I never intended to be the ‘other woman’.
What started as innocent flirting at work and on snapchat quickly escalated into a full-blown affair.
The midday lunch dates sitting in your car got me through some of my hardest days.
The drinks after work holding your hand under the bar and praying no one saw us were some of my happiest moments during weeks of darkness.
It wasn’t until we almost got caught and I was sprinting out your back door through the snow that I realized just how far we had gotten.
When she found my clothes balled up on your floor weeks later, I thought that was the end but it wasn’t. I still don’t know if she’s really that stupid or just unable to face very obvious proof.
I didn’t expect that I would fall in love with a man that I let into my life to distract me from the abuse that I faced day in and out when I got home.
Somehow, I cannot entirely feel bad for it. Yes, it was not a typical and traditional path but what developed between us was not just a fling.
It wasn’t just sex.
It was love.
Somehow the string-less distractions from our humdrum lives turned into something that we couldn’t go more than a day without.
We were scared of what we had done. Scared of what would happen next. Scared of how the future would pan out. And then all at once, we stopped.
Removing the source of the problem is not enough. Even without being in the same room, we still talk late at night.
I am scared. What we have evolved from fun to real and now we are stuck in limbo. Waiting in suspense of how the next part goes.
But I am not ashamed. I know that what I did was not to be malicious. It was not to be hateful or cruel.
What I did was for love.
One day, I will look back and know that it was worth it. One day soon, I will not be the other woman but rather, the only.
