These are the lowest moments. When I realize that my deliberate, desperate attempts to avoid becoming the model of womanhood I saw in my mother growing up have failed. I've circled around and landed in the exact circumstances that made her miserable. Uprooted and lonely surrounded not by your own friends and family -- or even mutual friends of you and your husband -- but by people that are his and only his. And you're always on the outside, playing this secondary Mrs. role instead of being considered on your own merits. And there's expectations, unspoken, about your house and your clothes and your hair and your ... class.
And I get so scared. Because I know I'm not the woman I used to be, already. This place is grinding down my soul.
Here, he is his better self. But I am my worst. Morose and standoffish and depressed and sullen. Soon, it'll be too much. The sensitivity and worry will harden into resentment. Then he'll lash out. And then, one day, he'll realize that I have become an albatross.
I feel like this is some kind of ghoulish epiphany. I know exactly how my mother felt and I know exactly why she has become the woman she is. There's no way to truly be happy if you're not emotionally grounded in the place where you live. And without that grounding, there's no connecting to anything or anyone. Because you don't want to be around long enough to give a fuck about them.
But you can't leave. It would tear every fiber of your being, because that's how deeply you love him. You just. Can't. Won't. Leave.
This is hell. Stronger women than I have been driven nearly mad. God help me. I am going to lose everything.
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