Here I stand, on Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park. This was the rope with which I was handfasted here, six years ago today–entering into the legal bonds and contract of marriage. At the time, it seemed to be the happiest day of my life.

Now, this rope feels like a noose around my neck, and I’ve been unable to breathe for nearly two months; it turns out that I’ve slowly been strangling this entire year, but I just didn’t know it (for certain) until February 7th. Now I’m just twisting in the breeze. I’m dead, and my husband killed me.

I don’t know how I can keep on with this charade. My trust has been shattered to its core, and I simply do not know how to heal. I’m trapped in a marriage and an apartment with yet another man who has traumatized me so badly that he may as well be my abusive father. I cannot look at him without feeling pain and betrayal. I cannot stand for him to touch me. And increasingly, I’m finding myself unable to be anywhere with him; to smile and play the role of a happy couple when I know it’s a lie.

Our agreements in relationship make it nearly impossible to commit sexual or even emotional infidelity; even so, in a Facebook post (which, it was pointed out to me this week, reads much less like an apology than a weak, half-hearted acknowledgement of guilt), Andrew states that “being the creature I am, I had to seek out those boundaries and test their strength.”

Well. That creature fucked around. He found out.

At this point, what’s in my heart is that we are married in title and contract only. My love for him is gone, and I don’t really see it coming back. Certainly not the way it was. He spent the first quarter of this year (and probably the final month of the last) chipping away at our foundation, and the House of Satyricon-Darling has crumbled into the ocean, washed away in the salt of a million trillion tears. Realities of San Francisco real estate being what they are, I currently have no choice but to keep living with him. But that just….is what it is.

If you’re wondering what he actually did, I’m tired of treating it like privileged information: we received an assistance check from the State of California to pay a portion of the massive back rent we accrued during COVID unemployment; it was for over $24K. Behind my back, Andrew spent over $14,000 of that money in 2-3 months–and lied to my face when I got suspicious and asked him if he was doing so. What he spent it on is really of little consequence; it was squandered, but more importantly, IT WAS STOLEN. The money was our landlord’s, not his, and his theft of it threatened my ability to continue residing in the apartment I’ve held onto tooth and nail for over 16 years–my only hope of staying in San Francisco, due to rent control–the place which he’d convinced me was our home.

He showed no regard for his own security, much less mine, nor did he ever stop to consider the consequences of his incredibly stupid and selfish actions. He showed surprise when I became so intensely trauma-triggered that I started locking the bedroom door when I was away from home (as I had to do when I was still trapped in a lease with my prior psychotic/abusive roommate (who, it so happens, was my prior longest non-biological male attachment)). The real hurt was when I realized that, looking back, this is very much in character for him.

In fact, the biggest red flag should’ve been our wedding day. I’m an adult who’s been living with (non-diagnosed/untreated) ADHD since I was a teenager; I’m well aware at this point in middle age that my life/creative process consists of contemplating an action for a very long time, procrastinating on actually taking any action, but finally rushing through to completion at the 11th hour; having already long considered what I planned on doing, those results–however quickly produced and last minute they may be–are almost always passable and, quite often, brilliant.

Such it was with my marriage vows; I finally jotted them down in my notebook the morning of our wedding day, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking my coffee. I wrote them well; I wrote them with intention, and with a great deal of forethought.

Andrew, on the other hand, wrote nothing down, and seemed to have planned not at all. His vows were lamely stammered out in an incredibly vague, half-assed way. They were barely vows at all; they merely referred to continuing what he was doing, basically.

Weak. Barely trying.

That’s basically how Andrew moves through life. He’s used to bullshitting his way to success. Well, it turns out that a killer smile, a big dick, and a con man’s charm are not enough to sustain a long-term relationship. So I find myself the victim of just another of his long grifts.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everyone who believed in us; sorry for everyone who was there with us that day, buying into a lie. I’m sorry for one more tremendous failure in a long life of grandiose mistakes.

I’m sorry I lied to myself. Many of those closest to me who attended the wedding thought I was not the marrying type; indeed, I am not. I should’ve known better than to get caught up in a silly romantic fantasy/delusion. I’m not capable of long-term love–certainly not of sustaining a healthy lifelong relationship with a romantic partner.

I’m broken, and I’m deeply, irrevocably traumatized, and I’m incapable of any lasting happiness. Everyone dies, leaves, or betrays me, given a long enough timeline. I’m merely cursed to keep surviving through it all.

I’ve realized lately that I’ve fooled myself into thinking myself strong, for a very long time. I think that many people see me from the outside and think I’m very strong. I’m not. There’s a difference between true strength and merely living through every countless sling, arrow, knife, and barb–every loss and tragedy and heartache and unfair, undeserved torment–and putting on a false face the next morning so I can continue pretending anything is ok.

I’ve been saying it for over a year, but I’ll say it again: I’m not ok. Things are not ok.

Things are not going to be ok.

9 years of relationship. 6 years of marriage.

One very, very dark and uncertain future.