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I didn't know fear until this week, when the entire ground floor of my world crumbled away beneath my feet. I suppose I could do away with the cliches, but they do help one think, don't they? Give you a way to describe how you feel when your feelings are indescribable.

I had been afraid ever since we met that tenuous way that we did that it would somehow turn out not to be real. Your feelings for me. Oh, I knew mine for you were real enough. I was feeling them. But despite what Atticus Finch says, you can't really get inside another man's shoes, nor can you get inside his skin. And I always tend to believe the worst anyway. Maybe it saves me from further disappointment when it actually happens. Who knows. Maybe it's the OCD.

So my fear has been, all along, that you'd find another. And so you did. And you called her "baby." And you told her you loved her. You did this while I cooked your dinner, washed your clothes, and took care of your children.

Fear? I guess, what I am afraid of, is that I still love you. You will still hurt me. Not that this is all over. It isn't. But my fear is that one day, if I can forgive (but not forget), that it will happen again, and worse.

Fear? There is an old saying that you reap what you sow, and I had sown this same bitter crop, hadn't I? If she felt remotely like I do, the one you were wed to before, then I am at a loss as to how to begin to apologize for how I wronged her.

Fear? That still you lie, and you love her and not me, and that you will leave.

Fear? It hardly seems adequate to describe how I feel. And it's only a part of it all. There's anger, humiliation, rejection, and a profound sense of sadness that I can't describe. There's loss.

You loved me so much once. Why did you do this?