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Nightmares of a Happily Married Woman
Nightmares of a Happily Married Woman
As I lay in the sun, enjoying the warm breeze of one of the last sunny days of the year; I thought of my life at that moment. I seemed to be content. I had every earthly need, I was able to get the things I really wanted, I had a great family who was there for me, and of course, my loving Husband. We had been married for 6 months and I had never been happier. Jordan was everything I had ever wanted, besides being tall, dark and handsome; he was loyal and so very supportive. He was so willing to do anything that might make me happier, and he loved me. He loved me for exactly who I was, and he gave it unconditionally. I had I good life, and many people would envy me for it.
My train of thought was lost then as I heard someone walking past me. I opened my eyes to see a neighbor walking across the lawn of our apartment complex. He gave me a half smile and a nod. I had only ever met him in passing and couldn’t tell you his name, but he greeted me the same every time. I decided it was time to get up; my mom would be there soon to pick me up. I was helping her pick out decorations and gift for my sisters baby shower the next week. I walked back to my apartment; feeling rather pleased in general, and went to unlock the door. It was already open, and before I was completely inside I could hear my husband somewhere in the house. “Hi Honey,” I called; it was my normal greeting for when one of us came home.
“Hi Babe,” he called back.
“You’re home early…” I said as I walked to our bedroom to find him. He was sitting on the floor with our puppy in his lap. “Well, that’s cute,” I commented as I flung my purse down and took my jacket off. “Hey, my mom will be here soon. She wants me to go with her to get stuff for Laurel’s baby shower. I didn’t think you’d be home yet. Do you want to come with us?” I offered, feeling slightly guilty for not being here to spend time with him.
“Only if you want me to” he said.
“Of course I want you to come, I always want to be with you, silly” I replied with a smile as I leaned down to give him a kiss. “Let me call my mom, we can just meet her there.”
A half hour later, we were in one of the nearby department stores looking for my mother. I hated this department store, it was always too crowded and you could never make a trip there without running into someone you knew. As if to prove my point around the corner came a petite blond woman, who was very obviously pregnant, and who I guessed was her husband right behind her.
“Jordan!” she said with obvious excitement.
“Hey Charlene,” he answered, “How are you?”
“Not too bad,” she said as she rubbed her belly. They stared at each other for a few seconds before she said, “Oh sorry, this is my husband Marcus.”
They guys shook hands as Jordan said, “This is Emily.” It always bothered me when he forgot to introduce me as his wife, but it wasn’t the first time, and I know he didn’t mean too.
“Hey, I’m going to go look for my mom,” I said to Jordan, it looked like he wanted to catch up with his friend, so I would let him.
I found my mom in the baby isle looking at stuff. We stood there for a few minutes debating over one blanket verses the other, and the whole time I couldn’t shake off the really bad feeling I had. All my good feelings from this morning where gone, and I felt really uneasy. I didn’t know if I was going to be sick or not, but either way I kind of wanted to go home. I told my mom I wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden, and I went to go find Jordan. I went back to the place I had left him, and figured they had moved over an isle because I could hear him close by, I was about to round the corner, when something they were saying made me stop.
“Jordan I can’t take this anymore, you keep telling me to wait. What is there to wait for?” I heard Charlene whisper.
“Charlene, this really isn’t the place, we’ll talk about it later.” Jordan said.
“You always say that and it isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“I just need to figure this out, ok?” Jordan said.
“What is there to figure out? I told you, I’m leaving Marcus. The only reason he hasn’t left me yet is because he still thinks this baby is his-“
“Shh!” Jordan stopped her, “I said not now.” I heard him walk away then, but he must have gone the other direction because he didn’t see me.
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard, I repeated it over and over again, my stomach flipping unsteadily, threatening to surrender my lunch. No matter how I repeated the words to myself, I couldn’t make then mean anything else than what I knew they meant. I felt too hot, and suddenly too weak to move. My head was spinning, and my thoughts where chaos. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on composing myself. I needed to act normal so I could make it home. I could fall apart and die when I got home. I was contemplating the meaning of my life now, but before I could come to any conclusion-
“Hey! Emily? Right? You’re Jordan’s little friend…” Not that voice, I thought to myself. I opened my eyes and saw that petite woman standing in front of me. She called me his “little friend.” Was she really that dense? The look of her face confirmed that she was. I could tell she honestly didn’t know I was his wife. With one subtle movement I turned my wedding ring around on my finger so that is just looked like one solid silver band.
