Chapter 2: The Questions That Bleed

Anthony and I grew up together. We were two children sharing the same desks, studying the same subjects, discovering the world with the same innocence. In our teens, his family had to move to another county. He left and I stayed. We were just friends back then, so his absence didn't hurt; It was just the natural separation of two school paths.

However, life crossed us again in adulthood. When I saw him again, already a man, I felt a turn in my stomach and I convinced myself: "Here it is. Here I stay. With him I will form my family." How stupid I was to believe in the fairy tales of fate. We never had children. Today I thank God for that, but at the time it was another silent resignation. He didn't want to. "It's not time yet," he always said. There was always an excuse, a work project, a business trip, a logical argument that I ended up accepting out of love.

In the privacy of our bed I was never lazy. I liked to enjoy my sexuality with him, to propose, to invent games, to change routines so that the years did not turn desire into monotony. I strove to be his lover, his confidant, his refuge. But I discovered the hard way that this is not enough when someone has already decided to look elsewhere.

Now, the mind becomes my worst enemy, imagining the daily life of its new life. I find myself wondering: Will she wait for him with hot food like I did every night no matter how late it was? Will she take the time to iron his clothes as carefully as I did? Will she run out to get him in her car late at night when an emergency arises? Like I did so many times? They are bursts of questions that pierce your soul.

To top it off, I make the masochistic mistake of checking social networks. I inevitably see photographs of them. Walks through places I don't know, captures of affectionate conversations, a display of public romance and attentions that he never had with me. Details that for fifteen years I asked him for, I begged him on my knees, and that he always denied me claiming that "he was not like that". Then you understand the bitterest truth of all: He never loved me as he said. The problem was not that he did not know how to be detailed; The problem was that he didn't want to be with me.

What did I gain from the divorce? An empty house and a bank transfer with a sum of money of several zeros. A lot of paper money. Is that worth my love? Is that figure the equivalent of fifteen years of my life, of my body, of my illusions? Only material things. Only money. That is what I am worth for justice and for him.

I couldn't stand it. I sold the house immediately; To stay in there was to breathe an air infested with false memories and broken promises. I packed some clothes in a hurry into a small suitcase, closed the door, and left that city. I escaped from that environment where every street, every coffee shop, and every familiar face reminded me of how insignificant I am to the people around me. No one really cared about my pain; To the world I was just a hallway gossip, just another abandoned woman. So I packed my grief and bought a ticket with no return date to the most remote place I found on the map: the coast of Norway.