The Divorce
We first met online in middle school. We met for the first time in real life in school... in the same class. Everyone in that class and any other student that saw us believed we were a couple, and it just kind of happened. We dated for the 3 years of high and then got engaged at graduation. Five years ago, we said we’d be moving to France to visit friends, with no real reason known to them. To us, it was a fresh start.
When I did fall pregnant, I decided on giving them a name that’d allow them to maybe blend in more in France while they grew up. We agreed on Lili for a girl and Louis for a boy. In the mix of trying hard for our kid, we ignored growing red flags in our relationship. I wish we had paid a little more attention. But alas, here we are.
Arguments.
At first, it was small things. Like arguments that were easily resolved over a nice conversation and compensation for those arguments. The arguments were always small and very random, like a normal couple. We always got over it. Until it progressed to bigger things and we didn’t speak it out or resolve it, we ended up hurting each other, not physically. God no. We are both public figures, and it’d ruin the two of us. Even now, Futoshi admits to wanting to.
The arugements only got bigger and soon, the two of us would stop talking and avoid each other for weeks or even months at a time, only interacting for sex with this child we claimed would fix our relationship.
The wedding.
Then, I got pregnant at 24, and we decided that while I was still slim and not big and heavy and sore with the pregnancy, we’d get married. In late September, with the thickness of autumn, we had a plan for the wedding and it was going to be a small one.
I had only one request for the wedding; my former high school friends must or can come if they’d like. I didn’t mean everyone in our hero course class, then it wouldn’t be small with his family, coworkers, friends and my friends, family, etc. Something that struck me as odd was that he said no. He was friends with these people once too. I asked why and he sighed, saying they were in Japan and Fall has a high crime rate in Japan at this time; I didn’t even know if that was true or not.
But when the wedding happened, I was very unhappy with how everything turned out. My mother refused to show up, she said to me years later that Futoshi was a bad man. I understand that now. She was supposed to walk me down the aisle, so finding she wasn’t going made me quite depressed. I was going to ask my father, but Futoshi insisted HIS mother walk me down the aisle, saying, ‘You wanted a woman to walk you down, not a man’.
That and the entire shape and tradition and place for the wedding just felt wrong to me. The chosen place was a church. A church! Both of us aren’t even Christian! Most of the foods had ingredients I was allergic to, which I asked why, and he said he didn’t know I was allergic to those foods.
We were getting married and this man didn’t know about my allergies. I knew his simple things that were common. Like fur, obviously not in food, but still, I knew more about him than he knew of me.
He refused to implement anything slightly Japanese for this wedding, and I feel that could also be why my mother refused to show up. I wanted to wear a traditional Japanese wedding outfit, the same one my mother wore, to be exact. But he claimed his parents wouldn’t like that, being French.
This, I believe, is the most important point to make: I should have fucking run away from him when I wasn’t bound by legal documents.
Avoiding arguments.
I’ve mentioned the arguments already and won’t go into much detail now, but the way they got almost physically abusive should have been my first red flag to have noticed. It got worse when I gave birth to my first child, Lili .
She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, she looked just like me, only with blond hair. An angel from the skies, we, me and Futoshi, both agreed that she would fix this broken relationship. I mean, we knew it was broken but didn’t talk about it. We just hoped it’d fix itself.
The key word is “hoped.” Futoshi got worse. He’d pick up fights and try to encourage arguments, but when he realised that I was ignoring his actions, he got sad and tried to blame it on me.
It soon became some kind of game. He tried to make a fight out of anything that irritated him, and I would then try to find something to busy myself with... then try to ignore him getting ‘sad’ when I knew he was just pissed off.
Arguments between us have now changed. There isn’t any, in fact. Sounds like a good thing, right? No, we are actually avoiding each other! We would stop talking entirely, and when we did, we would randomly stop when we felt that familiar buildup of anger. It’s not healthy anymore.
My lack of desire for sex after having a child.
When we were... intimate, working hard for a child, our relationship was ‘healthier’. And after I had Lili, my body was ruined. My stomach seems to be saggier and it doesn’t look right. I’m supposed to have abs! What the fuck happened to that?
It’s not that I didn’t want a child, I did. But not from me. If that makes sense? I’ve always seen myself married to a sweet woman in a wedding dress and veil, pregnant with my children. Not me in that position, you know? So when I had this child, his kid, it also ruined my mental health.
I was diagnosed with postpartum depression soon after birth. This was soon corrected to postpartum psychosis. I was obsessed with Lili and refused to let Futoshi touch my daughter, while also having moments where I’d attempt to ‘accidentally’ drop her before regaining myself and becoming disorientated.
I wouldn’t sleep for days, paranoid of her dying of some magical disease, I had delusions she was dead in her cot and would start screaming and have massive panic attacks over it.
The funny thing is, right after I was healthier and more mentally stable from that, Futoshi asked for sex. Right after my first child and a major mental breakdown that lasted 4 months.
I wanted to punch him. I asked why, and he said he wanted a boy. Of course, I told him to go fuck himself. If he wanted a boy so badly, he could go to Whore House and fuck one to make a boy. I will not be getting pregnant again after my experience.
For months after that, he would complain about being lonely and missing the old me, while I would work extra hours to ensure I got pregnant with Lili .To put it simply, after my childbirth experience and personal living hell, he was a literal cunt.
It all came to a smooth stop, and we decided, just before Lili ’s fifth birthday, we would settle a divorce. I think it was the only time he was calm.
While we were working through this divorce, I recognised a few changes in Lili. The divorce in general had affected her. Normally, Lili was just your average 5-year-old girl, happy and loving.
