I think I just met the happiest person in the world!

She wasn’t rich and nor was she particularly pretty. She wasn’t athletic or gifted. She was divorced. She was me.

I believed when I met you that you made me the happiest person in the world ‘cause, fuck it, I loved you! You took my breath away. You were handsome, and funny, and kind, and smart, and playful, and I thought you were fucking perfect. Do you hear me? I thought you were perfect. I wouldn’t hear a bad word against you. Even when you hurt me.

No matter what you did I thought you were golden. You were a Greek God to me. Powerful. Mythical. What I didn’t realise was you weren’t real.

It wasn’t till you tried to hit me that I realised. Realised how blind I’d been. Suddenly, I could hear all the times you called me fat, told me I wasn’t enough, made me cry. It was like you’d knocked some sense into me: a sense of fear and a sense of perspective because I’ve read too many articles about dead women where their friends said, “He was just so nice!” Like being nice meant you couldn’t be a monster. Well, you were a monster. As you hit me that’s what I realised.

I’d spent five years lifting you up and exalting you while you let my head sink beneath the surface. By the end of our relationship I was ugly, fat and bloated. A corpse caught in the current of your tidal wave. I was trapped in my happy marriage because heaven forbid I tell anyone what you’d done. Because no one believes a woman when she’s married to a man like you: a man she loves. God, I loved you.

I loved you so much that I hated myself for not being enough for you. I loved you so much that I thought I was the happiest girl in the world. I told myself I was the luckiest. I told myself that to survive. If I were better you wouldn’t need to tear me down. If I were better you wouldn’t need to laugh at me. If I were better you’d have listened when I asked you to stop that night. That night you didn’t listen. That night you climbed on top and I lay, eyes closed, pretending I was anywhere but under you. But you apologised. So that made it okay. You always apologised and God in heaven I forgave you.

It wasn’t okay. I only realised that today. Today, when I met the happiest person in the world. She was in the car and I realised that when our song came on I didn’t think of you. It wasn’t ours anymore, it was mine. Because music is free and so am I. She was in the car, divorce papers riding in the seat where you used to sit, and I realised I was happy. You were gone. I realised this today.