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The Story of a Broken Wife
It was the divorce that saved her, not her husband
“I was a high-functioning depressive, seemingly pulled together and buttoned down. But inside deep, I was numb and mute. Now on the other side of divorce, I know that was me fragmented and doing my best to cope. But my body knew.”
— Liza Caldwell
She was dying on the inside before she even met him — her future husband, unbeknownst to her. She was like a shattered mirror, reflecting bits and pieces of herself as people looked her way, but never revealing her full self; she was terrified of what people would see, should she let them in on the secret truths of her dark and broken heart, muddied by her own past. She thus led a solitary life, avoiding nearly all unnecessary interactions with other humans (necessary to her meant work, family, and the obligatory outing with friends here and there, so she could at least feel somewhat normal — what society deems as normal, anyway), until she met him.
He was her light amid the darkness that would otherwise swallow her whole, haunting her dreams and mind and even, her soul. He was her rock to anchor her down to Earth when her thoughts would take flight toward the world beyond the momentous now. She fell in love with him almost as quickly as he claimed to have fallen for her, even though he hardly showed it. Deep down in her heart, she knew she needing saving, lest she submit herself to her darkness entirely, so she readily jumped into his arms that embraced her reflective pieces he chose to see. She lost her light along the path of her life, so she allowed him to be the light that she so desperately craved, no longer ruminating in her filthy past that stole her inner light.
But with such allowance came a heavy responsibility that manifested itself into a burden the longer she pursued him. The longer she lived in this fairy-tale of a life that she knew wouldn’t have a happy ending, much like the endings told by the Grimm Brothers, much like the endings to follow a birth.
Their ending?
DEATH
Not death in the physical sense, as he is still very much alive, and so is she. I’m talking about death of the marriage. Death of her essence. Death of his essence. Death of a rose (marriage) that once blossomed into…
