I experience triggers daily, (The worst is when we first wake up.  When Richard reaches for me, I think of him reaching for Jaymie.  It happens nearly everyday and I haven't been able to stop it.  It's an subconscious thought that happens when I'm barely awake) I have developed mental muscles to fight them off.
I have to thank the lovely Dr. K for this defensive maneuver.  When I see a commercial for Victoria's Secret, Barona Casino or Chili's, when I drive by the Big Lemon or the Marriott Springhill Suites, when Richard strokes my stomach and I think of the email Jaymie wrote to him about touching her on the hips, my brain leaps into action, switching to self-preservation mode. Dr. K gave me the weapon.
My Mantra:
"I do NOT need to think about this now! It will NOT help me to think about this now! I will NOT think about this now!"
This pathetically lame, simple solution actually helps!  I've gotten really good at it! I wield those words like a sword.

I've also learned that just by using sheer will, I can CHOOSE to ignore the triggers.  I figured that out all by myself when dealing with the trigger that is my Mecca....Nordstrom.  Richard took Jaymie on a little shopping spree there, the same day he bought her the lovely undies at Victoria's Secret (I will NEVER shop there again!) he took her to MY Temple of Tranquility and bought her additional goodies (bribes) at the cosmetic counter.  Well, there was no way I was gonna let her take Nordstrom away from me!  Not a chance!  So, I CHOSE to ignore that trigger!  Just CHOSE it!  That showed me that when what you're going to lose is worse than the trigger...you can work up the strength to let it go.  Very empowering.
As helpful as the mantra was to calming the war waging in my mind and as strong as I felt using my own determination to defeat the trauma of triggers, I gotta say time is the best defense of all.
The months roll by, and I find I barely notice the scantily clad models on the Victoria's Secret commercials and very little attention is paid to the Chili's baby back ribs jingle when it interrupts a favorite TV show.  I drive right by that Marriott everyday to and from work, and on some days I don't even notice it at all.  I'm winning the battle of the Triggers.  Freedom!

I spent that entire weekend at Barona wallowing in Triggers, imagining the worst and not healing in the least.  When I left there on Sunday, I still had no answers. I was no better off than when I had checked in on Friday.  I had no idea how our marriage could survive this much turmoil and so many lies.
In fact, I had used most of the weekend planning how I could get my hands on the rest of the emails.
My tortured, twisted, trigger filled mind had come up with some very creative ideas.