Chapter 1. I'm Not Making Excuses.
Three months ago, I destroyed my fairytale marriage to the perfect man. There may still be a shred of hope we could rebuild, but everyone, from the trained professionals helping us to the people who know us and love us most, say it is unlikely that we will stay married. Apparently, the mature, responsible thing for me to hope for is an amicable divorce, healthy co-parenting, and salvaging what’s left of our friendship.
Even though they all think I’m an evil, wretched whore, they still expect me to only dream of the mature, responsible thing for myself. Newsflash, if I could be mature and responsible about things, maybe I wouldn’t be such a fucking whore, would I?
Frankly, fuck them. Fuck all of them.
I know I have never deserved Danny, not even at the start. All the way back in kindergarten they were already whispering in his ear that he was too good for me. She’s bad. She’s trouble. She’s too much. She’s a distraction.
Ms. Marie likes to tell a funny story at family dinners -- how Ms. DiPasquale in second grade brought her in to discuss how Danny had been hanging out with the wrong crowd and it worried her. Marie was worried too, of course. What wrong crowd? She knew all of Danny’s friends. So, she looked into it more, and it turned out that the wrong crowd was just me. And everyone laughs, even though they have heard the story before, because it’s supposed to be cute and sweet. Skinny little Carrie, all blonde curls and Pokémon green eyes. Adorable. How could she be bad?
Yet some of the laughs are always a little awkward, even so many years later. They know. Nobody hesitated to tell me back then. The joke was that I should always do confession last because nobody wanted to wait in line behind me. Principal Heart would say “see you next week Donna” to my mom when she picked me up from detention. In third grade, everyone could pick their own seat, except me. I had to sit in “Carrie’s seat” at the front of the class, where the teacher could keep an eye on me.
It wasn’t that I was a monster. It was just the consistency of my violations. They expected me to be bad and I rewarded their suspicion every time. By and large, I’m not even sorry. I needed to do what I did. Bitches looking at Danny with big doe eyes? Well, what was I supposed to do but give them a beatdown? I was always in trouble for uniform violations, but I was never going to bother my parents about the stupid uniform. We really were poor as shit, and we really couldn’t afford to live in that house, in the better side of the Old Neighborhood. So, I just did as best I could. Homework? I did it if I needed to, but so much of it was stupid. I was going to grow up to be Danny’s housewife anyway. What did I need long division for?
I’m not making excuses for myself. Every kid in the Old Neighborhood had it bad. The big paper factory had closed and then the engine parts factory moved to China, and suddenly everyone was either unemployed or keeping an unemployed family member afloat. Everyone.
Waves of alcoholism, wife beatings, drug dealing, thugs in the park, arrests, prostitutes in the motel district, they all hit around us like the seven plagues. Everyone was poor, angry, fucked up. So yeah, I didn’t really have it much worse than anyone else, I was just less built for compliance than the other kids. I was never good at taking orders. I wasn’t even good at listening to instructions, or at pretending I was.
I reserved all my compliance for Danny and nobody else got any.
Hell, they don’t even know the worst of it. In Fourth grade, Danny told me the Ms. DiPasquale anecdote. I guess Ms. Marie had told him, maybe as a joke, maybe as a warning. But I got my revenge. I watched Ms. DiPasquale for weeks. Learned her class schedule, mapped out her routine. One morning, she came in looking like hell, crying. She was upset about something. I saw my opportunity when she took a break to visit the teacher’s lounge, probably to cry more, and left her coat behind, draped over her chair. I slipped into her classroom and pocketed her car keys. Well, all her keys. Probably her home keys and who knows what else. I hid them in the crack in the foundation between the rectory and the church. I imagine they’re still there. I stayed late just to watch the meltdown. She was hysterical looking for them, crying. Other teachers came to help. Years later I figured out that morning was when Ms. DiPasquale accidentally found out her husband had been cheating on her for years.
Yeah. Fucked up.
I won’t even touch the Uncle Keith thing. He’s in heaven now, I hope. PTSD killed him, the exact same condition I’ve given Danny. Maybe just a coincidence, but when I was seven, I prayed to God that he would take Uncle Keith away. Then a few days later, he killed himself. I didn’t exactly feel good about that back then, and now it feels like karma.
So yeah, I was a bad kid. More importantly, I still am all those terrible things and now everyone knows I’m the slutty girl who finally slipped in public, too.
But that doesn’t mean my children don’t deserve an intact home. That my family doesn’t deserve better than the hell on earth I’ve put them through.
And Danny.
For years, I’ve made Danny happy. That’s what really kills me. I know I’m an evil whore, but that doesn’t take away the fact that I’ve given Danny a good fucking life.
He may replace me with a hot 24-year-old, but regardless of how beautiful and educated and polished she might be, she’s not going to take care of him the way I did. The way I have for years.
Hold on. Let me make my case.
For one, Danny was the most well sucked husband in the country. I don’t want to recreate the Forrest Gump scene about shrimp, but I could, if I wanted to. Danny got wake up blowjobs, honey did you have a tough day blowjobs, this is a boring movie just tell me how it ends blowjobs, I’m on my period but horny blowjobs, your table will be ready in 20 minutes you can wait in your car blowjobs.
And I don’t mean to brag, but I got so good at it, I could make Danny write whole poems with nothing but the words Ah, Jesus, Fuck and Carrie. I don’t need to “do” ball worship. I worship Danny’s balls because that’s where our babies come from. It’s not a sex act. It’s a compulsion every time I look at them. I don’t suck Danny, I consume him. I get more and more turned on by the gagging, by the coughing, by the sensation of turning over control of my breathing to Danny’s hands on my head. And then I make him lose control of his hands. And then we both just have to trust the lord and see what happens. So fucking glorious.
