Betrayal. What is worse than betrayal?
I'd rather lose a friend to cancer or to some other rare disease than to lose a friend to betrayal. At least I can morn that loss to cancer out of my love for that person; but to morn the loss of a relationship, which was nurtured out of friendship and trust, because of betrayal while that person still lives is the most difficult thing I have ever had to bear. Losing someone to cancer or some other fatal disease does none of these to the degree the betrayal does. Betrayal can send people into depression, makes people question who they are, and robs people of their self-worth. I know. It happened to me.
I have been betrayed more than once in my lifetime. I have been betrayed by my lover, my husband, my students, and my family. Each betrayal, although unique in my own experience of it, has been just as bad as the previous one. Each one has left me questioning my judgment. Perhaps there was something -- sometime, somewhere -- that I did to cause this all to happen to me. I suppose I can make a list. Like the time when I stole that chocolate bar from my parents top drawer; I was three years old. Or like the time I took fabric from the maids who worked for us in Thailand. Or like the time I "found" $20 in someone's office and decided to keep it.
This is the story of my twelve-year journey into the nightmare of one of the worst betrayals I have ever experienced to date. This is the story of my love for two people who conspired to take what was mine, what I had work so hard to get, while I saw and talked to them almost everyday. One of the lead players is dead -- cancer -- and the other still lives, free of the charges I couldn't bring against her. Both of them I loved to the deepest corners of my heart. Both of them I trusted with my life and with my livelihood
It has been a long difficult journey, but for the first time since my discovery and consequent handling of this betrayal almost four years ago, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel; a tunnel that has taken me through much more than six lawsuits, four robberies, two real estate losses, and one extreme bout of depression out of which I am only now recovering. It's a work in progress culminating into a novel which I hope to complete within the next couple of years.
This is a story of that betrayal, of the hurt and the healing of it, of the people involved who were also hurt by it, and of how I found the strength to move on....
Much of that healing is to let the world know what happened.
....soon to be out in print.
-Sausan
