Fear, she wouldn’t have imagined the coldness and immobility of being fearful. How could the love turn around so quickly with such violence?
The courting and romancing ended at the wedding ceremony. Her husband was rude and curt at the reception with her and the guests. His only focus was getting high with a few of his friends. Her groom was handsome, blonde, blue eyes and tall. He was so perfect on paper.
Moving around the ballroom the bride greets their guests, alone. She is alone, again despite the marrying part. She is holding up the beautiful satin train of her gown, and stepping lightly in the most elegant heeled close-toed shoes, the step with the shoes feeling like royalty and changing the walk to more of a glide. How lovely the movement in the gown and with the shoes.
The music played a soft jazz selection and the wait-staff moved through the ballroom, giving a tone of a lifetime movie feature. And yet, she knew in her heart that the trimmings and the planning for the wedding wouldn’t make it all wonderful. The Groom remains a nasty person, someone without dignity and certainly someone without any respect or love for her.
He prefers to do lines of coke with his buddies in the adjoining room, rather than be by her side and dance and talk with family. He has made it clear that he has distain for the family that has come to share in their wedding day.
The childish dreams of her wedding day crushed in a moment. His spin remained that the drugs and the coke up his nose so much more important than making a commitment to each other. So, why would she continue with this farce? And, why would she cover up his bad behavior at the wedding and reception with their friends. She continues to think that she can make it better. She knows that she can help him be the best person possible. She is so naïve and she continues to believe that she can get him into recovery and back to the loving person that he seems to want to be.
The reality, as she now knows, is that a person delving into the drug scene is not going to work to get away from the ‘high’. The person drugging and partying is committed to a lifestyle and not going to leave it behind to be ‘straight’.
She dreams of an alternative life, one of love and joy! She realizes that her reality is one of fear, drugs, waste and anger. Her husband works when it suits him for money for his habit, not for them. She work to pay the bills and to keep the household going. She resents him.
The resentment turns to pure hatred. She wishes that he would not come home. She wishes so hard that he will stay away from her. He is a lousy, selfish lover. He is a childish husband. He is not a friend. In fact, as the days wear on, he is her enemy. He is pure evil.
Where does he go, when he leaves home in the morning and doesn’t return until the early hours of the following day? Who are the people that hang on his every word and cater to his whims?
Her wandering thoughts meander to other women’s marriages. How many young women are covering up for the bad behavior of their handsome and childish husbands? She keeps wondering about other women’s lives and she thinks that perhaps there are many that suffer. Suffering in silence was not part of the bargain. She would never imagine becoming ‘that suffering, victimized woman’.
One night she asks him something about what he’d like for dinner. He lashes out at her and throws a glass piggy bank, her childhood trinket, across the room directly at her. It misses her head. She flinches and it hits the wall, breaking.
Her childhood bank is shattered against the wall and onto the kitchen floor. Perhaps, she should have stayed at work. Perhaps, she should stay away to avoid these confrontations. She begins to cry and then louder. She must leave the room, so not to be in his way. She leaves the room, but not the house to stay out of danger’s way. Her husband is the danger. Why didn’t she know?
That night, as she lay in bed, her husband comes into the room and turns on the overhead light. Then he turns on the bed lamp and finds his pistol in his night stand. He loads the pistol and tells her to get up out of the bed. He says that he wants to show her how to use the gun so that she can defend herself, just in case someone breaks into the house. He takes the gun and pulls her out of the bed. She refuses and tells him that they can look at the gun tomorrow. He insists. He is holding her under her arms and lifts her up and out of the bed. She is out of the bed and standing in a swoop of his effort to get her out of that bed.
She is standing next to the bed in her nightgown, naked underneath and vulnerable. She is so vulnerable that it feels like a dream. Her husband pulls her around so that her back is against his chest. He holds that gun in one hand over her shoulder. He is showing her the open gun so that she can see the bullets, up close.
She thinks that she should be shaking, but she is resigned to having a crazy, drug-ridden husband. He keeps saying that he just wants to show her. He presses her fingers around the butt of the gun. Actually, it’s a pistol, he corrects her misinformation. He tells her in her ear, slow and hushed that he found the gun and rubbed off the numbers of this pistol, just for her. He tells her that it’s called a ‘throw-away’. It is an untraceable weapon.
A ‘throw-away’ pistol in their bedroom and he has her around the neck. He has her in a position where only her fingerprints are on the gun. If she is shot, he will tell the police that she shot herself, that she was depressed. This is not far from the truth, a half-truth, as she is depressed having married this horrid man. He has manipulated the facts, but then again, the truth may be that he has manipulated her. She is the successful lawyer with the beautiful home, and he is not. She is the person with the skill and the reputation in the profession, and he has nothing. He is a joke and not skilled at all.
She does not have the will to live, let alone to love anyone. She is not able to think clearly and she has no reason to get through her day. She is lonely and alone. She is sick and bone-weary and tired of living.
Fear, the fear becomes a reality later in the marriage. The fear and aloneness is something that builds up over time and once in her life settles in so that she feels that she can never survive. If she survives, will she ever feel joy? If she survives, will she wish that she didn’t and wish that the gun did go off that night? Will she be the one that is resilient and tells this story? Or, will she be the one that ends up a murder victim? Or, will she be the one that is the perpetrator of a murder?
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