They say exit wounds don’t bleed. I never understood that until now. Until this moment, sitting here, reliving a ghost. Because the pain that ripped through me all those years ago? It was a gush, a hemorrhage, visible for everyone to see. But the wound I carry now, the one that truly eviscerated me from the inside out… that one is silent. Invisible. And it’s infinitely worse.
My life with them was perfect. Or, what I thought was perfect. We built a home, not just with walls and a roof, but with laughter, shared dreams, quiet mornings, and a future so clear I could almost taste it. We talked about everything. EVERYTHING. I trusted them with my deepest fears, my wildest hopes. They were my anchor, my horizon, my entire world. I remember thinking, this is it. This is forever. I’m finally safe.
Then the texts.A notification. A ping on their phone, left carelessly on the counter while they were in the shower. My hand, moving without thought, picking it up. A name I didn’t recognize. A message that made my stomach churn. “Can’t wait to see you tonight. Think of you all day.” And below it, a picture. Not explicit, not exactly. But undeniable. Their hand, intertwined with another’s, on a table at our favorite coffee shop. A small, intimate gesture that spoke volumes.
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My world imploded in that instant.
The air left my lungs. MY HEART WAS POUNDING SO HARD I THOUGHT IT WOULD SHATTER MY RIBCAGE. I scrolled. More messages. Pet names. Plans. A history I never knew existed, unfolding in black and white on a tiny screen. It wasn’t just a moment of weakness. This was an ongoing, secret life.
They came out of the shower, humming. I just stood there, holding the phone, my face probably white as a sheet. They saw it in my eyes, I think, before they even saw the phone. The humming stopped. Their smile vanished.
“What’s wrong?” they asked, their voice soft, laced with a concern that felt like a cruel joke.
I couldn’t speak. I just held out the phone, the evidence damning, undeniable.
They looked. Their face crumpled.
“I can explain,” they whispered.
“EXPLAIN WHAT?” I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat, raw and guttural. “Explain the betrayal? Explain the lies? Explain how you could look me in the eye, every single day, and pretend to love me while you were doing this?”
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The confrontation was brutal. A cyclone of accusations, tears, denials that quickly crumbled into desperate pleas for forgiveness. I remember the pain, sharp and physical, like a knife twisting in my gut. The humiliation was a hot flush across my skin. The trust, once so solid, evaporated into thin air, leaving behind a bitter, acrid taste. We divorced. It was swift, clinical, and utterly devastating. I watched the person I loved more than anything sign papers that dissolved our existence, acknowledging the affair, accepting responsibility. The entry wound bled profusely.
For years, I was a ghost myself.
A hollow shell.
I moved through the motions of life. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Every song on the radio, every couple holding hands, every scent of their cologne on a stranger, was a fresh stab. The grief was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Therapy. So much therapy. Pills to sleep, pills to wake up, pills to just be. Slowly, agonizingly, I started to rebuild. Brick by fragile brick. I learned to live again. To laugh again. To trust a little. I found a new partner, a kind, gentle soul who helped me piece together the shattered fragments of my heart. The scars were there, deep and intricate, but I told myself they were a testament to my survival. I was strong. I was a survivor. I had healed.
Then the phone call came.
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From their sister. The one I hadn’t spoken to in nearly a decade. She sounded frail, her voice a thin whisper. She was in hospice. “Please,” she’d rasped. “I need to tell you something. Before I go.”
A knot of dread tightened in my stomach. Why now? Why me? What could she possibly have to say? I didn’t want to open old wounds. But something in her voice, a desperate urgency, pulled me there.
The hospice room was sterile, cold. She lay there, a shadow of the vibrant woman I remembered. Her eyes, sunken and clouded, met mine. She took my hand, her grip surprisingly strong.
“I’m so sorry,” she began, her voice barely audible. “I should have told you years ago. I promised I wouldn’t. They made me promise.”
I just stared, my mind racing. What promise? What could be worse than what I already knew?
She squeezed my hand. “The affair… it wasn’t real.”
MY HEART STOPPED.
WHAT?
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My blood ran cold. My head spun. The room tilted. “What are you talking about?” I managed to choke out, my voice a strangled sound. “I saw the texts. I saw the pictures. They confessed!”
Tears welled in her eyes, tracking paths through the pallor of her cheeks.
“They were diagnosed,” she whispered, each word a hammer blow to my soul. “Glioblastoma. Aggressive. Untreatable. They had weeks, maybe months at best.”
The air in the room thickened, became unbreathable. No. This isn’t happening. This can’t be real.
“It was right before you found the ‘evidence’,” she continued, her voice gaining a desperate strength. “They staged it. Every text, every picture, every single lie. They asked a friend to help. To pretend to be the ‘other person’. To make it look undeniable.”
“WHY?” I screamed, a raw, primal sound of agony. “WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?”
“Because they loved you, you idiot!” she sobbed, tears streaming freely now. “They didn’t want you to watch them die. Didn’t want you to suffer through it, slowly, day by day. Didn’t want you to sacrifice your life, your future, for a losing battle. They wanted you to hate them. To leave. To find happiness.”
Un hombre con cara de preocupación | Fuente: Unsplash
My vision blurred. The room spun. Every memory, every moment of pain, every bitter tear I’d shed, every angry word, every moment of supposed healing… it was all built on a lie. Not a lie of betrayal, but a lie of profound, agonizing love and sacrifice. They hadn’t cheated on me. They had let me hate them. Let me believe the worst. All so I could escape a fate that would have broken me.
They had died alone, perhaps with only their sister knowing the terrible truth of their final act of love. I had spent years despising them, believing they were a monster, while they endured their final days with a secret agony, not just of their illness, but of my hatred.
The entry wound bled for years. It was a gushing, visible trauma. But the exit wound… the knowledge of what they truly did, the magnitude of their sacrifice, the years of hatred I unknowingly hurled at a person who was silently dying for me, protecting me… that doesn’t bleed. It festers. It gnaws. It’s a gaping, silent void in my soul. And it will never heal. It will just remain, a constant, sickening reminder that the most devastating wounds are the ones you never see, until it’s far too late.
Exit wounds don’t bleed. They just destroy you from the inside out.
