Being near Martin more specifically. With me, as they entered their teen years, they became indifferent. As adults, we were almost strangers.
I heard from them occasionally, but those conversations where short and stilted, painful beyond belief, so I was almost relieved it didn’t happen more often. The guilt would hit me that I didn’t reach out. Then the pity party would start because my own children hated me.
Could I blame them? I also hated myself.
I hated Martin, too. However, panic at the thought of him leaving made me say, “If you’re unhappy, we can get some counseling. Fix things.” Because as much as I disliked him, now that he’d offered me an out, I suddenly didn’t want it.
The thought of being alone…
I tried vainly to think of something, anything, to cancel out the roaring in my ears. The heavy sensation pressing on me from all sides. The debilitating dismay as I saw my life, my future, being flushed away to make room for what Martin wanted.
It was always about what he wanted.
For a half-second, a rebellious thought overcame my anxiety. Why is everything always about him? What about me?
The ember of rage flared brighter than ever, yet I remained cold.
“I don’t want to fix things.” His short, clipped words brimmed with anger. “Get this through your thick skull. I don’t want to be with you anymore. You’re boring. Fat. Stupid. I mean look at you.” He waved a hand, and his face twisted in disgust. “You don’t even try to look nice anymore.”
Another verbal slap and a part of me wanted to argue, and then I glanced down at my outfit. An oversized shirt to hide the bulging middle and stretchy leggings in a soft faded cotton. I’d stopped wearing denim a long time ago due to chafing. I’d gained a lot of weight during my pregnancies. Even more in the past few years as boredom put me on the couch.
While I’d gotten a job once the kids hit high school, Martin had refused my request to go back to work full-time. He said it would make him look bad. I was secretly glad, given the idea of working more than twenty hours a week for minimum wage meant I’d have a hard time keeping up with the housework. Perhaps had I gotten a better paying job I might have splurged and hired some help. Except, as Martin liked to remind me, I wasn’t qualified to do anything. I was a wife. A mom. A homemaker.
“—a slob. Why do you think we don’t have sex anymore?”
I bit my tongue before I said what first came to mind. I wasn’t allowed to speak about his problems below the belt. “I’ve offered.”
I had, out of some sense of obligation and because sometimes my books had some steamy parts that reminded me of how I used to like sex when I was younger.
“And I said no to those offers because you disgust me. The sight of your body turns me off.”
The cruelty of his statement stole my breath. Martin had always possessed an acerbic manner, and it only got stronger as we got older. But this level of meanness… When did the hating begin?
The cold in me intensified as my rage overflowed. How dare he speak to me like this? Something in me rebelled. “I thought we stopped having sex because you couldn’t get it up anymore.”
It was mean. Horrible of me. Making fun of a condition that came with age and a relief that I no longer had to pretend.
The smirk on his lips should have warned me. “A limp dick only with you. Turns out I just needed the right woman. A real woman.”
Okay, that sucker-punched me even more than the body insults. I barely had any breath to speak. “You’re cheating on me?”
“I’ve moved on, and so should you.”
“To do what?” I practically yelled. I’d revolved my whole world around him. As miserable as it was, I had nothing else.
“Do whatever you want, but do it somewhere else. I want you out of my house. Take your stuff and go.”
“Where?” This was my home. This couldn’t be happening.
“I don’t really care so long as you’re gone by the time I come back.”
Hold on a second. “Where are you going?
“None of your business.”
My lips trembled. “You can’t just leave me.”
“I can. And don’t you dare start your crying. This is your fault.” With those final words, he slammed out of the house.
And I broke.
I sat down on my immaculate kitchen floor and sobbed. It wasn’t pretty. Or quiet. Or even dry.
Snot ran down and dripped from my chin, mixing with my salty tears. I took great, hiccupping gulps as my body shook and I cried. Cried hard.
If asked, I’m not even sure I could have said why I was so sad. In many respects, Martin was right. Our marriage hadn’t had any kind of true intimacy or love in a long time. Yet, it existed. It gave me purpose and meaning. A reason to get up early every morning.
Did it matter if I was happy? I wasn’t even sure what happiness looked like. How did one define happiness? I had a roof over my head, clothes, food, my own car. But those things came at a cost. My dignity. My self-worth.
When was the last time I’d truly smiled? Laughed? I didn’t even have my children anymore. Martin had chased them away, and I, too meek to confront him over it, allowed it.
Allowed that man to guide my every move and thought. He was right about one thing. I was dumb. In one fell swoop, he took my life and my future away from me.
I am nothing.
I was a nobody. No one needed me. Not a single person I could turn to or count on because I’d driven them all away.
Would anyone really care if I were gone?
My children would mourn me, but not for long. They’d escaped, and I knew they blamed me for allowing Martin to be Martin. As a father, he was the hockey dad on the sidelines, screaming obscenities at referees and other parents. Every year he was escorted from an arena and I got pitying looks. I wasn’t surprised when Geoffrey stopped playing.
As for Wendy, his little girl, she wasn’t so little. A chubby girl growing up, she’d retained some of the weight as a teen, and her father mocked her. “You’d need a dozen of those fairies with magic dust to make you fly.”
It was one of the few times I stood against him. Where I tried to protect my daughter.
“Don’t call her fat.”
“Don’t tell me what to do in my house with my kid,” he’d sneered. “Do you want her to end up looking like you?”
Rather than fight, I’d buried myself in a room with a book and a pint of ice cream. I did that a lot. Hiding from the ugliness in the hopes it would go away.
It never actually worked, and yet I couldn’t break the cycle. I still recalled how I’d hated it when my parents split up. I couldn’t do that to my kids. Then, once they were gone, I stayed. Why?
I actually knew the answer to that. Fear.
I was a fat, middle-aged woman with no job skills, nothing. Where would I go? What would I do? I couldn’t start over.
Except now Martin had left me no choice.
He’d told me I had to pack up and go. The very idea had me hyperventilating. Where would I go?
My first thought was to call the kids, and I immediately dismissed it. I couldn’t ask Wendy or Geoff. They didn’t deserve to have their lives disrupted, not to mention I didn’t think I could handle the “I told you so” from my daughter.