A Woman Scorned

If it’s what you truly want… I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti. Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph, all three of us. Immortalized… you and your perfect girl.

Warsan Shire
Anger, adapted for the visual album, Lemonade, by Beyoncé

I did it all out of order. First I forgave him, then I got angry, then I began to process what had happened. I had spent nearly five years in a committed, loving relationship with this man who had been my closest friend for just as many years before that. A decade of my life had suddenly turned upside down. I came back from Portugal confident of only one thing: this was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. 

I was immediately confronted with the disappointment of a breakup and the betrayal of his having cheated on me. We were no longer a couple, but he was still my best friend, the one friend who knew ALL the backstories, so I could just dive straight into the new story when I needed to. For the sake of that friendship, I was determined to push through my feelings about his infidelity. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I’m not used to easy. I only promised myself that it would be worth it.

After he took that woman he cheated on me with to our campus, introduced her to my own daughter, my belly was full of hot coals all the time. It was all I could do not to breathe fire. I just needed my friend too much to let any of my anger out. 

I was trying my best to get over it, but it would help a lot if he’d stop turning the knife he’d put in my back. After years of telling me what a private person he was, suddenly, his side piece was everywhere I turned.

I had let him keep me on the DL because I believed he was just like that, especially after things had blown up with his girlfriend before me. Her drama had spilled into his professional life with multiple employers. I conceded to his wishes for privacy, especially around his professional life, which was unfortunately the entirety of our mutual friends. I didn’t like it, but I could pretend we weren’t a thing, if that’s what he needed from me. 

In retrospect, when he first said that he needed to keep his personal and professional lives separate and that he required discretion from me, I should have just told him that that wasn’t an option for me. I am an open book, especially when I’m in love. Unfortunately, I have a terrible habit of yielding whenever I can. I don’t want to fight over the small stuff. The small stuff adds up so quickly, though. Rather than blurt out my relationship status to someone I shouldn’t, I just kinda withdrew. The easiest way for me to keep something a secret is to isolate myself. 

I didn’t make him put a label on it because actions matter to me more than words. When we were together, and I mean literally together, like in the same room, he was all the boyfriend I ever needed. The label isn’t what mattered. I felt wanted, protected, and loved. I believed I was in a monogamous, committed relationship. His exact words were, “we’re monogamous.” He said, “I love you.”  He held me and I felt like I was home. 

I didn’t care what he called it. Our relationship felt so solid. Except for when he’d disappear, become unreachable. When he’s gone, he is completely gone. He says he needs his alone time. I get that. As a writer, time alone staring into the abyss and creating satisfying scenarios for characters I made up is kinda my jam. Not only did I not begrudge him this need for solitude, I took some relief in knowing that he would always give me space to write. 

I thought we were perfect for each other. Learning how little I had meant to That Man killed me. All the excuses he gave me for what he couldn’t give me, and I accepted them with blind faith. I could meet him where he was at. Except that wasn’t where he was; that was where he’d put me. This irrelevant twat shows up out of left field, and suddenly he isn’t a private person after all. He definitely wasn’t skittish about putting a label on it. It seemed like every time I turned around, I was having her rubbed in my face. 

My family was overwhelmed with an unrelated crisis. I needed my best friend to be there for me. To give me support, distraction, comfort. Instead, That Man did just about everything possible to make one of the darkest times in my life so much worse.

I never wanted him back in my bed. He had cheated on me so casually, acting as if it was no big thing. Desire had been replaced with disgust. The word, “Possibility,” had always hung over our relationship, but now its meaning had changed. He betrayed me, rejected me, abandoned me. It wasn’t enough that I’d lost my daydreams of the future. He had to erase our entire relationship. Worse than that though, what if it had been bullshit all along? What if we were never really in a monogamous, committed relationship?

I have always tried to be responsible with my reproductive health. I’d had plenty of routine checkups over the years where they test for unlikely diseases, just in case. Pap smears are never fun, but they’re responsible. What if That Man truly didn’t think he had cheated on me? What if “we’re monogamous,” was just a thing he said to avoid conflict?

These thoughts led me to the most thorough and humiliating STI screening of my life. I had to go to my University Health Services and acknowledge that I had been engaging in unsafe sexual practices, that I had no idea how many partners my former partner had had while we were together and I had done nothing to protect myself.

His ex-girlfriend had been staying at his place while we were together and I trusted him. Even with the weirdness of that night when they were still together that he’d followed me to my bedroom for unknown reasons, I had it in my head that he would never cheat. He said he would never cheat, and that was enough for me to believe. The way he was with me after our breakup challenged my trust in their boundaries as exes.

During our relationship, a colleague had found a steamy love letter addressed to That Man. It stirred up some gossip, but I did my best to steer clear of it, sure that whoever had written it was with him before we were a thing. I knew he’d been with women between his ex and I. I took comfort in that, as proof they were really over and not just, “on a break,” before anything happened between him and I. Looking back though… Even the apprentice with the crush… It was bold of me to assume that was all it was. 

“That’s how he is with everyone.“

It finally dawned on me that I had no idea what That Man was doing when I wasn’t around. Even before we were officially monogamous, I expected he would tell me if he had done anything with anyone else. Why I kept assuming consideration from someone who had shown me so little is inexplicable now. 

I had my blood drawn and tested for syphilis and HIV. They gave me a pap smear to test for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and HPV. I endured an excruciatingly slow and detailed visual exam, going over my entire undercarriage, one little square at a time, looking for any signs of HPV or herpes. The whole time I was kicking myself for being so trusting. 

I am not writing this from prison. That Man continues to draw breath because the tests all came back clean. I don’t know if he was as reckless with my body as he was with my heart. I’m not sure that I trust he’d be truthful if I asked. There were a lot of conversations that a continuing friendship would require he and I to have someday, but at least none of them started with instructions from the health department. 

The timing of it all was so overwhelming. I was carrying too many heavy things at once. Then Side Chick started showing up in my notifications. How did she even find my Instagram? That Man and I were never connected on IG. She followed me, then unfollowed me. It was weird. Jarring. Then it happened again. The second time I sent him a screenshot and asked him to make it stop. 

He knew what I had going on in my life. Days earlier he’d promised that if I needed anything… He even offered to try to do my admin job until things settled down, without knowing more than the tip of the iceberg of what that actually entailed. When I asked him to make it stop he said he would.

Then the next thing I know he’s trying to explain to me how Side Chick was feeling some kind of way. He told me that she had come across something I’d written to him and… Hold up. He let the woman he cheated on me with have access to my most personal and private correspondence, meant for his eyes only? And he wanted my response to be concern for how SHE feels about that?  

I couldn’t swallow any more anger down. I tried. I still needed my friend, but I also needed some space between myself and the ongoing pain having him in my life caused. When I finally took a step back it was like stepping off a landmine. Kaboom.

There was more rage than I could swallow down anymore. I got drunk and I wrote him the meanest things I could think of to say. I was furious. The goal was to take all of the hurt and anger I’d been carrying since I found out about their affair and hurl it back into his chest. Let him feel it instead. I was done. 

It doesn’t work like that though. Maybe the email hurt him. Maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. It didn’t make me feel any less pain. At best, I accomplished nothing. At worst, I multiplied the pain and spread it around. 

I hate owing people apologies. Unfortunately, I had chosen to lash out. It’s the meanest choice I’ve made in my adult life. I took things he told me in confidence and tried to weaponize them against him in anger. There was so much anger, too much for me to hold in.

‘Cause I’m here, to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
It’s not fair to deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me

Alanis Morissette
You Oughta Know