A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement. You can throw all your love and energy and attention down into it, and the hole will never fill.
I was still trying to explain to myself how I’d become this person, this discarded wife, when I’d never even wanted to be a wife in the first place.
I wrote in my notebook, Please let there be a lesson at the end of this.
Early in our marriage, John had said we should make our life decisions mathematically, with numeric values assigned to each category. His art career and day job both got fives. Mine got threes because my career was more advanced than his and my day job didn’t pay as much as his. When I suggested th…
I hoped the child wouldn’t do that to his wife.
Then I wondered if John’s mother had ever had that thought.
I became a tugboat hauling around a mortifying barge of unwashed sadness. My son stood on deck, frightened and helpless. My breath reeked of the grave. I was inhuman, annihilated.
When he fucked me from behind, he’d always rested his elbows on my lower back, and every single time he did it, I told him that it hurt, and every single time, including that time, he put his elbows right back onto my back as soon as he got lost again in his private euphoria.