“That’s me.” I said with a very fake, forced smile. I hated her, with every fiber of my being; she had ruined my life in a matter of seconds. I blamed her for my unhappiness, more than that, despair. Yet I had a need to know everything, I needed to know what had happened, and I couldn’t let Jordan know I knew anything until I knew everything.
“So how do you know Jordan?” she asked.
“Oh, Jordan and I go way, way back. Old family friends you know…I’m practically family.”
“Like a sister?” she asked.
“Yeah… Just like a sister,” only I knew I was being sarcastic, “we tell each other everything,” I paused, and decided to just go for it, “you must be that girl he was telling me about?”
“He talked about me?” she asked, surprised, yet pleased.
“We have no secrets.” How I wished that was true… “You look like you want to talk about something; hey, why don’t we go next door, there’s a little restaurant, it would be a little more private.” She looked like she wasn’t sure. “I highly doubt they’ll know you left at all.”
“Oh ok, I’m just dying to tell someone!” she said in a rush. I couldn’t hold back the Evil thought of ‘I can fix that for you.’
Once we where outside the doors I asked, “so how did you to meet?”
“Well, you know that little part time job? The one up at the school?” I nodded. “Well,” she continued, “that’s where it really all started. We talked, we flirted; you know, one thing led to another really…” I knew she was being vague on purpose.
“I see,” was my only answer. We walked inside the restaurant and sat on the sofas in the waiting area. “So, what now?” I asked her, pointing to her belly with my eyes. She knew what I was asking.
“Well that’s the problem,” she said, “I told him I’d leave my husband, but he seems to think it would be more complicated than that and I don’t know why.”
“He’s just like that…” I supplied.
“Well I’m leaving my husband either way, and I think I have the rest all planed out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, as soon as I leave Marcus, I was going to talk to Jordan about, you know, making things official, telling our parents, moving in together, that sort of thing. I think it was just kind of unexpected for him, I mean the baby, but he’s a good guy, and I know he’ll do the right thing. I think he is just waiting until I get closer to having the baby. I think he wants to surprise me by proposing in the hospital. So if everything goes according to plan, I’ll be married with a baby by the end of the year.” She smiled happily, like she had just told me the end of a fairy tale.
I wanted to vomit, I wanted to strangle her pretty little neck, I wanted to do her bodily harm… then run her over. But instead I decided to crush her dreams the way she had crushed mine. I couldn’t keep this charade up munch longer anyway. I wanted her to know he was mine; that he chose me, that he would never be hers the way she wanted him to be. Jordan had been divorced once before, and it was too hard on him. I knew he would never go through it again; something was too engrained into his emotions to do that.
As odd as it was, at this moment I was more angry at her, even though I knew Jordan was at least as much (if not more) to blame as she was. But angry as I was I still wanted him, I was still willing to fight for him, to make it known that he was mine, and only mine.
“Well, Charlene,” I started, “it sounds as though you have everything worked out... but as happy as that all seems; none of that’s going to happen. Jordan is not going to marry you.”
“Why not?” she asked; a little confused and disappointed.
“Jordan can’t marry you,” I turned my ring around and showed it to her, “because he’s married to me. He’s been married to me for over half a year, and he’s going to stay married to me. So I suggest you stay with your husband, and forget mine.
“Jordan married you?” she asked in a clearly condescending way.
“Yes, he did.” I said in a way to let her know she was not going to intimidate me.
“You can’t stop me.” She said in a low but determined voice.
“What?”
“You can’t stop me,” she repeated. “When you’re not there, it will be the same as it always has, you can’t stop me from touching him. Jordan loves me, I know he does, he’ll leave you, just wait. He has a baby now, and he’ll take care of us.”
“Has he ever said it? The exact words ‘Charlene, I love you?’ well?” I asked. I could tell by the look on her face he hadn’t, but I could also tell she was trying to hide that fact.
“He doesn’t have to, it’s obvious.” She replied.