Sure, those are whore things. I’m good at being a willing mouth and two holes, but I was a good wife in other ways, too.
I ironed his clothes. Every day, he’d go to work with crisp, freshly ironed shirt and pants. That’s something right?
I minded his bed like a sanctuary. Always made, always clean, fluffed down comforter and pillows. Cool linen in summer, warm flannel in winter.
I minded our money. Never went over my budget. Never asked for a new car, or jewelry, or expensive vacations. We made our budget together, I got all my begging and cock slobbering and negotiating out of the way, we agreed to it, and we stuck to it. And that discipline helped. It helped when he decided to strike out on his own and we had six months to live on in reserve. It has helped us stay on track to pay off the house by the time MJ goes to college. We were a partnership, always had been, going back to high school and his lawn mowing business.
I cooked. Every meal except once a week, I cooked from scratch. No additives, no crap from a can or a box. Everything came from my garden, the butcher, or the farmer’s market. When we got wealthier later, Danny bought a big freezer for the basement and twice a year we’d fill it with fresh meat from a farm an hour away. Even the stray cat who visits our patio eats grass fed beef. It got to where I would only hit the grocery store every other month, but everything else was so fresh I had to wash soil off in the sink before I cooked it. Danny and I look like college students. I do believe healthy eating is part of it. Maybe a huge part of it. Try to get that from some slut on Tinder.
His home was spotless, his social calendar was full, his parents (and mine) were completely engaged in our children’s lives, everyone got Miller family Christmas cards, his three gorgeous children looked like royalty every Sunday at church, his beautiful wife looked radiant at every gathering, and we always brought a home cooked dish everyone talked about to each potluck.
That all counts for fucking something.
Maybe not to everyone, but it counted with Danny. He loved his life. He was proud of his life and he was quite proud of having tamed the shrew. Nobody was surprised I turned out to be good arm candy, but he also made me a good little housewife, and he loved it. I know he valued our life together. That’s why what I did is so terrible.
And I listened to him. I knew everything about his life. Every morning I would pick out a tie for him based on the look I thought he should project that day. I knew when he needed to look strong, conservative, aggressive. I would adjust his tie by the kitchen door as he left the house, standing on my tippy toes for my goodbye kiss and a soft squeeze of my ass.
If Danny and Drew and the others worked late, I would bring them afternoon snacks on the way to pick up the kids. When Ellen, one of his accountants, got diagnosed with cancer, I fed her family home cooked casseroles three times a week, for months, while she went through chemotherapy. I managed the business’ social media presence, their advertising campaigns, their newsletter.
And when he got home, I didn’t just ask him how his day went. I knew what he had been up to. I knew from his face how it had gone. I knew to give him room to unwind in the garage, or when he needed a scotch and a dumb slasher movie, when he needed me to step in the shower to rub his back.
Most of all, I knew when to shut up and let my man be.
So, I guess I’m bragging. Fine. I just don’t think I was only being selfish to want us back. I had betrayed Danny. I had fucked everything up.
But what I had destroyed had value. Real value.
And if we could salvage something, that would maybe have value, too. I refused to believe I was simply replaceable with a younger hot blonde and a housekeeper.
Our marriage had value FOR HIM. And for our children. And for our families.
I fundamentally believe it still has value to our God.
Yet, none of it is my hands. Not even, really, Danny’s hands.
Most of our fate lies in how Danny’s body and brain heals. It’s not about what he wants, or what he can “man up” about, or what he believes. I destroyed him. I destroyed his brain. His emotions are totally dysregulated. He’s not connected to the identity he had before I destroyed him. His personality is now a brutal, painful battle between his old self and pure trauma response. I often feel like the Danny I love, the Danny I grew up with, my Danny, is dead. Because I killed him.
Part of our fate lies with the deal we made to avoid me going to jail for breaking Cadence Odjick’s nose, disturbing the peace, public intoxication, driving black-out drunk, crashing the car into the Miller’s front lawn, causing over a thousand dollars’ worth of damage, which apparently made it even more serious, and then resisting arrest after all that.
Mandated individual therapy, weekly community service as part of a highway cleanup chain gang, and until the doctors say otherwise, we only get two nights a week for “supervised” dinner visits. They are not physically supervised, but we both must report on every visit to our therapists to make sure that I don’t break any of the rules, and the therapists report to the court.
Of course I’ve already broken several of the rules. I just can’t help myself. I want Danny. I need him like a drug. So yeah. I’m a whore. And a failure. And a disgrace to therapy protocols everywhere.
But that one night--while we kissed, while we held each other, while we touched--I felt something I hadn’t felt in months.
Love.
Love that holds you while you fall apart. That cries when you cry. That doesn’t shame you when you break.
Love, as I learned from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, forgives all things.
Hopes all things. Forgives all things.
Is such love possible, in this life or the next? I don't know, but I intend to do everything in my power to find out.
However this thing ends, one thing not even those who despise me will be able to say is that I didn't work hard enough. That I didn't give it everything.
So let the therapists bench me. Let the family whisper. Let the world keep calling me what they will. I’m still going to fight like hell for the life we had, though I deserve to lose everything. Because I’m not trying to claw my way back into a marriage for convenience or status.
I’m a woman without honor, trying to honor what we had.
I’m a heartless whore still trying to love the man I adore with everything that I am.
