I have encountered one of the most difficult times in my writing. Never before has my real life bled over into a story that I have been working on. Granted, sometimes my stories are bits and pieces of things that have happened to me or something that I have experienced, or maybe a dream that I have had and then I work on how that would all play out. But, now things just got a little too clsoe to home. My current project includes two friends that learn to navigate life together. It is a testiment to true love and it is a testiment to true sisterhood. Although the book has been outlined for quite some time, it has come to the part where one character finds out that an affair has become part of their lives. Now, enter my real life. My husband and I have been together for 16 years. In those 16 years there was a couple that was so close to us that in the beginning we were all dirt poor and lived together and had probabley the best times of our lives. This is the couple that we have vacationed with yearly. This is the couple that I am blood related to the wife and the husband has been my husband's best friend since middle school. We all met at the same time. We are all part of this incredible love story that is better than fiction. And now, it is all ruined. I found out that the husband.... he has been having an affair for the past five years. For the past five years, the man that I thought I knew; the man that I truely believed to be a great person; the man that I was proud my husband was with... is not the man I knew at all. Not only has he been cheating... But, he straight up left his wife and moved in with another woman. I feel like I am getting a divorce. I don't understand. This isn't my marriage. Yet, I feel like I have been cheated on. I feel like I have been let down. I can help her pick up the pieces. I can be vindictive when she needs me to be strong. I can help with her children. But can I get over the feeling of betrayal? Can I stand it if my husband has to never see him again? How does one get over this? How can I find the strength to write about it? Does that make the topic and characters even more real? Is it better to let the raw emotion come right out on to the page or is it better to write that emotion into your current work? I am stumped. I am heartbroken. I am wounded.