It was June 6, 2008, on American Airlines Flight 438 from Nice to Dallas after having chaperoned my son’s class trip abroad when he walked onto our plane, took the window seat of the empty row beside mine, and slid the cocktail napkin onto my tray …

Looks like you need to talk. I’m a good listener.

He’d just watched me trying NOT to fall apart listening to “The Real Life” by 3 Doors Down for the first time ever in my life. Keep in mind that just hours before that Godforsaken (or was it GodSENT) note appeared, I’d just shed the first layer of my skin sitting in the dark on the shoreline in France with our Israeli tour guide, “Adoram”, the first of two innocent bystanders foolish enough to ask me “what’s wrong”.

With them, I was just “speaking” and they listening. No judgement. No advice. Just two people I never thought I’d see again and felt “safe” to slit my wrists upon and verbally vomit what was then an entire lifetime of “secrets” that were killing me. If only they’d known what they were signing up for, right? I was a like a really bad song on a radio they just couldn’t shut off – two unwilling soldiers in the war of me reconciling my own soul.

By the way …

YES, I was married when we met. NO, I never slept with him. (Although, he’s one of the only men I have or will ever let really “hug” me.) YES, emotional affairs are cheating. YES, it was wrong. NO, I’m not ashamed of it. YES, I’d still send that “email heard round the world” and flipped over the proverbial game table of my then “perfectly BULLSHIT” life! YES, I’m still very much in contact with “The Flyboy” who still lives in Sweden, and YES, I very much do love him. We speak on the phone as often as we can and I see him whenever he’s in Dallas for his pilot simulator trainings. YES, he loves me, too. YES, he’s going to see this, because he’s been here reading The Diary and on my social media “hiding in PLANE sight” all the while. And so, with that …

Dear Flyboy,

Hi there, it’s me again! Thank you! Just THANK YOU! This REAL life I live now truly is so far away from the liar, liar, pants on fire fake one I used to, err, “live”, and I have God, Adoram, you, and that silly little napkin to blame for it!

~ Love Forever … ME!