Today is D day
Today is D-Day.
It’s been 4 years.
I decided I couldn’t stay in a marriage with no communication, no love, no emotional support.
If I’m being honest with myself…
about a month after we got married, I knew it was a mistake.
But I stayed.
I made up all kinds of reasons why I had to stay.
If you’re my age, you know those reasons.
I was taught to endure no matter what.
Men will be men.
The woman’s job is to suck it up and stick in there, no matter what he’s doing.
If you don’t—you’re the failure.
And the other big one I told myself:
He wasn’t a bad guy… he just wasn’t my guy.
I had been reasoning with myself for years, and it was getting more and more unbearable.
Then one day my daughter said something to me that I couldn’t shake.
She said,
“Mom, when are you leaving him? He’s an NPC.”
I didn’t even know what that meant.
She explained it like this:
the people in the game that don’t really do anything… just background.
She said, “You deserve more, Mom.”
I gave her all the same reasons I had already tallied up in my head…
and went right back to doing what I was doing.
But later that night, laying in bed, thoughts just going…
I looked up what NPC meant.
And I really started to evaluate what she said.
She was right.
That’s exactly what our relationship felt like.
I was a player… and he was just a figure in the game moving around.
I thought about that for the next two months.
I dissected that statement like we used to do in high school with frogs.
Cut it open. Looked at everything.
I argued with myself.
Back and forth.
Until finally… I won.
We went home, and I told him.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
I wanted a divorce.
He left. Completely disappeared.
Changed his number. Everything.
I came home after being on the road for a few months…
to divorce papers.
He took all the money we had saved.
Tried to take half my house.
Left me with a pile of credit card debt.
I knew the risk when I told him.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this…
but it did.
⸻
This was the beginning.