Mistakes.

The sounds of the plane engines calm my broken soul, I try to sip at a ginger ale but my stomach has curled into itself like a scared hedgehog. Nine months of pain flash before me-crackly slides on a flickering projector.
With August 7th came our first anniversary, what a perfect day it was. We had a picnic on our lawn, our little dog running between us, taking pictures of one another in the sunshine, eating, drinking, laughing. Glasses of Champagne and a blanket on the floor in front of the naked fireplace we were renovating. Later that night our families came together and we celebrated by sharing the top layer of our wedding cake. I don't think I could have been happier in that moment, forever felt much too short.
A mere seven days later we arrived home from a camping trip, drunk with memories from the weekend, songs around the campfire, while Blake played the guitar, too many drinks, great friends and laughter on the lake.
The memory begins to blur at this point, but I remember setting some of the camping supplies down in my beautiful kitchen, feeling so happy to be home again. I walked to the back door to let the Dog out when my phone buzzed. This is the turning point of my life, in those few short seconds it took for me to read that message, my whole world changed, my universe cracked. I read the words several times in my head, "no one will tell you, so i will- your husband was kissing a girl at a wedding dance in June" I read it again out loud, I remember looking at him in disbelief, his words coldly denying the truth, I knew in my bones that they were true. I spent the next three hours in a field of the school i had always imagined our future children would attend. Those hours spent on the phone, my tears matched one by one by the biting of Mosquitos. His incessant calls, his promises that nothing happened masked by the voice of the person who recalled the night’s events, the other stories that began to surface, how no one believed this was the first time.
How he lied to me in those fragile moments, my heart clinging desperately to any hope that he was telling the truth. He betrayed me twice that day; the first time when he let me walk out that door, a second time when he let me walk back in with her on the other line. I can still hear her voice echoing throughout the walls of our house "He wasn't wearing a ring, he didn't tell me he was married, I'm sorry"
It was at that moment that Blake truly lost me, within those minutes that his beautiful blushing bride recoiled into herself and died.
He watched her.