This story is almost two decades in the making, and telling it feels necessary to moving forward. I cannot promise it will be fair, but it will all be true.
First, a bit of background.
I met the man I would go on to marry through a blind date set up. I’d been in Dallas a little over a year, and just had my heart broken by an older man who made me feel like I was made of starlight. But he didn’t want more children. I was young and thought marriage and family was the prize. So I cried on the floor of my apartment for a few days, entered into a very ill-advised situationship at work before accepting a writing assignment that would take me through Europe where I would enjoy even more ill-advised exploits and come home ready to be sensible again.
This part of the story isn’t about Chris, so much as the cast of characters around him. Dating him was like stepping into a minefield. I was incredibly naive.
The woman who set us up was the best friend of Chris’s cousin and his sister (you got that?). She read my blog and thought he and I would hit it off. We’ll call her…Sarah. Because that’s her fucking name and I’m abandoning the higher road for the one that frees me of this emotional nightmare. In fact, let’s just call everyone by their real names. I’m a grown ass woman comfortable with her dirty laundry. And I am tired.
Anyway, the three of them were a little trifecta of insular, petty maliciousness. You’ll see.
The Trifecta of Petty Maliciousness
Shortly after we started dating, Sarah and Amber (the aforementioned cousin) invited me to drinks. I was thrilled. It felt like an invitation to belonging. I was separated from my friend group by most of a continent, by this point. And their little group of friends had been together for well over 20 years and “in” was not a place I’d had much hope of achieving. So mid-week, I met them at a bar a few cities away again, again, so naive it’s a little embarrassing.
His cousin, whose own mother had passed tragically young, was considered part of the nuclear family. Birthdays, holidays, family vacations. That night, she wielded that closeness like a weapon and she swung wide. The two of them spent the evening telling me how awful the whole family was. His parents were controlling. They had crazy, obsessive-compulsive behaviors that made everyone uncomfortable. His sister Jessica was a mess, they said, recounting tales of black out drinking, cheating and a secret abortion. Chris had failed out of college, lying to his parents and taking their money for classes he would never even attend. They were loyal to no one. And no one was safe.
I was not safe.
Boom! Landmine. I went home and cried in the shower. And I kept every single word of that conversation to myself for more than 15 years. But secrets are like stones and I’m done carrying heavy shit. Consider this an unburdening. An exorcism.
That I didn’t see it as the red flag that it was, that is on me. And the older-and-wiser me would slam on the breaks. Younger me chose…differently.
Before she was my sister-in-law, Jessica was the mean girl at parties who’d get shitfaced and tell anyone who’d listen about how awful I was. How I thought I was too good for everyone. I was ruining everything. Look, I get it. I was really different. And the outsider. But if anything, I tried hard, too hard, to ingratiate myself. Rookie mistake. I changed the dynamic and she hated me for it. I remember walking in to the kitchen at a house party one night to hear her sobbing about how I was ruining my own wedding with my tastelessness. She cornered me, later, demanding to know why I didn’t intend to change my last name. After all, her grandfather had been the world’s best guy.
I’m rolling my eyes as I type this. I’d heard enough stories to realize that a fairytale (and that alcoholism runs in bloodlines).
At her own wedding, some months before we were formally engaged, and despite the fact that I lived with her brother, I was seated at the coworker’s table. My significant other sat with the family. Sarah was tasked with shooing me out of wedding photos. I’m not even kidding. The experience was demoralizing. Because it had been designed to be. And when I asked that Sarah not be included in our engagement celebrations, well, that went over like a turd in a punchbowl. but I stood my ground. For once. Because while the rest of the snakes, I was stuck with, she wasn’t blood.
Landmine. Landmine. Landmine.
I spent the next few years being reminded that I was not welcome. For Christmas that first year we were married, Amber gave me a photo album covered in cat hair and labeled conspicuously with a bright white sticker that said, “Free gift. Not for individual sale.” Another Christmas it would be an expired Cinemark gift card.
And no one ever said anything. Not Chris, not his parents. I was expected to take the high road. And as committed to people-pleasing as I was, I did as I was expected.
And here’s where we’ll leave off for now. I’m so tired. The act of unburdening takes its own toll.
