A slipping down life

I remember reading Anne Tyler’s A slipping-down life. Maybe that was when my concept of love became corrupted - when I became obsessed with making ‘it’ work regardless the advice from professionals and friends, regardless the reality I was living.  I may not have etched his name into my forehead with a penknife, or piece of glass … or whatever the protagonist did in that story, but I etched him deeply into my life and it hurt me just the same.

I have carried the scars and my determined stance for fifteen years.

Of course, it could have been longer but for that last encounter.  That last weekend of humiliation and destruction.  The moment when he took all he could. My mind skirts around the details - freezes and backs away.

I’m ashamed. I will not go back.

So now, I’m the crazy one and he the sane. He has moved on with his life.

She’s a carbon copy of his daughter, our daughter. He has made a new start - mid life crisis or not.  I’m told he has fond memories of our good times. I don’t.

I wonder if he thinks of the couch. My tears. His cruelty.