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I will not fight with my husband. I will not fight with my husband. I will sleep in the guest room again.
Because when we try and have a nice evening, when we watch something in bed, together, and then talk or engage, somehow, it turns into a fight. So, while we’re both working through whatever it is we’re going through, I find it best to give each other space. That’s my logic.
Only when I wake up and greet him in the kitchen, I am met with a hostile, “So you’re just sleeping in the guest room now?”
Now, I’m on my back foot. If I tell him the truth, the real reason I’m in the guest room, there will be a fight. The tension will seep into my daughters and Ms. Roz will make a comment when I pick them up. Something like ‘Emmy seemed sad today, is everything okay at home?” Instead, as the girls run around us, I tell him, “Oh, no. I was just working late and didn’t want to wake you up.”
One can only do this for so long – pretend and hide and bury how we feel, what we wish to say. Yet that’s what I keep doing. It’s easier to just avoid.
Thus, that afternoon, I set up an after-school playdate to get out of the house, take care of my kids, to do my duty, but also have someone, a woman, I can talk to.
I deliver the plan to my husband later as a gesture of good will. I tell him to take a break. Enjoy a night off. I’ll get the girls from school, take them to the park and get them dinner with this friend, and bring them back around bedtime.
Of course, things pile up throughout the day. We plan to meet at five but I’m running late. Thus, on the way to meet this friend, I roll a stop sign.
I stop, but only for a moment, because I see the Range Rover across from me coming out of the gated community, whom I sense, is going to be a slower driver. So, yes, I jump her to the punch.
There is honking behind me. I look in my rearview mirror. She’s cursing and giving me the finger. I roll my eyes. Road rage is common. I think, she’ll get over it, simmer down. Yet when I look in the rearview mirror again, I see she’s filming me.
Something that’s been simmering in me bubbles up.
I mutter something like “fuck this shit,” slam on my breaks, put the car in park in the middle of the road, get out, and walk towards her.
“What is your problem?” I yell, gesturing to the phone she now has turned towards my face. “Why are you filming me?”
“I’ve called the cops,” she said. “This is evidence.”
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