u/bringingoutthedread

~ shitty burnt oatmeal cookies with protein powder and peanut butter ~

It’s been over a year since we’ve spoken but the lasting effects of her bullshit plague me daily. Tonight it’s in my head on a nonstop loop.

In our early 20s, all we talked about was moving away from our small town to travel and build our dream careers. Marriage was on the back burner and we were even more adamant about not having children. She complained for years about having to raise her sisters due to her parent’s lack of, well, parenting.

She wanted to teach English in Spain and was applying for the program when she met a guy. At first he seemed great but then all of a sudden he was convincing her not to go to Spain, move out of her parents house and in with him, and start having children. She already had her visa and flight booked to Spain and he proposed to her, promising that if she married him, he’d go with her. After less than a year of dating, and TWO WEEKS of being a fiancée, she graduated to wife.

Then, he pulled the rug out from under her and flat out refused to go, calling her selfish if she left. She went anyways and cried for weeks. The minute I suggested I come visit her, he was already on a flight to see her. After just 3 months he drained her bank account (he never applied for a working visa so she fronted all the costs) and she moved back home, under his roof.

She made $12 an hour as a teacher at a public school, and literally could only afford $4 Shein clothing pieces. I refused to hear about him because she’d defend him at every. Single. Turn. It was easy because I had moved away from home and our friendship was long-distance anyway. I missed what it was like before him, and I’d have glimpses of her whenever we’d talk, but she’d become a completely different, pathetic person.

One day, she wants to FaceTime and has big news to share. I pick up her call, she giggles, and tilts the camera down to show her 8-month belly she’d been hiding. He won. We stopped talking shortly after that, and it’s messed with me since.

I cannot comprehend how someone could have it all and just throw it away in the blink of an eye. To be IN Spain, living the dream and then come back home to have a child with a man that tricked her into marriage. I get angry thinking about her $12 an hour salary and how baby formula is $50 a container. I get angry that we were young girls together and our worst fucking fear came true for her. She CHOSE it.

Its so prevalent on my mind lately; I started dating a man within the past year and even in the moments I feel so in love, I feel so intensely traumatized by what happened to her that I can only ever focus on the fear of it happening to me. I’ve word-vomited about it so many times to him and each time we talk it through, but there’s some weird lasting trauma from it I just can’t seem to shake. She’s a cautionary tale in a way, and I am just so goddamn angry at her for ruining her life and making me question mine.

I’m struggling to love wholeheartedly because of my intense fear my partner might flip on me like hers did. It took me forever to stop thinking about partnership and marriage as a golden cage and now I’m right back to square one. I hate her. I actually fucking hate her.