Danger

Something seething, cold and malevolent in the back of my mind pricked up it's ears today, even as I sincerely wished her well.  I knew it, and did my best to cut it off from whatever life support it had been clinging to, unnoticed for so long, but I failed.  It's awake now, and it knows me very well.
I've just realized that until I was married I'd never been embarrassed to tell anyone something that had happened to me.  Whether it had been my own fault, or someone else's the thought never crossed my mind to be humiliated because I was able to accept what had happened as life, and move on without reservation.  Even now I can tell all manner of crazy stories about horrible, traumatic,even tragic experiences without batting an eye, but I was always embarrassed to tell anyone about her infidelity.  I felt great pause, and a knot of guilt and fear climb into my throat whenever I had occasion to mention her many financial betrayals, or the time she deliberately stayed in harm's way on a whim and some childish excuse while I was away. 
All these things pale in comparison to the bitterness and humiliation I felt, and still feel, when I have to tell people she left me.  I know why now.  Because I've always taken pride (first mistake) in knowing people and their character and every failure of hers was a failure of mine that could have been avoided by the simple choice not to have married her at all.  I could have avoided all of that, but I didn't because I was in love, she was in love, and we were going to figure it all out together.  It wasn't even naive, I went in with my eyes wide open and the world at arms' length, but it didn't matter. 
She would have been (probably will be) THE perfect wife for someone, almost anyone else, but not for me.  The things that didn't work out were academic, but infinitely important to us on opposite ends of the spectrum and therefore irreconcileable.  Why then did it take 11 years?  Stubbornness?
Because I loved her, and because I thought God wanted me to stay (last mistake.)  At least I was wrong about that.
They're moving in together, with my children, and talking marriage in the summer.  The ONE thing I asked her for, she had to lie to me about again.  Again, she's doing exactly what I said she'd do, and I can't believe she'd ever do but I read it all in her months ago..  I'm so, so, sick of being right...and I just want to...but I won't.

Stress:  The condition resulting from the mind overriding the body's natural urge to throttle someone who desperately needs it.