ugly

I am a warrior.

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I was in the sixth grade when my parents took me and my brother to a school fair. Our school always put on impressive fairs, lots of games, dunking the teachers, and I almost always came home with a new pet fish only to have it die a few days later.

That year, they had brought in a new attraction. A gladiator jousting inflatable arena. Two people would enter and climb onto their own pedestals. Each would get a long stick and fight to knock each other off their pedestal.

I rushed to get in line. Looking around, I could see a lot of high-school students in the crowd. I felt a bit nervous thinking I would have to fight people twice my age. I was always the strongest in my class. I won every arm wrestling competition, playing mercy, or race. Sometimes, I would play with a stick in the backyard for hours, swinging the stick like a sword. But to beat a high-school student in a competition like that? It was going to be hard.

It was my turn now, I entered the baloon like arena to face the previous winner, a twelve year old freckle-faced boy. “Okay, I got this,” I thought and placed my feet shoulder width apart, ready for the go-ahead.

“Go!,” the ref shouted.

I thrust my stick forward, aiming for the boys chest. He blocked me and jammed his stick back at me. Running my stick along the side of his, I did a quick spiral and twisted the stick from his grasp and pushed him from his perch. The crowd cheered, I had won.

My next opponent was a high-school student at least twice my size. He had broad shoulders and wore a black tank top with jeans. I squared my jaw and planted my feet firmly, ready for a hard fight.

He started aggressively, and I blocked each attack with equal force to prevent falling back. I was getting the timings of his hits down. Hit hit, hit. Hit hit, hit. Hit hit, now! I moved to the side of my pedestal, dodging his next blow and impeding his balance. I swept my stick from the side to finish the job.

The next five matches went more or less the same way. Soon, there was a crowd cheering me on. It was such a rush, the adrenaline, beating kids twice my age. I felt unstoppable. 

Until a five year old girl was lifted onto the stand. I played along with her, pretending like she was hitting me right in my weak spot. It was hard for her to even lift the huge stick, so I moved to the very front of my pedestal to make it easier to hit me.

Bam, “Oh no!” I yelled as I fell, “you got me!” The ref came and held her hand up in victory, and her face gleamed. This was a different kind of rush, a better one. She was so happy.

Making my way off the arena, I found Mom and my step-dad Bob waiting for me.

“You were incredible!” Bob yelled.

“There were kids in line that literally left because they didn’t want to fight you. High school kids!” Mom exclaimed.

I blushed, “I know, it was awesome!”

Driving home, I felt an absurd sense of pride, I was the strongest. I was a warrior.

A child’s guilt.

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Guilt is a funny thing. When you are a child, something as small as stealing a no.2 pencil at school can send your young mind spiraling.

I thought about it all day. How could I do such a thing? I would hate it if someone had stolen my pencil. I was so sad when someone had stolen my special red crayon. That pencil’s eraser was just so much better than mine. It wasn’t fresh, so it didn’t smear my drawings, but it wasn’t overly used either, so the metal edges housing the eraser wouldn’t have scraped the paper. Someone probably thought something just like that when they had stolen my special red crayon.

It was on my mind even when I went next door to see my babysitter, a sixteen year old boy named Jeff. Jeff had the best room. It had lots of cool pictures of people holding katanas on his wall, his own t.v., a couch, and even his own Nintendo 64. That was the best part.

Dad had his own Nintendo 64 at his house, too. We would play Donkey Kong for hours at a time. I couldn’t play on Dad’s game anymore. He was into the really hard levels. But I had thought of a for sure victory plan, I was going to train at Jeff’s house every day after school until I was even better than Dad.

That day, Jeff had an idea. He invited me to lay down with him on the couch. Even with my small six year old body, there wasn’t enough room for us to lay side by side, so he had me lay with my head on his chest. Dad and I had snuggled like that all the time. It always made me so sleepy.

“If you’re going to be using my N64 so much, then it’s only fair if you do something for me, okay,” he asked, stroking my hair.

I looked up at him, “and then I can train to beat Dad?”

He nodded and took my hand, slowly moving it down into his pants. “What do you feel?” He asked.

I was confused. Why did he need my hand in there of all places? “I feel…something smooth…and maybe long?”

“Good,” he said, “if you pet that for a little while, I’ll play Donkey Kong with you. You can even be Diddy Kong.”

I thought it was such a weird thing to ask for, but if it meant I could train to be better than Dad, then it was easy enough. Something about it made me feel uneasy. Why did I feel like I was doing something wrong? Was I making a mistake? Ten minutes hadn’t even passed when I asked if we could play Donkey Kong yet.

As promised, we played, but a lump started forming in my throat. I had just done something horrible, I could feel it. My chest felt tight thinking about it.

Later that night, as Mom was tucking me in, I couldn’t hold it any longer. “Mom, I stole a No.2 pencil at school, and I put my hand in Jeff’s pants so I could play the Nintendo. I’m really sorry, will you forgive me?” I felt like I was about to cry, waiting for her to yell at me.

