You know what I think a good idea would be?

It's to play the board game LIFE with somebody, and totally cheat, right? And then when the person I'm playing with says "Hey, that's not fair!" I'll respond with "Well, that's the point, life isn't fair."

And then I think I'll smack them with the board.

Yeah, that'd be a good idea.

It is driving me nuts. I keep looking for signs that I am replaced every time I go to his parents' house. I keep waiting for the pictures to change, for mine to be taken down and hers to slip into the spot where mine used to be. I keep steeling myself for the family portrait with her in it instead of me. I make myself crazy, this is true.

I am unsure that I will ever be able to get over this. It has been two years since he abandoned and replaced me. Two years. You would think that I would have gotten over this by now, but I haven'. It is deep in the core of me.

His family was my family. His friends were my friends. Pretty much all have disappeared along with him. He made sure of that. Still. We were married 17 years. His family IS still my family despite everything. It is awkward as hell sometimes.

Tonight they handed me a stack of pictures to look through.

NOOOOOO! silent screams echo. They are pictures of a graduation in the family that I was not invited to. Pictures of him with my replacement. Pictures of MY family that I have been cut out of. I can not let go. How do you just let go of people you love? Just like that? I don't understand it, the acceptance. The shrugged shoulders of oh well. I don't get it. I don't want to see pictures of him laughing with her. I don't want to see her in the pictures of family events. That is MY PLACE dammit. MINE.

But it isn't anymore. I was cut out because he changed his mind. Because he wanted to try on someone new. I can tell myself a thousand times over I am better off without him. But deep in the core of me. I can not let go. He took more than himself and our friends and our family with his departure. He scribbled with black crayon all over my fairy tale books.

And I can't stand the torture knowing that one day soon HER picture will be on the wall where mine used to be in his parents' home.

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