So many times on this board, I have heard the anguish of spouses who ask the same questions "When will the pictures stop? Will they every go away?"
My husband's infidelity occurred in a brothel in Thailand, a place known for it's ability to cater to every man's needs. The pictures and movies going around in my head as you might imagine were excruciating. They kept me awake at night. They haunted me when I was awake. They flashed in my head everytime my husband touched me. I truly thought I would go crazy with grief. I couldn't seem to make them stop...and I wondered...how can I ever get past this? How can I ever love my husband again if I keep seeing these pictures?
This is a story about what happens to the pictures.
"Remembering June"
June was my mother. She was a heartstopping beauty. She modeled on TV, in magazines and she walked like a queen. I can remember walking with her as a child...holding her hand, and entering a crowded hotel lobby...and it was like time stood still. All activity stopped...everyone's eyes were riveted on her as she walked with me down the long corridor and into the restaurant. Men walked into poles. All of my boyfriends secretly worshipped her.
She got cancer at 58. She was still so beautiful and full of life, but as the disease progressed she became more and more frail and gaunt. In the last two months she was in great pain. There became a wildness and desperation about her. She deteriorated in front of my very eyes to a hollow, shrunken, ghastly image of agony. Blood constantly fell from her lips, she screamed and thrashed and tore the clothes from her body.
I cried unchecked for the last two weeks and prayed for God to come and take her. I was alone with her, holding her hand when he died. And as she slipped from this earth and her body relaxed, she looked beautiful again for a moment in time.
In the weeks that followed, I could not get the image of her dying out of my head. Everytime I tried to think of her, I saw this monster she had become...this haunted wraith writhing in agony. Each memory felt like a stab wound. I missed her so desperately, but without warning this image of death and pain would enter my consciousness.
I was so angry with God. I asked "How could you do this? How could you take my beautiful mother and leave me with THIS? Can't I even REMEMBER her? I have lost her, and now I have lost any chance of remembering how she was...how beautiful she was. When I think of her all I remember...all I CAN remember is this ugliness and pain? Why can't I see her as she was?"
As time went by, I was still haunted by her death, but her life began to slowly slip back into mine. I would laugh at a joke...and hear her laugh. I would wear my hair a certain way and see of a flash of her in my own face. As the memories of my life with June began to creep back in, the memories of her death began to fade.
And before long, the two weeks before she died....became just that....two weeks....measured against all the years of her life. It took a long time, but eventually there was a flood of images of June in all her glory, and it became harder and harder to even remember what I saw before she died.
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The pictures in the brothel have gone the same way. Now, I must consciously decide to ressurect them and torture myself with them....they don't just come unheeded and unwanted as they did. Instead they are weighed against 20 years of marriage and images.....