“Oh, yeah, so obvious, that’s why he’s shouting it from the roof tops. Face it! He’s ashamed of you, why do you think you’re his dirty little secret, why he won’t meet your friends or family, or introduce you to his. Why do you think he won’t talk about the future with you? Because, there is no future with you in it. Not for him. He doesn’t have any secret plans to make your life happier, he’s trying to figure out a way out of your sick little fairy tale you’ve created.”
I hoped that look of pain on her face meant that I had crushed all her hopes. She was about to say something when my phone rang. I answered, “Hello,” pause, “hi honey….yeah… I’ll meet you at the car…mhmm. Love you too, bye.” I looked at Charlene as I said ‘I love you’ I wanted her to know that whether or not she was aware, Jordan had already made his choice. “I have to go. Think about what I said.” I started to get up, and she started to say something, she was trying to have the last word, but I wasn’t going to let her. I cut her off, “oh and by the way, “said over my shoulder as I reached the door, “He doesn’t really like blonds.”
On the way home, I was giving Jordan the silent treatment, and when I did look at him I gave him my “look of death” as he called it. I knew he would catch on pretty quick that I knew he did something bad, but I wouldn’t say a word until we where home. As we pulled into our parking spot, I was suddenly so scared to go inside with him. I didn’t want to say what I knew I had to. I wasn’t ready to hear what he was going to tell me. From this point on everything was going to be different, and I didn’t want anything to change.
We walked in silence to the front door, and I refused his hand when he offered it. He opened the front door, and we both walked inside. He walked to the middle of the room, turned and stood there, waiting for me to say something. All of my bravado from the restaurant was gone now. I felt so weak, so fragile, like one word was going to shatter me. How could he hurt me like this? How could he betray me in the worst way possible? I wanted to scream at him, but it only came out as a whisper, “why?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. “How could you do this to me?” I said as I walked closer to him. Before now, I was only numb, only accepting the facts but not the emotions that went with them. My mind had built a dam to keep them out and now it was as if the dam was collapsing, and I was feeling too many things at once, and I couldn’t control them. “How could this happen?” I asked a little louder. Jordan backed up a little, and raised his arms in front of him in defense.
“I didn’t mean too,” he said.
“‘You didn’t mean too’?” I repeated. “YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO!” I yelled at him, tears where in my eyes, and my words kept breaking. “Tell me what happened!” I demanded, I needed to hear him confirm everything, even though I knew it was going to kill me to. “TELL ME!”
“I’m sorry,” he said as if he needed to say that before anything else. “We met at the school; she works for them after hours, organizing the activities. I didn’t mean for anything to happen. I still don’t know how it happened; she needed someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on, I guess. I was just trying to be a good friend to her; but it was something more to her, and before I knew what was happening it was already done. I couldn’t stop after that, she just, she… I don’t know… it was really hard to say no to her. I know I messed up, I sorry.” He confessed in a rush.
“You’re sorry? YOU’RE SORRY!” I started yelling and I couldn’t stop. “WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME!” I was sobbing now and I couldn’t make myself stop. Jordan kept looking away as if it hurt him to see me like this. I had an uncontrollable urge to grab his face in both my hands, and make him look in my eyes; force him to see the pain in them. So that’s just what I did. I reached for him and he backed way, but there was no more room to move. He was backed up into the sliding glass door. I had his face in my hands now, and I wouldn’t let him look away. “WHY? WHY? WHY?” I kept repeating it, taking gasping breaths in between. I knew I was pressing my nails into his cheeks, but I didn’t care, I at that moment, I wanted to bang his head into the glass until it broke. Instead, I slapped him as hard as I could. But my arms felt weak and useless, I knew I wasn’t hitting him very hard, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
He had broken my heart, and I didn’t know if I could ever recover from something like this. He was my whole reason for living and now it seemed as if that reason was fading away. Words cannot convey that kind of despair; the feeling of losing everything at once, with no hope of ever having it back again. I was still sobbing, and everything was becoming hazy and confusing, “Jordan,” I said, needing something from him, although I didn’t know what. “Jordan,” I repeated.
Everything was slipping away, my head was spinning so fast I wasn’t sure if I was standing up or lying down anymore. I had this strange feeling of falling off a cliff, yet at the same time being pulled in the opposite direction. The pull was so much stronger; I could feel the pressure of whatever was moving me. And then as if I was surfacing from under water, I broke through the boundaries of the pull; and woke up.
calm
