By Her View From Home 
I am not cleaning the house today. I am not picking up toys or doing laundry or washing dishes. I am not working in the garden or mowing the lawn. I turned the TV on for the kids and am burying myself in computer work. Because I can’t stop thinking about yesterday.
I can’t stop thinking about how yesterday’s revelation will affect my family or the relationships I hold dear. I can’t stop thinking about how hurt or betrayed or angry I feel. I can’t stop thinking about how much it hurts. I can’t stop thinking about how much you think you know someone and how little it turns out you really know them.
Part of me wished it wasn’t true, but then I saw his pickup at her house yesterday and all that hope was lost. It was parked in the back alley in the middle of the day, hidden just out of sight from nosy neighbors. But not hidden well enough.
I was seething with anger. So much anger I was shaking. My heart was thumping out of my chest. He didn’t even notice me sitting in the shadows as I watched him exit her house and get in his pickup, completely oblivious to the fact that he’d just crushed his little girl’s heart. The little girl who considered him a hero her whole life.
He’d just incinerated my heart. Maybe he didn’t realize the full consequences of his actions. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Who knows? I don’t. Because I don’t know who my dad is anymore.
When my friend came to me asking the hard questions, relaying the gossip she’d heard floating around our tiny rural town, I’d been completely oblivious. Completely oblivious to the sneaking around and lying. Completely oblivious to the whole other life he’d been living.
Now I can’t stop thinking about all the times he hasn’t answered his phone. All the trips to the mountains he’s taken. Was she with him? Does she know who I am? Does she know he has a family already?
He was my hero. The hardest-working person I knew. And just like that, he’s the man who turned my world upside down. The one who could destroy our family.
Fifteen years ago, we got in a big fight. It was a big deal to me because I was so close with my dad growing up. He was the one person I didn’t want to disappoint. But as a 19-year-old in love, I couldn’t help but run off with my now husband every chance I got. He said I was “being a hussie,” “bringing shame to the family name,” and that “the neighbors were going to start talking.” My how the tables have turned. Who is this man? I don’t even recognize him anymore.
I’ve noticed a difference in him in the last couple of years. My husband and I both have. He seemed withdrawn, stressed out, cranky all the time, and hard to talk to. I thought it was because he was working too hard. Now I’m left wondering if the guilt of this secret relationship is eating him up. Do my siblings know? Does my mom know? Do they even care? Am I the only one upset by this?
I have no idea who to talk to. I have no idea who to turn to. I have no idea who to trust with this devastating information. Everyone knows everyone where I live.
It was my aunt who told me. She felt so bad for the details she’d revealed to me, but that can’t be her burden to bear. I was the one who asked her about it. Someone has to be the bearer of bad news.
I must live under a rock or something. I was completely oblivious to the relationship he’d been carrying on for over a year. If she was just a “friend,” then why is he trying to hide it? The detective in me instantly went on Facebook to find out anything I could about her. All I found were two pictures. I don’t know her name. So I hurtfully call her the blonde bimbo. I know that’s not fair, but nothing is fair anymore. All I feel is pain. He thinks he’s being sneaky, but when you live in a town of 300, people start noticing things. And apparently, I was the last one to notice anything at all.
I feel so betrayed. Will this be the thing that blows up my family? Where do we go from here? Do I confront him or tell the rest of my family? Nothing in my relatively vanilla trauma-free life has prepared me for a moment like this. Confrontation makes me cringe, but it feels like the only way forward. This is not something I can ignore.
I feel numb inside. He doesn’t even know that I know, so he has no idea how mad I am or how hurt I feel. I feel so hurt. I feel so betrayed.
I don’t even think I can be around him without saying something or doing something I’ll regret. I didn’t want to call him or wish him a happy Father’s Day. I’m so mad at him right now. But I know if I didn’t call him, it would hurt him. And I can’t bring myself to do that to him even after everything he’s done to me. Do I condemn the man for one despicable choice after 34 blemish-free years as my father?
I don’t know what’s going to come of this. What I do know is that I’m going to fight that much harder for my own marriage. We’ve spent the last six years putting the kids’ needs before our relationship, and that ends today. My children will grow up knowing what a healthy marriage looks like instead of the loveless marriage I had modeled for me. I never want them to feel this way about me or my husband. And the work we do now to strengthen our marriage will affect generations to come.
God’s grace, my husband, time, and therapy. That’s what’s going to get me through this. I will not let this destroy me. I will not waste the wounds, I will use them for the better.
by Connie Cumming 
by Hollie Gilman 
