The Day the World was Turned Upside-Down

Thursday, September 17, 2009 - the day my world changed. It has only been 4 days, but at the same time, it has also been a lifetime ago. I'm starting this story the same way that this journey was started. With the discovery...



It started off an a non-typical day anyway. I was exhausted from being up most of the night with my son who was suffering from a terrible bout of the stomach flu. I kept him home from kindergarten, but my daughter still went to preschool that morning, giving me a little time to prepare for my work meeting over the lunch hour. Even though I consider myself a stay-at-home mom, I still take the occasional temp job just to bring in some extra money. About 10:00am, I happened to glance over at my son who was snuggled into his blanket on the couch. He was feeling better at this point and looked so sweet...I thought "I need to take his picture". Indulging the impulse, I walked over to the shelf and grabbed the camera. Moving close to my child, I turned it on and a photo came up - the camera had been left on the view setting. It took me a double and then a triple take to understand what I was looking at. It was a close-up photo of a man's crotch in lacy red garters and panties. My ears popped and my head got fuzzy. My next thought was "this isn't our camera" followed by "someone is playing a joke on me". I started flipping the photos backwards. About 6 photos in (all close-ups of various body parts in sexy lingerie), I focused in on a full-body image. My eyes saw the dark mustache on the face under the long blonde wig and everything momentarily went blurry. Do you know the scene in the movie where the main character discovers something? The camera quickly focuses in on him, but the scene all around him goes fuzzy and jumps around? Do you know that that really happens? As I realized that I was looking at photos of my husband in our living room - there was our couch - the same one that my innocent son was laying on - I felt shaky, nauseous, panicked. I quickly flipped through the photos again and again, trying to comprehend what I was looking at. My next thought was of my son -- he couldn't know that mommy was upset. I don't know how I found the strength to say as calmly as I could "Mommy will be right back, sweetie" and nearly ran from the room into my daughter's room where I started to hyperventilate. I remember that I kept saying "Breathe, just breathe, oh God, breathe, oh, God, just breathe..." I was shaking. My brain kept trying to grasp what I had seen My thoughts turned to "Who took the pictures? My husband is gay and having a gay affair - in my house!" Who is it??? Is it Steve? or John? or someone I don't know??? Who took those pictures???
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I started the above post four days into our journey. It's amazing how far one can come in such a short time... My husband is not gay; he is an autogynephiliac. The word fits, according to him. It is now day 6 - my reeling world has slowly come to rest, upright, I believe. We are still together. I feel such love for him and I believe him when he says that he loves me. We have committed to work through this and have an appointment in 2 days to see a counselor both to help William come to terms with who he is and to help us as a couple integrate this into our lives. At times, for me, the pain, rage, anger, betrayal that I felt at the moment of discovery wells up inside. When he holds me, though, I am awed by the level of trust that he is placing in me when he tells me exactly what he is feeling and I feel like our love affair is just beginning.

This blog is not about my husband - it is about me and how I am dealing with the changes that are occurring in my life. At this point, I debated whether or not to change the above, but decided to leave it in as it IS the point where our journey started.