Chapter 1
And there I stood in a home much better than the one I had shared with someone I had once known as a husband - he was a farce of the word’s very definition, though he’d be quick to tell anyone I was a farce of the word wife if one could put up with his disjointed sermons of hate.
Just remembering them, I felt something twitch within me, something deep and old, something that made me dizzy for just a second. I breathed a sigh of relief, I never had to hear another one of those as long as I lived.
I stood at the running sink with my coal black hair pulled back revealing a face of creamy white flesh by a headband. I cupped my tattooed hands under the faucet and watched as they filled with water, transforming from a writer’s tool to that of a miniature swimming pool for some mysterious miniature people.
I splashed cold water on my face, and I felt the sleep take a hasty retreat from my skin and eyes when my phone next to me wiggled as I always kept it on silent - the past few years ushered in scammers from faraway lands trying everything they could think of to take your money - sob stories, fronting as a company, pretending to be your significant other, pretending to be a celebrity, amongst other ideas just as sleazy.
With this brought a fresh wave of racism in America, old derogatory words for people of colour came rushing back into the backwoods mouths of the ignorant American people; this alone made me happy I chose to surround myself with those rare Americans who weren’t like that, and had entered a new relationship with my best friend, he wasn’t American, he was Canadian, but he lived in the same state I did, just he held onto the Canadian way of life.
My phone screen had gone dark already and using a tattooed knuckle to give the dark screen a light knock, up came a piece of art that would forever put a smile in my face and heart forever and always, a piece my cartoonist boyfriend and best friend had made for me. The time was nine thirty-three and my boyfriend worked the night shift, I knew he was in bed, sleeping and saw I had a text message, I knew (and hoped!) it could either be my good friend or my best friend (the one I wasn’t dating). But it was a number - no name attached - I unlocked my phone and went to my text messages app and read the message:
It was someone - a he or she or perhaps they - and they were telling me about when they got off of work, I had no idea where they worked and not to be completely mean-spirited but I really didn’t care. Another message was sent by the same person, this time asking me if that would work for me to come over, it was a wrong number obviously and messaged back that they had reached the wrong number and added an emoji to show that I was sympathetic to their plight. I put my phone down and resumed the attention to my face.
Pumping my green lightly exfoliating face wash onto my fingers and rub massaging circles upon my skin before washing my hands of the excess of face soap from my hands. I pulled open a drawer and like a seabird plucking an unsuspecting fish from the briny blue, I grabbed my facial moisturizer and set it next to my pineapple-scented hand moisturizer. I turned back to the sink to wash my face when I saw another text from the same number. They used my first name, and it dawned on me clearly and brightly, that the husband I had left was messaging me, asking me for my help to locate his tablet he had misplaced.
He wanted my help for something that would never be my problem again. I knew if I messaged him back a no, he was the type to come over to my residence and put the barrel of a gun to my head and squeeze the trigger - one less female in the world, rise up men! We finally rule the world! I hated men like that, men who loathed women with a violent feeling because, between their legs, nothing dangled between their knees. So instead, I told him I was busy doing my morning routine and was far too busy to waste my morning texting people. He told me that was a fair enough point for he has just finished his morning routine, again, mistaking me for someone who actually cares. Before I could ask him to leave me to my morning routine he began to tell me his, a walk down the hill to the garbage can and when he was in his home, he gave himself a thirty-minute workout.
While I thought that wasn’t a bad routine for someone who was nearly four hundred pounds - low impact - I said nary a thing to him, not wishing to enable another unhinged insanity-filled sermon. But alas, my silence was like that of an invite for his insanity, as he began to tell me how it was actually nice, he no longer felt dependent on me for the expected motivations he felt a partner should give. I had tried so many times in so many different ways to motivate him, but his laziness was an illness that he wasn’t willing to cure. He continued with the verbal vomit that it was nice to not be told that he did not want to do something when he said he wanted to. I hoped he didn’t think by showing me he was capable of taking care of himself I’d want him back. He hoped the time apart from him was helping me. I thanked him and turned my phone over hiding the screen like a shameful secret.
From between the phone and the counter, I saw the white-yellow light, someone had messaged me. And I knew deep down my ex-husband had probably sent me another message. I picked it up again after putting my face cream back into my drawer; leaving it open as I needed to do my make-up still - and read the message. It was an invitation if I wanted to talk about my healing, he would listen, but he was happy that I hadn’t completely isolated him from his support network of brothers. He had isolated me from my friends and family but in typical Millennial fashion, he was hard at work - for once - on rewriting our marriage to make himself out to be the victim. I rolled my eyes, I guess I had been given the role of the bad guy though I hadn’t beaten my wife or cheated on my wife. Another message came in, it was him telling me not to worry about helping him on Thursday. I wasn’t worried and before I could finish reading the second message, a third bumped up the thread.
He had stopped and wasn’t going back to the Men Going Their Own Way and Red/Black Pill movement videos, it was still his wish to talk to me and be my friend, and he said something so truthful, that he assumed I did not care but his friends - his support network of brothers - while supporting him, hand not put me down in his eyes at least. I said okay to everything, no reason to try and reason with someone as unhinged as him and my okay was apparently an invitation for another message: Okay for me to pick you up? Or for Edward to bring you over? Seeing as how I’d never be getting into a car with him, my boyfriend would be taking me - if I had even agreed and I hadn’t. If he was taking me, he didn’t honestly think he wanted me there, good! If he was able to come by and pick me up, then he would like extra time to talk with me. “Edward would be driving me.”
“I’ll find my tablet when I find it then,” came his reply. I hoped, I prayed that was it, but no, he said that was actually not fair of him. I needed the support of my best friend and he understood that. He would think upon wanting my help, but he did not want the likes of Edward in his home.
