I went off the rails.

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I had betrayed my spouse and bed with other male.
My husband now gets nauseated when he sees me, refuses to pay attention to me, is rude to me, and has moved out of the house we rented. He hated me and said I betrayed him and wanted me to leave empty-handed.

I was sitting in the empty hall, the couch still showing traces of her sitting yesterday, my hand still cold to the touch. My phone flipped through all the records of his messages, the last one was the "Don't look for me again" he sent, and the previous records were all he asked me "What do you want to eat after work", "I forgot to add clothes when it's cold today". I tried to send the sentence "I fixed the cooker at home", the message was sent out, soon it showed read, but no reply.

The next morning, I went to the market to buy his favorite ribs. I wanted to make a soup and bring them over to him. I don't know where he moved, so I have to wait downstairs at his office. When I waited until noon, I saw him coming out of the building, talking and laughing with his colleagues, but as soon as he saw me, his face immediately sank and he turned around and walked to the other side. I caught up and handed him the thermos, which he didn’t take, but stepped back and said, “Don’t you think it’s disgusting for you to give me this stuff?” I stood there, watching the water dripping from the thermos onto the floor, the same as my tears.

Back home, opening the closet, his clothes are still hanging on the left – suit, sweatshirt in neat order, on the right are my dresses and jacket. We used to joke that the left side was the "breadwinner area" and the right side was the "beautiful area", and we had to laugh at each other every time we picked up our clothes. Now I folded his clothes piece by piece into the storage bin, and when I folded to that gray hoodie, thinking back to last winter when I had a cold and fever, he carried me to the hospital in this shirt, keeping my hand warm all the way in his pocket.

After a few days, I asked my mutual friend Ah Lee to help me say good things. Ah Lee said she had dinner with my husband yesterday and he drank a lot of wine. He said that when he thinks of me with another person, he feels like he has been cut and there is no way to forgive. Lee advised me to either wait any longer or accept reality. But I don’t want to accept it, I still want to go on with it.

That night, I sat on the bench downstairs in the estate for a long time. We used to come here for a walk often after dinner, and he would hold my hand and tell me about company anecdotes or listen to me moan about my worries at work. Once I had an argument with a colleague and was sitting here crying, and he crouched in front of me to help me wipe my tears and said, “In the future, when you are wronged, tell me that I will always stand by your side.” Now the long chair is still there, but he is not there.

Another week passed and he suddenly sent a message to come back and pick up the rest. I pre-cleaned the house and cooked her favorite sweet and sour ribs and tomato scrambled eggs and set them on the dining table, thinking she might have two bites. He walked straight into the room after arriving, grabbed his computer and luggage, and didn’t look at the dishes on the dining table or say a word to me the whole time. When he reached the door he stopped and said, “I paid the rent this month, you can find your own place next month.” After opening the door, he left without looking back.

I watched the dishes on the dining table slowly cool, picked up the chopsticks and folded the ribs, there was no taste at all, as empty as my heart. Walking to the terrace, I saw that the leaves of the succulents he had planted before had faded. He used to water every morning and said these small plants need to be taken care of just like me. No one cares now, they are about to die, just like our relationship.

Later I moved to my girlfriend's house. My girlfriend advised me to stop thinking and start over. But I often can’t help but think back to the old days—to the breakfast he made me every morning, to the supper he would bring me back from overtime, to the surprises he secretly prepared for my birthday. I know it was my fault, it was me who destroyed our home with my own hands, but now it is too late to say anything.

Once I went to the supermarket to buy something and saw some milk on the shelf. I thought back to the fact that he used to always ask me to drink pure milk, saying it was good for my health. I would buy two boxes every time, one for home and one for my company. I picked up a carton of milk and put it back down. Because I know, no one will ever mention me drinking milk again, no one will ever treat me as well as he did.

Now I take a detour every day after work and pass by the estate I used to live in. I look at the building we used to live in. The lights are sometimes on and sometimes off, and I don’t know if there are new people living inside. I sometimes think that if I had done nothing wrong, we should still be in that little house now, cooking together, watching TV together, and thinking about the future together.

But now, those are only memories.