June, 2010
Dear "Family",
Dear "Family",
I am walking away; a mere shadow of my former self. The pain envelops me like a Holocaust cloak casting shadows in the growing dusk. Doubts don’t grow, pain does. I have no questions, merely agonizing, painful statements of fact.
I was not meant for this life. I did not want to be who I was cookie cuttered out to be; and yet forcefully molded and shoved into the lifestyle, I rebelled at every turn, until my life turned into something beyond painful, something that manifested itself into a physical illness that is literally eating me up from the inside out.
I would like to say that I married young, made mistakes, didn’t listen. But I didn’t. I would like to say that I was pressured into making a series of stupid mistakes, but I wasn’t. My entire existence was a mistake, and my entire life is an existence that was molded and developed because of a series of religious follies that were, or are misrepresented by men and women who are uneducated and intolerant.
I am angry and bitter, cynical and frustrated. My life a deep hole that I will never climb out of. I realize that my mistakes are my own, and that my having made the choices I made, will cause my children to suffer, which they shouldn’t, but because of the "warm loving: community that I live in, they will.
I would like to say that my family will love me unconditionally, but I can’t, because they won’t, and that is the most painful admission of all and because of that, I am walking away.
They would never admit this fact either. Unfortunately, if they knew of my sins, they would walk away from me, and it would not be me doing the walking away.
My husband tells me that he does not know if he ever loved me. He does not know if he was ever attracted to me. So why did he marry me? He does not know. He does not know if he is gay, or straight, or bisexual, and because of his confusion, he has trapped me, at a young age, into a loveless marriage, with two small children, whom I love, but do not know if I like because they now remind me of him.
Divorce is not an option. My family adores him, and they will never see my side of the story. But he knew when we married, something was wrong, and although I asked him, he lied. And his lie, has caused me to hate him. He is selfish. He never listens, he asks and then never ever listens.
He does what he wants, even though he is ten years older than I, he acts like a child. He makes decisions solely on what he wishes to do, never thinking about anyone else, and for nine years, in order to make my family believe that I have made the correct decisions about my life and that I am happy, I covered for him. So, I look like a fool, and he looks like a wonderful man. In this community, this is often the case. The women look like ditzy twits, even though we often struggle to keep our families together, and the men wander around doing as they choose. My pain causes me to lash out in anger and hurt and frustration and I just cannot take it anymore. Daily I fight with myself not to take all the myriad of pills that are sitting in my dresser.
I suffer, and therefore I am walking away. I will be criticized and castigated in the court of public opinion, but my choices are simple. If I do not walk away, I will be carried out.
