“Because I’m not everyone else, and neither are you. You’re pretty fucking important to me. So you deserve to be called by your name. Not anything else,” he grunts in the back of his throat. “I know he called you out of your name more than once, and I want you to know, Magnolia Grace,” he puts emphasis on it. “I care about that name as much as I care about you.”
With those words, the tears fall. I cry for the woman I was, the one I’ve become, and the one I want to be. I’ve needed a safe space, someone to understand what I’m going through. No one else in my life has been able to give it to me. Even the people I’ve asked, they’ve not been able to understand it. Truthfully I began to wonder if anyone at all could ever make me feel safe again, especially after my house became a place where Cody held everything over my head.
I let myself cry for a few minutes, mourn the person I thought I was, the marriage I hoped I would have. Then I turn to Levi, and answer his question. “He did. He did a lot of things that hurt me. Some were mental, financial, emotional, and there was one night it turned physical.”
Anger moves across his face in waves. First it seems to hit his eyes, then his jaw as he develops a tick, then his lips when he sneers. “I’m not mad at you, I want you to know that. I’m fucking pissed at him. What did he do?”
There’s a very visceral and physical reaction to him asking that question. Immediately I’m thrust back to that night, to the way my stomach felt as if I were about to puke. The way my hands shook as I tried to reason with him, the scream that ripped from past my throat, and echoed off the walls. It all comes back to me as if I’m a person not participating in the memory itself. It’s as if it happened at me, not to me. But I know I have to tell him.
I have to tell someone.
I’ve never said the words out loud, and I need to. Keeping them to myself just continues to give him the power I keep swearing he doesn’t have.
“I’m not even sure what started it,” I say quietly as I shake my head. “He and I had been fighting more often over stupid shit. Things that don’t even tend to make a difference in everyday life. One minute we were talking. The next? We were screaming at one another. It isn’t how I was raised. My parents barely paid attention to one another. I spent more time with your parents than I spent with mine. They showed me what a marriage was supposed to look like.”
Levi breaks in. “They weren’t perfect.”
“No, but they loved each other, and they loved y’all. There was never any doubt of that, even when they were arguing. We all knew that they would respect one another. So that’s what I brought into my marriage with Cody. I wanted what they had. Maybe they weren’t perfect, but they turned their marriage into a great life. So many days I prayed that’s what I would have. That night, I realized those prayers wouldn’t be answered.”
I have to stop for a minute, closing my eyes to take myself back there. So often I’ve not wanted to think about it, but if I’m going to tell Levi what happened, it’s going to have to be all of it.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says as he reaches forward, taking my hand in his.
“I do, I’m never going to be able to move on if I don’t. If I don’t admit what happened and give actual words to it.”
“At any time if you need to stop, all you have to do is stop. You owe me nothing, not your pain, your happiness, your emotional feelings. I’m asking, and you can permit that if you want.”
God, this man doesn’t realize what a good guy he is. How has no one scooped him up yet? “Like I said, we’ve been fighting more often lately. That night, I was on edge, was definitely overstimulated, and I just didn’t want to deal with him that night. Maybe it was the fact that I’d had a crazy day at work too? Back then I was both working a day job and doing the dipped treats on the side, but the side job was starting to take the place of the day job. That particular night, I was going on around ten hours of sleep in three days.”
“So you were tired?”
My stomach rolls slightly as the feelings from that night replace what I’m feeling tonight. “Exhausted,” I admit. “And I was annoyed. He hadn’t cooked dinner, and I’d texted him asking him to do it because I knew I had a really long night ahead of me. When I got home,” I stop, licking my suddenly dry lips. “He hadn’t done anything, and I was so pissed. He actually wasn’t even there. A note on the counter said that he’d run an errand. All I could keep thinking about was that he had time to run errands. I didn’t have that time.”
In my mind, I’m wondering if Levi is thinking I’m selfish. I say as much to him.
“No, I don’t think you’re fuckin’ selfish. If there’s one thing I’ve realized watching my parents, it’s that you have to be willing to do things outside of your comfort zone. There may be traditional roles, but when your partner is having a hard time, then you have to step up and help them. You’re not selfish. You wanted a fucking partner and he couldn’t handle it. That says way more about him than you.”
I want to believe him, desperately want to believe him, but I’ve lived so long thinking that all of this issues are my fault. If I’d been a better wife, then we wouldn’t have had issues. But his words give me the confidence to continue. “I had a lot going on,” I remember the overwhelm I was feeling that night. “On one hand I’d just finished melting my chocolate and tinting it, right at the time the dinner I’d gone out of my way to fix, because I was hungry, was done. Timers were going off. Two of them, and I just needed peace and quiet for five minutes, without the threat of something burning. I just needed five minutes.”
“Which you should’ve been allowed to have. Even if you didn’t ask him for it, I imagine, he could tell. He was supposed to be your person. The one who could tell when you needed a break, right?”
Yes, all of this. It’s what I wanted. “Yeah, exactly. That’s all I’d wanted, for him to take some of that pressure off of me. I went to grab my chocolate out of the microwave, and I dropped it. All over the place, including on my legs.”
“Did it burn you?” He asks immediately.
“That would’ve been the first question you think my husband would’ve asked, right? He came through the door right as it happened. I said something like fuck, and started screaming because I just had to get the feelings out.” He hadn’t asked if I was okay. “You know what he did?”
“What? And don’t try and make him seem like a better guy, Magnolia. Tell me exactly what he said.”
I smirk, thinking back to the look that was on his face. “He told me to calm down. Those were the only words he said. He told me to calm down.”
“Oh shit,” he whispers.
“Yeah, I lost it. Fucking lost it. I was so overwhelmed. In physical pain, because the chocolate had hit my legs and gotten under the pants I was wearing, but in emotional pain, too. I was drowning, and I just wanted my husband to help me.”
He reaches out, moving his hand from mine. Instead, he cups the side of my cheek with his palm. His thumb rubs slowly and carefully against my skin. I lean into it, because it’s as if he realizes I need to feel connected. “He didn’t though, did he?”
“No, he kept telling me to calm down while I lost my damn mind. That’s when everything went from bad to horrible.”
