Throughout our marriage my husband lamented his life. He had only ever slept with two other women than me. He had never travelled abroad other than emigrating to Australia with his parents. He had not pursued the studies that he wanted. He had stayed in unfulfilling jobs, moving from factory floor to factory floor. His first marriage was very standard, with two kids, a mortgage, a dog and a cat, and a very normal divorce from his first wife, where they grew apart as the kids got older. His parents were wonderful, his upbringing was gentle and uneventful. He basically had a cookie cutter existence.
Everything about his life and his being up until he met me had been vanilla (which ironically was his favourite ice cream flavour).
Nothing eventful. Nothing exciting. Zero adventures. No stories to tell over the dinner table. No scars. No wounds. No mountains climbed. No triumphs over evil. No wins. No losses. Nothing, really.
But the thing is, none of that bothered me. He was who he was, and I loved him at that time, for that.
But….it bothered him. And it bothered him, greatly.
It bothered him so much so that when he juxtaposed his life to mine, he felt so inadequate that he chose to crush me down as if he was a car compactor at the junk yard squashing me, an entire vehicle, into a teeny tiny cube of compacted metal.
He would grill me in the evenings about the men (or women) I had slept with. My childhood. The jobs I had. The time I spent in prison. The ways I had been hurt and the people who had hurt me. He would dive so deep into my scars that we would get lost in the welts of my body that I barely came up for air for days. We trundled relentlessly through my traumas like Indiana Jones seeking his next stolen treasure.
My husband used to tell me we did all of this because he wanted to get to know me better. He wanted to understand every single part of me, to love me harder. But every little bread crumb that I dropped for him, made him resent me more. Resent me for the life that I had lived, and the life he had not. He once told me that he even resented the men who had loved me before him, because they had left the scraps of me for him to love. And as we picked me apart like a supermarket BBQ chicken every night, I started to see myself through his eyes. I started to see myself as a broken down, used up, good for nothing, corpse. But what I didn’t realise was that the hate he was projecting onto me, was the hate he felt for himself.
Then one very ordinary day over dinner, after a friend, with his backing, was being particularly racist, I found my feet and walked out. Back straight, chest out, face forward, I walked out of the restaurant, and then the very next day I walked out on him. I walked out on him and decided on a better life for myself. A life where my corners were not cut off and I could be authentically me without someone trying to sharpen my soft edges. I realised that man had broken my wings but still somehow expected me to fly. I could not remain in that relationship anymore. I finally saw him for who he was: a mediocre man who couldn’t love me for all that I was because he hated all that he was or had never been. He hated that his life was so mayonnaise and punished me for all my flavour.
I reasoned I had done us both a favour walking away. I had a chance to be me, and now that I was free, so was he. He was free to have all the one night stands he felt he missed out on. To do all the things he regretted not doing as a single man. All the things he used to say meeting me had put an end to. He could finally be the bachelor he always yearned to be. But……life isn’t like that, is it? As they say, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. He wanted me back, but the short story is that I didn’t go back. And instead of my ex sowing his wild oats all over the place, he jumped straight into another relationship.
I wasn’t jealous. Not at all, and I’m still not. I am, if anything, amused. This man hurt me. He took from me in ways that no man should. So, this was the best revenge: the continuation of a long and ordinary life for an ordinary man. Him jumping straight into a relationship, doing what he has always done will get him what he has always got – a mundane life, exactly what he feared, dreaded and hated the most about himself was manifesting.
I hope he stays in this relationship for a very long time. I hope they do day in and day out together. Food shopping and paying bills, cooking and cleaning, making love three times a week, and watching tv on the couch at night. I hope this stock standard relationship lasts a lifetime, because I know that is his nightmare, but I also know that this is all he is capable of. His dreaming space is so limited that it cannot and does not extend beyond the confines of ‘normal’.
As for me, I am happy to have freed my spirit from his shackles. Love shouldn’t have chains or bars or cuffs. Contrary to what I’ve been told, I am not a carcass left behind by old boyfriends, ex-husbands or former lovers. I am entirely whole. I am hope made flesh. And I am not going to be wooed by the vultures who circle above me. It’s a new era for me. An era of loving me for me and rejecting the projecting of others. All easier said than done, but if I have learnt anything over the years it is that I have strength in my bones and fire in my belly and I am anything but ordinary.
So, husband, I bid you adieu, and fare you well. May your relationship blossom and prosper, and may it be long, steady and stable. You deserve it!
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