UnkindlyYours

I remember the day my marriage fell apart like it was yesterday and not 3 years ago.

It was a long enough day already and I had been preparing for an even longer night. We were stressed, stretched way too thin, and had just bought a house. Y’know the trifecta for a perfect storm.

We were tired, I was cranky and I hadn’t eaten all day. So it should have come as no surprise that we would fight over what we would have for dinner. Just like all the other times we fought over what to have for dinner. And after the stupidest fight we had ever had, we went out to a new restaurant, so we could fight in public instead, naturally.

And as you might suspect, it went horribly, and I realized after fighting in the kitchen, fighting at the restaurant – which was really tasty – fighting in the grocery store parking lot after dinner, and fighting again in our kitchen, that I was miserable. Not because the day was long and the night was longer, not because we were in the midst of longest fight we have ever had, but because I was looking into the eyes of someone I could tell did not love me.

Those eyes that had looked at me in bewilderment when we talked about my book obsession and awful music taste, the same eyes that cried with me during our darkest days, the eyes that used to sparkle at the potential the future might hold, had become the same eyes that were attached the person I married, the person who had become my closest confidant, and best friend. and that person, Those eyes, stared at me like I was inhuman, less than, and burdensome.

I wish I knew then, that night, when words hurt worse than any beating I had ever taken, was the start of the end, but I was really blind and naive. I didn’t know to look into my mind for a few moments let alone think about what this could mean for our future, MY future.

At the time, I thought it was a tired look, or one of exhaustion or despair. I wish I could have foreseen how the end would play out, or have guessed at least that an end was coming. Would I have acted differently, who’s to say?

What I know now is that I have self-respect in place of self-doubt, and hope where there was only uncertainty; and that my awful music taste really was awful, but I only learned that this past year. Anyway, all this to stay I was never going to last in that relationship and my fear of the unknown nearly got me killed. Not in the self-deprecating, “My life is SO over,” way, but in the, “My parents are burying their child way.” And let me tell you, that realization was sickening, and embarrassing.

It wasn’t until a few weeks after we separated, when the Cool Older Cousin sat me down and told me I was losing my spark, and I had become small that even thought to look inward, and much my dismay, it was true. I had started behaving like someone with no self respect, no agency, and no capacity for self compassion to demand better for myself. I felt weak, used, and torn apart by someone who did not love me.