I sank to an all-time low. My confidence and self-worth bottomed out, and all I was left with was insecurities and a loathing of my own body, because clearly I wasn’t even appealing to Finn in that way any more either. If I were truthful, I’d have to admit that I hated myself. I hated myself for not having the courage to get out of this destructive relationship, I hated myself for letting him treat me this way, and I hated myself for thinking that I didn’t deserve better.

The final straw came on a day that I wasn’t expecting. I remembered the exact time that my life finally seemed to slip back into place and the exact time that I finally grew a backbone and stood up for myself. It was at 1:13pm on a Tuesday in the first week of August.

I’d just finished work at the diner. Dave, the fry cook, had accidently scheduled two waitresses instead of one, thinking that it would be busy. But the lunchtime rush had never really seemed to come, so Karen and I had flipped a coin and the winner – me – got to go home an hour early.

As I approached my flat, I knew that something wasn’t right.

Finn’s car was parked in one of the allocated spaces for our building. He should have been working until four. I frowned, fumbling with my keys, hesitating because part of me already knew what I’d find if I went inside. I stopped with my key just millimetres from the lock, unsure if I wanted to go in. The lonely, needy part of me wanted to turn around and walk off, to spend an hour somewhere else and come back at my normal time. Part of me was terrified. But there was another part of me too this time, just a small spark of the old Bronwyn, the one my daddy had raised into a strong, confident woman who knew her worth and place in this world. For a long time I thought that girl had been banished, but she reared her head inside me now, demanding that I walk into the flat and see what I knew was happening inside.

Somewhat unconsciously, my hand unlocked the door and my legs carried me over the threshold, closing the door behind me quietly. Everything looked normal inside my flat, just as I’d left it this morning before going to work. The only thing that was different was the three empty beer cans on the table and the half-drunk glass of wine with the harlot-red lipstick mark around the rim.

My back stiffened. A little whimper left my lips as my fears were confirmed. Finn had brought someone back to our home for sex. Luckily, Theo was spending the day and night with a friend tonight, so I didn’t have to worry about him for a little while.

A bang and a girlish giggle came from the direction of my bedroom, and I closed my eyes, taking a couple of deep breaths preparing myself for what I was about to see. My legs shook as I made the twenty-eight steps to my bedroom door. As my hand closed over the handle, I could hear them inside, heavy breathing, and her moaning my husband’s name breathily.

My heart was in my throat as I turned the handle and wrenched the door open.

There they stood, Finn and some pretty, blonde girl that barely looked legal, pressed up against my bedroom wall in a passionate embrace. Her shirt was off, exposing a toned, sculpted figure that I’d never had, even before childbirth. His hands were on her pert little arse, and hers on the buttons of his jeans. Judging by the shocked and horrified expressions on both of their faces, they hadn’t heard me come in.

Even though I’d known what I was going to see, the shock of being confronted by Finn with another girl actually made my mouth pop open and the air whoosh out of my lungs at once. I’d never actually caught him cheating before, never seen it with my own eyes, only the evidence after or rumours. Seeing it was worse than I thought it would be. And the disrespect that he would do it in our home, in our bedroom, hurt more than I could have imagined. It was like a slap in the face how low he would sink and how little he cared about me.

Finn immediately stumbled back from the girl and shook his head, holding up his hands innocently. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he protested, his voice tight and panicked.

I swallowed around the emotions that seemed to be trapped in my throat. I would like to have said that I was angry or distraught at catching my husband moments from banging someone up against a wall, but I wasn’t actually angry that he was about to cheat. Foolishly, I’d gotten used to his cheating ways, I didn’t expect much else from him really. What I was extremely f**king angry about was that he had the nerve to do it in our home. That disrespect cut me deeply and tasted so bitter in my mouth that I actually wanted to spit to get rid of it.

“Who’s that?” the girl asked, looking from me to Finn. Clearly he’d neglected to tell his lay of choice that he was married.

Finn shook his head quickly. “This is all a misunderstanding. We were just talking. I was just showing… er…” He motioned towards the mortified-looking girl and frowned as if trying to recall her name. “Um…”

“Cheryl!” she hissed, picking up her discarded shirt from the floor and yanking it down over her head.

Finn nodded quickly. “Cheryl, right,” he muttered. “I was just…” he gulped, clearly having no lie on hand to make this right. He turned back to me. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Who is that?” Cheryl asked again, angrier this time.

“I’m his wife. Did he neglect to tell you that he was married with a child?” I asked.

Her face paled. “But you said you were widowed.” She looked at Finn in disbelief.

I kept my gaze glued on Finn as I sank my teeth into the side of my cheek. He’d told her I was dead. The pain of that was crushing. He recoiled, shaking his head, his lips flailing as if trying to come up with some bullshit lie to get him out of this situation. When it appeared that he had nothing to say for himself, I turned to the girl.

“Go home,” was the only thing I could think of to say to her. I couldn’t be angry with her if he’d fooled her too, in fact, I actually felt a little sorry for her.

She blinked a couple of times and then nodded, straightening her clothes as she practically ran from the room with tears in her eyes. I turned back to Finn, not even knowing what to say. I had a million things running through my mind, a thousand things I wanted to scream at him – what a cheating scumbag he was, how I hated him, how he was a useless husband, and how low he made me feel because I wasn’t enough for him and that he felt the need to seek physical attention from other girls.

But instead I said nothing. As usual I kept it all bottled up, partly because I was afraid that once I said those things I would have to acknowledge the truth of them and do something about it, and partly because I was afraid of the consequences of admitting that we were broken beyond repair.

