This Straight Wife is Still Here

I was too young, too innocent, and too gullible to be getting married, but I believed we were destined for happily-ever-after.  It was 1971. I was leaving my abusive father’s house to create a new life with my young husband. We were 20 - year - old college students. I was an artist, a poet … and a dreamer. I thought he would be my rescuer.

Instead he married me to rescue him - to fix him  - and as a cover. Not as a partner nor a lover nor even a friend. And he understood early before any vows were exchanged that I would not fix him, or in truth I could not, and he hated me for it.  It was all a secret, one that I was too blind, too invested in denial to understand or accept... for almost 40 years.

So I woke one morning and realized my whole life had been a lie. The marriage I thought was - never existed. The man I knew and loved -  never existed. I needed to grieve for a husband I lost who never existed. It was crazy time.  It would be a long time before I would trust my own perceptions again.

I had come into my marriage with one little cloth suitcase. I left with a moving van. I bought a house I loved and prepared it for my new solitary life and retirement. Then the Great Recession befell this country and I could no longer keep up with the expenses. Recessions have no quarter for artists and poets … or dreamers.

These days my life remains in storage – my furniture, artwork and art supplies – everything, as I figure out what the next stage of my life will look like. But I can still afford new art supplies, and writing just requires pen and paper, or my laptop. And hopefully new dreams will come.

My creative self helped me escape an abusive father, sheltered me from an unhappy marriage, and now in my 60s comforts me in my confusion and loss. Being an artist or writer is solitary work, just as is losing myself in the land of denial. Today I try to keep both feet on the ground and live in the real world; but my brushes, my pens and laptop are always at hand.

                   
    © Copyright for all poetry, prose and artwork belongs to Maureen Kavaney Tillman