Ardor

Chapter 4

It had been a few months since that day.

Sometimes, it felt like a lifetime ago; other times, it was as raw as if it had just happened yesterday.

The betrayal was thick as the air in that room.

My husband and my best friend.

Those were the people who knew me best. The people were supposed to be there with me through thick and thin—those who should've never betrayed my trust like that. They shattered every single thing in an unforgivable moment.

Everything.

I could still see them- Sameer and Alisha- tangled in sheets, in my be-

God, I was doing it again.

Thinking about the stuff I should not be thinking.

Because I was not that woman anymore.

The one who stood frozen in shock.

She felt like her entire world was crumbling around her.

I was not the same person anymore. And I was learning to be okay with that.

Putting my life back together was not easy. Or pretty. It wasn't like it was supposed to happen overnight. It took me days- no weeks- where I couldn't even face myself.

The pain was excruciating like I was suffocating and no one was there to help me out of the water. But I decided that I wouldn't let them destroy me.

Not for long.

They had already done enough. I wasn't going to give them more ammunition than they already had.

So I started focusing on myself.

My sister and her husband Raghav helped me throughout everything. They were the ones that found me on that day. They took me with them. I was living with them for the past month. They were there when I was at my lowest.

But for some reason, I couldn't talk to them about everything maybe because I didn't want to feel like baggage to them.

So I found a therapist, someone I could talk to because I knew I couldn't hold the entire weight, alone. And slowly, I started talking about that, the betrayal, the hurt, the anger, the overwhelming sense of loss.

I let everything out.

And It helped.

Then I started small, like getting out of bed early and going out for a walk. Sometimes on a run. I reconnected with the people I had lost touch with because I was so consumed by my relationship.

I went back to the hobbies that used to make me happy but had fallen by the wayside.

I was reading, running, cooking for me, Disha and Raghav. I was doing everything without worrying about what someone else wanted.

It was liberating.

My career had become another lifeline.

So, I applied for a teaching job at a nearby college. I got accepted. I poured myself into work. I let my ambition fuel me in ways I hadn't before.

For too long, I'd been content to "support" my ex-husband's dreams, but now it was my turn. I remembered how good it felt to be independent, to succeed on my terms and it gave me the confidence I thought I had lost.

Of course, not every day was easy. Some days, the anger came back, crashing over me when I least expected it. I thought about what they did to me, the betrayed in the most intimate way possible.

I still had moments where I questioned everything- My judgement, my worth, my ability to trust someone ever again.

But I realized that healing isn't linear. It's messy and there are setbacks. But that doesn't mean I was not moving forward.

Slowly, but surely, I was.

I had moved out of the home I shared with my ex-husband. Packing up the remnants of my life wasn't easy. But it was necessary. I thought we would be building something with our lives...

We all knew how that turned out.

I cut everyone who betrayed me out of my life, including Alisha, my in-laws and some of the friends/relatives who thought I was the one to blame. If I had been taking care of my ex-husband like the good wife I was supposed to be, nothing like that would've happened.

Amid everything, I had also filed for divorce. We were still working through the legal stuff, but emotionally, I was done.

It's impossible to repair what was broken. And the funny thing was the more distance I put between us, the clearer everything became. I could see how much of myself I had lost in that relationship.

And now?

I was getting it all back.

I won't lie and say I'm healed, or that the hurt is gone. But I was no longer defined by their betrayal. I started to define myself again, on my terms.

Every day I was rebuilding, piece by piece.

I learned how resilient I was. I learned how to love myself in ways I never did before. And most importantly, I understood that no matter how badly someone else tries to break you, you always have the power to put yourself back together. Even if the pieces didn't fit quite the same anymore, they're still yours.

And that's enough for me now.

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