My ex got married and I went mad
If he has grown into a loving husband to someone else, then could I have been the darkness?
When a woman you once called a friend marries the man who once abused you, what are you supposed to feel?
Anger? Rage that she chose him and his transgressions—things she knew about, you told her, she was there for some of it firsthand—over you?
Sadness? Despair that he snagged and manipulated and convinced her of the same half-truths and full-lies you once believed yourself?
Happiness? Relief that everyone has grown and this is a truly good thing—grace toward his past self, her past self, your past self?
Do you assert your own years-old pain? Do you smile blandly when their nuptials arise in conversation with an acquaintance as if you haven’t thought about it at all? Do you stalk the internet—fully aware that it’s degranged—to see who joined the celebration? (When the pictures load, do you feel betrayed?)
Do you scream that your experience was real, give credence to memories that still infiltrate the occasional nightmare, shout in step with Taylor Swift: I was there, I remember it all too well? Do you force yourself off Facebook and into the present moment? Do you look at your own husband from the passenger seat and shudder with guilt about spending a single second dwelling on life before you loved him?
I do all the above.
I’m embarrassed that I know my ex got married last month. But I do—and if that’s not enough on its own, I even knew before the occasion arrived. Worse: I thought about his wedding a few times the day of. Has the ceremony started? Would I recognize all the faces in the room? Is anyone there in central Wisconsin thinking about me the way I’m wondering about them?
While the guy who once took a knee to give me a diamond ring promised to love someone else for eternity, I was hiking with my own spouse and his brother through a bed of crisp leaves. Later we went dancing on broadway in Nashville. Sean spun me around, the band’s vocals flooded the room, and blips of remembering my ex fell few and far between our grins—but I was surprised they were there at all. I thought I’d banished them from my waking hours (and finally, mostly, from my dreams) ages ago.
I believe I’m supposed to wish him well. I like to think I am a Big Person with a forgiving heart—kind and empathetic and reasonable above all else—but my suddenly conscious insistence that I am better than my ex might be the very thing that makes me worse. I have no idea what his internal life is like anymore. (I’m not sure I did when we were together.) I want to hope he’s grown, that he is no longer jealous and controlling, that he and his now-wife are a healthy match—and yet I find myself actually hoping, sickeningly, that he treats her the same way. That he continues to be as bad as I remember him. That the problem was not me.
Because if my ex has become a loving husband to someone else, then I could have been the darkness.
Is this what prompted my maniacal, toxic stalking? How I ended up on someone’s girlfriend’s aunt’s Instagram account hoping to catch a gleam of a wedding dress, of my ex in a tux, of the rager it seems they threw? I’ve joined a legion of mad women. I know I am in good company, I know I am only human, I know it is okay (maybe necessary) to feel these things—but I hate myself for it all the same.
I hate myself for still hating him.
I have spent years questioning what counts as “abuse”. If it’s presumptuous of me to use the term when others have experienced worse and endured more. If the fact that so many shared connections still cavort with him—even my own grandma comments on his Facebook posts—means it couldn’t have been so bad, really, I must be making things up in my head. (After all, that’s what he told me multiple times when we were still together.) I am dramatic, I am weak, I am vindictive. Years later his voice assigns me these identities within my own head.
I know I can’t forever hold another human being to hurt they caused only once upon a time. I know multiple things can be true at once. I know cementing my ex as villain will never be a cure; insisting I was victim can only hold me back.
I know I know I know I know. But I also feel. The two do not always get along.