At first, she looked shocked. Horrified even. But then it was like she realized the look on her face and course corrected. “It’s okay, you don’t have to worry. You can give the pencil back and say you’re sorry.”

I hadn’t even thought of that, “Oh yeah, I’ll do that tomorrow!” She gave me a kiss on the forehead, a hug, and closed the door behind her.

Later that night, I woke to strange voices coming from the living room. One was Mom’s, and she sounded like she was crying. The other voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t tell who it was.

I snuck out of my room and peeked around the corner into the living room. Mom was there, crying into her open palms. Next to her, rubbing her back, was Jeff’s dad, Gary.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes shot up to meet mine, her face marked with lines from her eyes down around her jawline. She got up and forced a small smile, “I’m sorry I woke you sweetie, there’s nothing wrong. I was just a little sad about something.”

“Oh, okay. Can you tell me what you were so sad about?”

“Don’t worry about that. Let’s just get you to bed.” She ushered me back to my room, tucking me into bed, and all the while, she looked so terribly sad.

Jeff’s dad. Did it have something to do with what I told Mom? I must have really done something horrible to make Mom cry like that. Something even worse than stealing a No.2 pencil.

A child’s guilt is a funny thing.

In the hours after

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The slam of the door left a dull sound echoing as Erik stormed out. Kaylee’s cries seeming to carry it through the apartment. I held her, my poor little girl who could not possibly understand what was happening. Or why. I barely understood myself.

“Why would you make daddy leave,” Kaylee cried, “that is such a mean thing to do!”

“I know you don’t understand sweetheart. You might someday. For now…just know that Daddy did something to hurt Mommy. And Mommy just needs some time.”

“What did Daddy do to hurt you, Mommy?” Evan asked, crawling into my lap with Kaylee.

Erik hadn’t had the nerve to tell them what he had done. He had no conscience when it came to having an affair…but when it came to looking our children in the eye and telling them what he had done, he had not been able to stomach it and told them simply that he would tell them someday. But then again, I didn’t have the nerve to tell them either.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” I told them both. I probably never would. Destroying how one looks up to their parents was a concept I was all too familiar with. I didn’t want to be apart of that process for them.

We cuddled there for a while in a silent numbness. Eventually the kids, being resilient as children often are, got up and started to play. I laid there, huddled under my blanket. Trying to block everything with sleep, unsuccessfully. Instead, I watched them play. Silently crying, wondering if our family was about to break.

It wasn’t long before I needed to get up. Needed to move. So I cleaned everything in sight. I scrubbed the walls, cleaned the dishes, mopped the floors, picked up the kids room, until there was nothing else to clean. The only thing left to do was to unbox my new computer for the dream job I had been longing for since the kids were born. A job working from home, where I could be with my children and my husband. A job that was supposed to fix everything. But nothing was that simple. How could I start a new job in the morning with everything going on? How was I supposed to put on a smile and pretend to be a cheerful woman excited for a new adventure? I huffed at the boxes and decided to ignore them. Unboxing them would mean moving forward despite everything. I wasn’t ready for that.

I plopped back down onto the couch, but it wasn’t long before my thoughts started to over take me again. I needed to talk to someone. Anyone. But it was still early in the morning, which meant it was even earlier across the country where my family and friends were. I messaged my Mom and my friends anyways. Hoping someone was awake. I stared at the screen, my foot tapping impatiently. Nothing.

I fell back on the couch exasperated. Suddenly realizing just how alone I was here. It had been hard, moving here for Erik’s school. But before, at least I had him. Now, I had no one to turn to. No one to occupy my time with. No one to talk to. Erik, at least had his sister. I scorned him for bringing me here. For doing this to me when I had no where to escape to. When I had sacrificed everything; my home, my dreams, my family. Just for him to cast me aside when it had all finally become too much for me to endure. I wondered what excuse he possibly had to give. If any excuse he had could possibly be enough. I doubted it.

I slammed my fist into the pillow next to me. As if that could make me feel the least bit better. I couldn’t wait any longer. I stalked into my room and closed the door so the children couldn’t hear me before dialing my little brother Austin’s phone.

“Hello?” He answered, sounding as if he had stayed up all night playing video games again.

“Hey Austin, I am so sorry to wake you up this early…can you grab Mom? It’s important.”

“Yeah, one sec,” he mumbled, sounding somewhat annoyed.

After a few minutes of shuffling noises and static Mom answered. “Hey, what’s going on?” She asked.

“Hey, Mom,” violent sobs started to take over me the moment I heard her voice. I suddenly remembered all the times Mom had told me she thought Erik was just using me. Taking advantage of me. And now, despite always telling her she was wrong, I was about to prove she had been right all along. I hated that almost as much as what Erik had done. “Erik’s been having an affair,” I choked.

“What?!” she yelled. She sounded genuinely surprised. I had half expected an ‘I told you so.’

“How do you know?” she asked.

