And Here's Where You'll Be After Your Affair Ends
And probably for a long time, too.
If you do the right thing, they say, you are supposed to create good karma.
If you create good karma, things are supposed to get better.
You’re supposed to see that you were far better off without the guy. You’re supposed to have far more fulfilling experiences. You’re supposed to see how wrong the affair was when you fall for someone far healthier … far better.
When you do the right thing, your life is supposed to turn out better.
(Isn’t it?)
Over three years ago, the married guy I had a brief emotional affair with sort of slunk back and asked to see me again. While making it clear he just couldn’t leave his marriage, because his entire family tried to cut him out in retaliation.
He would miss his children too much. He would miss his grandchildren too much. He just couldn’t leave.
I knew staying in touch with this person would in no way support that. Even my horoscope was saying, Stay out of power and control.
At that point in my life, I didn’t trust myself to see the guy again socially without resorting to manipulation. Aww, come onnnn, you know you’re miserable there.
And that would in no way help anyone. If a person isn’t ready to leave his marriage, the person isn’t ready to leave his marriage. I can’t make him ready by resorting to power and control.
We’re just supposed to work on ourselves.
So, I did.
I worked on myself and worked on myself and worked on myself and worked on myself.
And … nothing happened.
Okay, well, covid-19 happened. I guess that’s at least partially responsible for nothing else ever happening in my life. (I mean, how can it when you can’t even go to the gym anymore?)
Every other “I Used To Be A Mistress” woman has moved on to a better life. (Or, those who have moved on to better lives have been the only ones to write articles about their former lives as mistresses. Wait, can you call yourself a mistress to a guy you never slept with?)
I, on the other hand, am pretty much ready to give completely up on everything.
It’s covid-19. I’m not going to meet anyone else. Even if I did, I’m so sad and depressed I don’t have anything to offer anyone else. In the past twelve years, I’ve been beaten down by caregiving three old people in their last, slowly dying years, one of whom was my husband and best friend. I had a pretty bad hip injury last year that’s taken all year to get better, so I haven’t been able to exercise and gained some ten more pounds, and I was obese before that.
I’ve crossed the fifty-year line.
And, I’ve watched my writing fall flat … and fall flat … and fall flat. Crickets.
Okay.
Nothing I ever wanted for my life has worked out.
And I’m pretty deep into certainty by now that it never will.
I’m never going to be a writer. Never going to be part of a family again. I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone. Oh, and, having taken care of these sixty-plus, seventy-plus, and eighty-year-old plus people, I know pretty well what comes after your fifties.
I’m working the career that would have been my mother’s dream career, but I’ve known my whole life it isn’t mine.
And I’m about out of fight, here. I’m about out of ideas. I’m totally out of hope.
I’m literally afraid to choose something else, because whatever it is I choose, the Universe says no. And there ain’t no arguing with the Universe. What It says, goes.
I have to live within what this Universe will let me have. What this Universe will let me have is the career my mother wanted, the bills left over from the school necessary for that career, and a house that needs cleaning.
I’m trying really hard to be happy with what I have.
For now, at least, I’m financially stable, and that’s much more than many, many Americans get to have right now.
That’s good, but it’s not enough for actual happiness.
My horoscope says right now, You’re afraid you’ll never be happy again.
Yep. That’s about right.
Things were supposed to get better next year. I see no evidence of that on my horizon. It doesn’t matter what was originally predicted for you, it doesn’t have to happen. And I see zero evidence that it ever will.
So, I’ve given up every last hope and dream I ever had.
I have no new ones, because I have no faith they would lead to anything other than the same disappointment all over again.
What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
Oh, well. All that looks prudent to do with it right now is accept what I have, and try again to make myself happy with someone else’s dream career and my home chores.
Really, if I were able to be happy with just those things, life would be fine!
So why don’t I just … feel happy with only those things? Because those things are all I can have.
When you do the right thing at great cost to your own happiness … aren’t things supposed to turn out better than this?