Obnoxious

He called me obnoxious and I decided I was never going to have sex with him again. We had stopped making love a while ago.

To be more specific: he called me “obnoxious,” the next day I asked for an apology, and instead he asked me to first understand where he was coming from. THEN I decided I’d never have sex with him again.

He tore his ACL a year into living together. He was on crutches for months. I became his legs, his second body. I made a box into a crutch stand so they didn’t keep falling over. I pushed him in a wheelchair around the African American museum in DC. I brought him his toothbrush and mouthwash and he spit back into a cup for me to take back to the bathroom.

91 days before marriage

I have decided that I am no longer a person! At least until he is doing better. He were telling me yesterday about how the past few days have been about my feelings and my stress over having to be their second body, and that I haven’t asked him about his stress. For instance, I didn’t know he was falling behind on his school work. But I think between having to be his second body when I’m home and my decisions not taken seriously at work, I’ll just lock my feelings away just for myself for the time being. We had sex the other day, which was fun, but I don’t want to have sex while I’m in this state because it would just be one more ask of my body. I told him I’m struggling to find the balance between telling him the truth and dumping my feelings/stress onto him.

His parents visited, not even knowing that we were in a romantic relationship. I thought I’d get some respite. It didn’t happen.

I did this all willingly, pre-marriage, as a partner, and I still was not going to be fully recognized. His parents did not know who I was to him, our connection, how I should be calling them my in-laws.

81 days before marriage

Got home, told him that I’m pissed (only just realizing it myself) that I’m the one that’s here, sleeping next to him, when he's nauseous and throwing up and taking him to appointments and yet his own parents STILL don’t know about me. I don't even get recognized for doing all of this as his partner!!!

FUCK THIS

I HATE HIDING MYSELF

FUCK THIS

I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

He suffered from chronic pain and auto immune diseases. Even after his ACL healed, I continued to be his second body.

81 days before marriage

In my head I say “don’t touch me, I don’t want to have sex. My body is the only thing that’s mine right now” Yet, more accurately, my sexuality is the only thing that’s mine right now. You’re just lucky to see it in your own home.

I did all of this willingly.

I married him willingly.

Wrote a letter to myself and my therapist defending the idea of why it was a good idea to marry him. It’s 183 words.

I felt obligated to marry him because I was the one who talked about it for years because that’s what I thought people in love did: bind themselves together with self sacrifice and love.

9 days after marriage

Dissociating

Always wrong

Always sensitive

Always too much

Partner always asking me to be honest about being too much

Never wanting to be too much

Always running away

Always thinking he’ll leave

He should have left me

He gets defensive

He doesn’t recognize where his defensiveness is coming from until months later

Always expecting me to know where my attacks are coming from when he can’t do the same for himself

Always wanting to be right

Bc we were always told we were wrong growing up

Would be easier to be worshiped

Would be unfair to the other

Harder to be devoted to someone that is more devoted to himself, even though it’s how to heal

Can’t blame him for wanting to heal

Encourage me to prioritize myself

So we butt heads

We butt priorities

We heal with and against each other

Freeze in the kitchen putting away food you won’t taste right now

Mouth too focused on biting your finger off to ground you

Always remembering that biting off a finger would be like biting a carrot

I brought up separation nine days before our first wedding anniversary . We decided to try marriage counseling instead.

He noticed that I didn't talk a lot during the session, and I got to point out that he interrupted me twice. He went quiet.

The day of our six year dating anniversary, one year and one month into marriage, I swore I wasn’t nervous. But for whatever reason I hadn't slept well the night before, I barely ate that day, I hadn't had enough water. We got to dinner and the restaurant was slow and I was getting a migraine so I went to the car and sat and he came back with the food and in the 10 minutes that it took to get back home he tried feeding me and I pushed it away. I was trying not to throw up. He helped me out of the car and noticed the seat cover under me had slipped off. He asked why and I, unable to string more than 10 words together, said “people sit there.” He stormed away from me for making a “flippant” remark. I wobbled behind him. At the door of the elevator he said “You know, just because you're not feeling well doesn't mean you have to be obnoxious about it.”

80 days before marriage

I want to tell my friends, my parents, about how sad and lonely I am, but I don’t want them to get a worse picture of him in their heads.

We got to the apartment and he stormed off again. I put my stuff down. He came back and said “I forgive you.”

I went to my bathroom, closed the door and sank to the ground. I hate sitting on bathroom floors. I hate sitting in the pitch dark. I cried there by myself. He tried opening the door against my back. I opened and crawled to the front door to take off my shoes and finally went to bed.

The next day, I told him “I believe you said something mean to me yesterday, and I would like an apology.” I asked like he had coached me to. Instead, he brought up that I needed to understand why he said that, and he deserved an apology too. My rage was quiet but apparent - he saw it and we decided to put a pin in the conversation. I went to bed and decided I was never going to have sex with him again.

80 Days before marriage

I am filled with rage. I have to hide everything. I have hidden OUR mess in my room, so his parents don’t see. I have hidden OUR relationship on my tongue, in the form of reminding it to not call him “amor” in front of their family. On scolding my fingertips to not hold his hand, the most accurate measure I know of gauging his mood and anxiety.

I have to hide myself right now, tuck her away, along with my lack of energy and patience. I forget to pretend to not be a person. To be a wallflower in other people’s lives. I respect myself too much to keep pretending, until I respect others more than myself. Respect their hardships more. He has been cast in a difficult life right now. Who am I to add my own rage and qualms and sadness to that?

Three days later after the lack of apology, I was listening to How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis. I found what I hadn’t been able to explain:

Rest is:

- A Right, not a reward

- Fun

- Recharging

- Includes time autonomy

- Isn’t being on call

- Your responsibility to actually rest well. It’s your partners responsibility to protect your rest time.

My body wasn’t mine.

My rest wasn’t mine.

How could I rest at home when I was on call to get up off the couch to get him something from the kitchen because it hurt him more to do so than it did for me?

How could he call me obnoxious when I had never done so to him? When my crime was being sad and expressing so?

72 days before marriage

I ask too much and not enough and all I do is cry.

I left him three weeks later. I made all the plans starting the week before, but only admitted to myself that I was doing so two days before I left. I called his therapist to let her know. She expressed her condolences for me and I was rude and told her that I didn't care what she thought, I was going to do it anyway and that she was going to have to take care of him on my behalf.

All this because he had called me up obnoxious for not feeling well. He had taken care of me during my depression and job search. He swore he was self-sufficient. After I left him, he accused me of being “despicably cruel” for not coming and helping put lidocaine on his back.

He may find this and deny it and bring up the wrongs I did. That's fine. I admit my wrongs. But he's not the one writing here and he's not the one that left. He's the one that asked me to come back to continue to stay hidden in our relationship from his family. I don't wanna hide myself anymore.

I told him I was disappearing into the relationship. I told my friends and they told me that I shouldn't light myself on fire to keep another warm.

For years I have been telling my friends they need to be friends to themselves. I knew if they told me someone was treating them the same way my own husband was treating me, I would have told them to leave. I finally listened to myself.

14 days before leaving

We watched Priscilla (2023). In the end, Elvis asks Priscilla if she’s leaving him for another man. It wasn’t that.

“You’re losing me to a life of my own.”