I told her everything, how I had seen the Just for Us page up on his phone. How I had recognized it was discord, then found the channel on his lap top. How they spoke of loving each other, how Erik had consoled her and told her they would get through this. I was blubbering through snot and tears by this point. I felt like a child running to their mother after getting a scraped knee. No amount of kissing boo boo’s and band aids would help this though.

When I was finished recanting the mornings events, Mom went quite for a moment before stating “you’re coming home.”

For some reason, it wasn’t until that moment that I truly realized the implications of exactly what was happening. Was my marriage really ending? Was I going to have to move back home in shame? Was I going to have to raise my children by myself, without them ever truly understanding why we had run far away from their father? Would they resent me? Were these past six years of toture for nothing? How would this affect them…?

“I can’t Mom, he’s their Dad” was all I could say. I felt as the figurative key turned, locking me into the cage that was now my life, and again I cried.

Just for us

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I woke from a bad dream early in the morning. I laid there, frozen. I rolled over to curl up into the back of my husband for comfort, but he was awake, looking at his phone. Just for us flashed in a white font on a black background. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust before I realized it was a discord channel. As I blinked the sleep from my eyes I began to make out gifs that spoke of loving and missing someone. Someone that wasn’t me.

Erik put his phone down and I immediately pretended to be asleep. Maybe I wasn’t understanding what I was seeing. Erik rolled over and put his arms around me, kissing me slowly and moving his hands down toward my breast. I couldn’t get the bold white words out of my mind, so I rolled out of bed and told him to get some sleep while I got the kids breakfast.

I tried to banish the thought from my mind. My husband was not the type to cheat. It was likely one of his gaming groups he was just paling around with. But the thought persisted as I scrambled cheese into an egg mixture. I set breakfast on the table and looked up to see my husbands laptop sitting out on his desk…I had to know.

I sat in his office swivel chair and hesitantly opened his laptop, stopping before putting in his password. I had to be mistaken, I thought. I opened his discord and saw the channel I was looking for right away. Its logo was a red heart on a white background with the initials E +S centered in the middle. Probably just some kind of joke, I thought.

I clicked on the logo, and immediately, my heart dropped. This was no joke. This was no misunderstanding. It was all there in plain white text. My husband professing his love for another woman. A woman who was afraid of losing him. A woman he continued to reassure that they would get through this. A woman named Sab. I stared numbly at the screen for several minutes. I couldn’t bring myself to read any further.

Somehow I brought myself to stand and walk back towards our bedroom where he laid awake in his bed. Probably waiting for her to respond to the message he had written her the night before. “Get out,” I said as calmly as I could muster.

“What?” he asked. It was incredible how genuinely confused he looked.

“Get out,” I repeated. This time more firmly.

“Come here, tell me what’s going on,” he patted the bed inviting me to sit.

“No. You heard me. I want you out,” tears were streaming down my face uncontrollably now. His feigning ignorance sparked rage within me. I turned sharply and marched back down the hallway and threw myself sharply down into his chair. I took my phone out and quickly started taking as many pictures of their page as I could before Erik followed me into the room.

He froze when he saw what I was looking at. There could be no more pretending now. I turned and again said, “get out.”

“Lets just talk about this…” he muttered.

“What exactly is there to talk about, Erik? That you cheated on me? That you had an affair?”

“How are we supposed to fix any of this if you don’t talk to me?!” He was yelling now, frustration and annoyance showing through. But not regret. No sign of apology.

“You’re kidding right?! Talk about this?! I have been trying to talk to you for years, trying to spend time with you for years! I’ve done all the talking I possible could do, you ignored me. You betrayed me. And now you have to leave!”

He put his hands up in defeat. “Fine.” He stomped his way back to our room where he grabbed his backpack and started angrily throwing his school supplies and books into the bag. I couldn’t help but notice the lack of clothes he was bringing. Presumptuous of him.

Once his things were packed he sat down and called the kids over to him. “Daddy has to go,” he told them.

“Why?” Kaylee whined.

“Because Daddy made a mistake. And Mommy doesn’t want me here anymore. Which is more than reasonable.” I scowled at the obvious attempt he was making.

“What kind of mistake Daddy?” Evan asked.

“…You’re a little too young to understand now. But maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older. For now, all you need to know is that Daddy hurt Mommy”

“I don’t want you to go Daddy,” Kaylee started to cry. Clinging to the collar of Erik’s shirt.

“I know baby,” he said, “but Daddy needs to give Mommy some space right now.” With that he stood and gave each of the kids a big hug. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and made to leave through the back door. “I love you,” he called as he made it to the end of the hallway.

“Don’t say what you don’t mean,” I stated blankly. He slammed the door behind him. Kaylee started crying. Evan seemed un-phased. “Come here, baby,” I held my arms out to hold her. She came and snuggled with me as she sobbed on the couch.

“Why would you make Daddy leave Mama? Why would you do that? That is such a mean thing to do,” she bawled.

I stroked her hair. Taking in the unique smell that was my little girl. “I know baby…I know.”