“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve answered, ‘How are you?,’ with a forced, fake, ‘Hanging in there!’ just to make the conversation easier. We hung her Christmas stocking on the mantle this year. I am painfully aware that on Christmas morning, that stocking will hang empty as the others burst with gifts. ‘Why me? Why our family?’ But for now, we honor her absence. I am finally ready.”
“‘His heart could be repaired,’ I thought. We could get past that, carry on. And then the doctor said, ‘This is very common with Down syndrome.’ That I didn’t want to hear. Surgery wasn’t going to fix that. I put it out of my mind. Our baby wasn’t going to have Down syndrome! Then the doctor said, ‘You have the option to terminate.’”
“I didn’t understand at the time, but he was triggering autistic meltdowns. He objectified me constantly and often talked publicly about my genitalia, how no man had ‘had me before.’ Months before my 20th birthday, I proudly displayed a photo of my brother in uniform on the TV, which was ‘too imposing.’ I immediately threw my belongings into a trash bag. It was like a light bulb went off in my head.”
“My face was red and my eyes were swollen from sobbing. When we were good, we were great. When we were bad, we were absolutely volatile. She dropped the inevitable bombshell. ‘Where do you think this is coming from?’ ‘What he put me through,’ I replied. ‘Deeper, Amber.’ It hit me. There was no miracle. Our marriage was over.”
“I feel like I don’t financially contribute enough to my family. I yell. A lot. I talk to God every week, but I haven’t been to church in years. I dye my hair when I’m feeling stressed.”
“I cooked when I was asked. I cleaned dirty breeches, dirty dishes, and everything in between. I was loving. I was patient. I tried to look as pretty as I possibly could. I was forgiving. I was ENOUGH. I was more than enough. But for the wrong man, it did not matter. You may be the rib, but a rib cannot fit comfortably in a body it was not designed for.”
“Our babies! Were they gone? We drove the 3 hours to the IVF clinic. The doctor informed us, ‘One baby is still there, and next to the baby is a blood clot 4 times its size.’ I remember my eyes filling with tears. I began crying on my wife’s shoulder. ‘What you two are doing isn’t right.’ No one ever tells you how hard it will be to have kids when you’re gay.”
“He accused me, ‘Your boyfriend is in the RV parked outside, isn’t he? How dare you bring a man into our home, in front of my daughter.”
“When we got married, I had no idea how to relax my body. How to communicate without completely shutting down for days. I struggled to show emotion, to be vulnerable. It took 5 years of marriage for me to believe he wasn’t going to hit me when he got mad. The simple act of raising his arms triggered me and made me flinch.”
“Addiction is a room (and whole hospital waiting room) full of brothers, sisters, nieces, uncles and friends beating themselves up because they didn’t save you. It’s a doctor saying the words ‘legally brain dead.’ An empty chair at every family event. It’s a daughter, a son who have to figure this world out without their dad. This is a man who loved with everything he had. Drugs don’t love you. Your family and friends do.”
