I have written this in the I wish I told you category. I really wish I had told myself. I wish I had told my 25 year old girl self that it’s not normal to feel a sense of death to self when preparing to be married. It’s not normal to be made to feel I didn’t earn a ring or getting down on one knee. Former self, you are worth so so much more. You are worth a hundred times more than any man or woman can give you, and you shouldn’t be with a someone that doesn’t understand that. 

I don’t know that there’s much I wish I could tell you, old flame. I have said my peace to you many times. It’s always fallen on deaf ears. I cried in the bathtub on our wedding night and it’s taken four long years to recover from the degradation and humiliation you make me feel all the time. It’s taken two pregnancies, both of which you displayed extreme medical neglect when I was in crisis for me to acknowledge that I no longer have to keep your cruelty a secret. I don’t care what’s wrong with you, I don’t care why, I don’t even care the depth of your depravity I will probably never know. I trust you about as far as I can throw you and I suspect that there have been betrayals I will never know about. I wish the world could know that when pressed you have no character or courage of conviction. Every single person close to you has felt betrayed by you sometime or another and we all make excuses. I honestly think I am probably doing the worst thing I could possibly do to you right now – Divorcing you and destroying your chance to portray you are “better” than your extended family – a near pathological need to have the Norman Rockwell experience. But it literally has nothing to do with you. I have to save myself from you, from this relationship that has taught me our truest and most closely held dreams can be twisted up in toxicity until they rot. Dreams die hard, and it’s been a slow painful process. Gangrenous pieces of my heart have been amputated, and I am done.   

I do not desire you anymore. I do not think well of you, I can barely articulate positive attributes to our children. I will though, because I will not rob them of what little father they have. 

One day our children will see through you and it will be tragic. The children and I – we will have been seeing one another through the years. They will know my pain, my story, my character, my ethos and my failures. You are a liar. And it breaks my heart for them that one day you will disappoint them as you have disappointed me. They will find your love shallow and cruel and insincere as I have. I regret giving them your DNA – but I also know they are beautiful souls. And I will be here for them to pick up the pieces. I will teach them they were born with strength and honor and pride that runs in my veins. And it is more than sufficient to make up for your pathetic contribution. I am seething, and one day I know this rage will reveal herself as grief that will fade into the background of my life. For now, I am grateful to be making strides away from you. I don’t know how I will make it, but I will.