I used to be...

I used to be married and now I’m not. Today would’ve been my 3^rd year wedding anniversary. And I’ve been sitting in my feelings all day trying to make sure I remember every detail of where I was 3 years ago and where I am now and how I got here alone.

The one scene that is stuck in my head is when we took our vows. I went first and looked him in his eyes and even cried during them. I meant every single word. Now thinking back, I think it was the first of many times where he was there in body but not in spirit. Yes, he looked in my eyes and said the words but I think that might’ve been the moment he checked out. Which would explain why I found out 4 months into our marriage that he was crushing on his female co-worker and texting her that he loved and missed her during a trip to Disney I had planned with all of our friends. It was at this time that I also found the receipt of a Christmas present he bought the same female co-worker. He bought another woman a Christmas present 6 weeks after our wedding day.

She’s just a friend, he would say. You’re the one I love, he would say. And yet there were still videos of women masturbating saved on his phone. And an ongoing relationship with this woman at work the entire time we were married. I guess the beginning of the end was, the week of Christmas last year. When his phone was going off and he was dead asleep. We had just finished moving back into his parent’s house so that we could save money for a house. His phone was going off non-stop and I finally got fed up and when into it to reply to whoever it was. And that’s when I found a Skype conversation with the same female co-worker that went on for months.

In the thread, he would tell her that he loved her and that she was so cute and awesome. He told her how he thought they were soulmates and that they should runaway together. He told her about how they should go to the movies and cuddle. This conversation went back several months, before during and after my mother’s transplant surgery.

These are the memories I need to hold on to and try to celebrate.

Not my dress or my makeup or the pictures or even the moment when I said my vows and meant them.

I should hold on to the memories of being his wife more than the glamour of being his bride.

Because being his wife was hell. Not just because of this woman at his job that he couldn’t help himself but betray me with.  That was one part of it. The other part was when he would call me a dumb bitch for making the temperature warmer a couple of degrees. Or all the nights I voluntarily slept on a couch because I didn’t want to be groped every night like a cheap hooker or deal with the loud lawnmower snoring coming out of his face for hours on end. I should remember all the times he told me there was something wrong with me for never wanting to have sex with him.

I should remember the time he told me I was being selfish because I didn’t want to move to Orlando when my mother was sick with liver cancer and waiting for a transplant.

I should remember how he called me a miserable cunt bitch that one time I tried to have a conversation about always vacationing in Disney and never going anywhere else. 

I should remember his hot breath in my face as he yelled at me that "Even Beyonce got cheated on".

I shouldn’t grieve being his wife. But I guess it’s okay for me to grieve how great it was being his bride. Just for today.