“How could you do this again?” I finally whispered. But as I spoke, my anger seemed to build like a storm inside me, all of the hurt brewing up from years of being treated like dirt at his hands and for not being appreciated for everything that I did for him. What if it hadn’t been me to come in? What if it had been Theo that came home early and caught his father screwing a young girl up against a wall? Rage. It took over everything, coloured my vision, burnt my throat. “You’re a useless sack of shit, Finn Reynolds!”

He nodded, flinching as if my words stung. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? That’s not f**king good enough!” I ranted. “Was she even legal? She looked like a f**king child!”

His brows furrowed. “She’s eighteen,” he answered quietly.

I nodded absentmindedly. “That’ll be why her tits looked like f**king rocks still then, huh?” I muttered. “I’m sick of this shit!” My eyes filled with tears, causing everything to blur.

Finn stepped forward, cupping my cheeks and tilting my head up so I had to look at him. His pale green eyes were sorrowful and apologetic, the same as they always were when I confronted him about one of his affairs. He gulped, and the silence stretched on and on, almost until it became painful as we both stood there and fought against what we both knew we should do.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Those words meant nothing to me any more; they were just empty, meaningless words strung together and thrown out for effect. “You can’t do. If you did, you wouldn’t do this,” I replied weakly, putting my hand on his chest and pushing him away from me.

“But I do,” he protested. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, buttercup. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know why I do this. I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath as I realised something that I already knew, way deep down inside me. I was better than this. I was better than this man that stood in front of me that had every single part of me at his disposal, but yet disrespected me so easily for a casual f**k with a pretty girl. I deserved better than to be treated like this. I put myself through this time and time again because I believed that maybe he would change, maybe he’d stop looking at other girls, maybe, one day, I would be enough for him and then we would fall back in love again and have the life that I dreamt of when I was a little girl.

“I’m sick of this happening, I’m sick of you cheating, I’m sick of feeling second best and that this is my fault somehow. I deserve better than this,” I muttered, shaking my head and looking down at my wedding ring on my third finger of my left hand. “I never signed up for this. I hate the way you make me feel so worthless all the time, Finn. I can’t do this any more.”

He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat as he stepped closer to me again, gripping my upper arms tightly. “What? Bronwyn, don’t say that, don’t do this. I love you, and I’m sorry. This will never, ever happen again. I love you. You’re my life; you and Theo are the only important things to me. I’ll never do it again, I swear. I’m so sorry. I can change. I will change. Please, forgive me. You do deserve better, and I’ll be better. Please, buttercup, please?” His voice was desperate, frightened even. I could hear the vulnerability in his tone as his fingers bit into my arms, holding me in place. His words were always the same after I found out about his cheating. He always promised to change, apologised until he was blue in the face, and gushed how much he loved me. But it wasn’t enough, not this time. “I’d be lost without you, you know that. This will never happen again. It’s you and me, forever. Just you and me, no one else.”

I closed my eyes, fighting the humiliation that was causing my heart to squeeze painfully in my chest. “Finn, we don’t work.”

“We do!” he protested. “You don’t want to be on your own any more than what I do. We need each other. And we can’t just break up; imagine what that’ll do to Theo.”

I frowned, knowing he was throwing every emotional tool at me to try and make me not say the words that were right on the tip of my tongue. I hated him for bringing in those things, but those were the reasons I’d put up with him for this long already – because I didn’t want to take Theo’s dad away from him, and because I was afraid. Afraid to be on my own, afraid to be a single parent, afraid to walk up to my mother and tell her that she’d been right about Finn all along. How would I look her in the eye after knowing that I should have listened to her all those years ago, when she saw that he was no good?

“Please, buttercup. I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you. I’ll try harder; I’ll be better, I swear.” As he spoke, his breath reeked of alcohol as it blew across my face. “Maybe we could get some counselling or something. I could learn how to be a better husband. Just don’t give up on us, don’t let me screw this up, please?” His hands slid up my arms, coming to rest on my neck, his thumbs stroking my jawline softly. “I’ll do anything. Let me make this up to you. Just one more chance? Can we start over, we’ll work it out? Please?”

My decision had already been made though and no matter how much he pleaded, how much his eyes bore into mine, how softly he stroked my face, I couldn’t change my mind, not this time. I felt different inside. Starting over was scary and terrifying, but my pride had been wounded irrevocably by the sight I’d walked in on. I couldn’t pretend any longer.

My words left my lips before I fully thought through the consequences of them. “Take your filthy, lying, cheating hands off me, and move the f**k out of my flat!” I hissed, raising my chin confidently. “I’m done. We’re done.” I took a deep breath before saying the last bit. “I want a divorce.”

The words didn’t hurt as much as I thought they would, in fact, it was almost a relief saying it, and they took some of the weight off my shoulders that I’d been carrying around for the last twelve and a half years since we said the words ‘I do’. The finality of the word divorce hung in the air and, in that split second, I actually felt proud of myself. I was finally making a stand and believing that I was worth it and that I deserved more – even if more meant being on my own and starting life over again. I’d made the right choice.

April 2014

“And you’re sure you’re really OK?” Skye asked for the hundredth time.

I sighed and nodded in confirmation. “Of course I am. Will you stop worrying about me? This has been coming for a long time. To be honest, I’m glad it’s over with,” I admitted, shrugging.

She gave me a meaningful look and took the hairbrush from my hand, taking hold of my shoulders and turning me in my seat. “Let me do your hair.”

I smiled gratefully. I knew that wasn’t just what this was for; this was a supportive gesture because she thought I was going to be freaking out. I wasn’t though. Like I’d just assured her, I was totally fine and this had been coming for a long time. It should have happened years ago and then maybe I would have had a little more self-confidence and self-worth.