She is in preschool and, surprisingly, has many friends there, and the teachers adore her. Lili was outspoken and very extroverted, with this divorce though, she’s changed. Her personality is different, she’s...I don’t know. Not as extroverted as before? Let me explain some things I’ve noticed.
One, she’s... angry. I expected a change, but she’s never been angry and I didn’t expect her to lash out in this way. I hate to compare her to him, but maybe it’s him rubbing off on her. I hope not. I’d die before I’d let her become someone like him.
Futoshi is a vile human, no matter how hard I try to battle that fact. He’s nice, yes, but married to him? A different story. I can only imagine what’d happen to her and who she’d become if he had to raise her on his own.
Secondly, she has changed her sleeping habits now. Me and Futoshi now sleep on the couch interchangeably, and Lili has recognised this. I don’t know how, but she would come crying to the one in the bed and beg to sleep with them, and then in the middle of the night she’d wake up and run down stairs to the couch and wake up there with the couch habitant.
I thought it was weird and would try and help her stay in the bed, no matter if it was me or him in the bed. She was young and needed a bigger space to sleep than a couch that could barely fit an adult, you know?
Futoshi didn’t see it as an issue and told me to leave it. I explained my reasons to him. I thought he’d be understanding, which dad would want their child to be sent to the ER with a cracked open head? But no, of course, he said to me that if we just held onto Lili while on the couch, she’d be fine. I argued she doesn’t wake us up on the couch and just sleeps, which is dangerous in itself anyway.
He keeps fighting me on this, even now. I’m trying to train her to enjoy pillows and blankets or anything warm, comfortable, and furry so she won’t sleep on the couch. slowly working, but I’m so scared of her just falling off the couch in my sleep or his sleep and us needing some medical trip to the doctor because she’s bleeding out from her fucking skull.
Thirdly, a few days ago she asked if she was the reason I was leaving Futoshi . I nearly dropped the mug I was holding. Lili is too young to understand the whole situation, I get that, but she has understood words I’ve been saying to him recently. And from this, she pieced together ‘parents distant? a child? mom leaving because child didn’t fix distance.’ and so she’s concluded that she is the reason mommy and daddy aren’t in love.
She knows what marriage is and that we are married, she thinks it’s when two people love each other that they decide to be together for life. They also believe that when married, they will be given a child when they love each other enough.
However, recent changes have made her ask questions herself, which battle this. Lili has watched us and has detected that our scents are friendly when speaking to each other and wants to know why. That’s what children do. They question everything. And in her sight, she blamed our distance on herself.
I want to help her and try to make this poor marriage work again, but I know that if we kept up the perfect straight couple act in front of her and the public, it’d only get physical between us. It’s not healthy; she doesn’t see it.
Another thing, hopefully the final thing that changed, was that she became clingier. Lili will scream now when she is alone. She is unable to be alone anymore, we have to homeschool her now. She is too scared to leave us. Lili is smart for her age. She understands that I am leaving, not just the relationship, but also the house.
Yes, I am moving houses. I plan to stay in France, though. With how clingy she is right now, it’d be too dangerous to go far. Futoshi agrees but doesn’t want me to live with his daughter. Notice his? That’s because Futoshi likes to emphasise that she was once his sperm and refuses to acknowledge that I was the one who made that sperm into the beautiful 5 year old before us today.
I hope I win this court case about who keeps the kid, though. She feels safer with me. She shows clear hate towards Futoshi and even started calling him Futoshi like I did a few weeks ago. Lili is copying me, and it’s better than him rubbing off on her. So I’m letting it happen for now, so when I win, we can fix this family without him, and hopefully I can teach her Japanese and move back there and introduce her to the twins and triplets. I miss the old friend group, we will reunite someday soon.
I left France a few hours ago, Im on a plane right now, the divorce is compltely setled, and I have a temporay home waiting for me back in Japan. I had no choice. My vison is blurry, sory for misspeilling anything. I told myself I loved him, but I think it was fear of having no one else that woud ‘love’ me. I cant focus, I lost the fuckign cort case, I lost my daughter. I lost everything. I lost my betaiful angel. I hope I make it home to a friend who fuckng cares abut me. Im reunting with Etsuji and I will stay with him and his twins till I can recover from this loss. Im so sorry, Lili. Mommy will save you.
Mari Asaoka here, a good 10 years later, well yeah, I’m 39 now. My friends, Kanta and Etsuji’s twins, have gotten into same high school as we did. I’m proud of them, obviously, but one of them came to me yesterday with a concern. Aika normally goes to her parents about her concerns and issues, but today she refused to talk to her parents and came to me. I felt honoured as her honorary aunt, to be important enough, she needed me!
My smile faded when she mentioned a student in her class. She described this student as a girl with long blond hair, auburn eyes and with my birthmark that made me look more like a fucking racoon. Lili Dupont. Dupont. It pissed me off, I didn’t think straight and told Aika to ‘fuck off’ and I left the house.
I know Futoshii's back in Japan now. It’s pissing me off. If I let that poor girl continue to live with that fucking abusive, manipulative liar, fucking shoot me here. He ruined me. I never wanted a child, but God help me, I’d be her damn mother if she needed one. And Lili needs one. She could have had two. I do have a girlfriend waiting for me at home, who cares about my needs and doesn’t see me as some fucking babymaking producing machine, Futoshi.
I’m at Shiro’s right now, writing this. I’ve asked him to speak to the 1-B homeroom teacher to get Lili’s address. Yes, I know it’s illegal, but so was our relationship. Once I get it, I will confront that cunt and ask him for answers. Why the fuck did he drive me away from her, why the fuck did he ruin my life, and why the fuck did he never fucking listen to anyone who told the fucking truth?
