The Day I Stopped Swallowing Shit

I found out she had been cheating on me in August. She did it for seven months, out of the ten months I had been in that relationship. Those were seven months of lies I swallowed like a docile cuck, a role I wasn’t even asked if I wanted to be a part of. While I paid her car insurance and she paid for my phone, she was out there screwing someone else, probably with my money still warm in her account. It wasn’t just the betrayal that pissed me off. It was the fact that after I confronted her and told her I was done, she didn’t disappear. She didn’t retreat in shame like any half-decent human would. No. She stayed. She lingered. She did everything to keep me around.

She said we could build something. A future. We’d talked about it, right? House, family, life together. So she used that. She weaponized it. At that time, our bills were entangled, so when I told her I was done, she threatened to cancel my line. I said, “No shit. I’ve got a thousand business cards with that number on them.” I wasn’t begging. I was warning. I needed that number. My number was my business. My work. My identity.

But she wasn’t about practicality. She was about control. She wanted the leash.