There is so much ugly running wild, so home should be a refuge, a place to escape from the rest of the world.

From the time I wake up until the time the kids go down for sleep, I am taking care of the house and home. After the kids are tidied up, I make breakfast. I cook from scratch and serve my family meals and snacks, so it’s never simple. I put love and time into it each time. It will be something like French toast, scrambled eggs, fruit, and milk, or bacon, eggs, potatoes, cinnamon toast and fruit. I’m Puerto Rican and the kitchen is definitely the heart of the home.

Also part of our Puerto Rican culture, in between meals, we are taking care of the home. Laundry, making beds, doing dishes, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen and living space, sweeping, mopping if needed, freshening the powder room; I will put a movie or music in the background and get to it. In between that I will work on homework or lesson plans because I’m a student, and a teacher. I handle official business and/or errands, quickly shop for groceries or other necessities once a week. I’m always taking care of anything and everything, because it’s what I love to do, it’s who I am. And yes, I iron the baby’s clothes.

The nighttime routine comes, I prepare dinner, then it’s showers for the kids, a bath for myself and the baby, reading/art time, prayers, and a little free time for the kids before bed. We have lots of time together because I’ve been home taking care of Jace who is only two, the son I share with Chris. He isn’t ready to be away from me just yet, and I’ve been emotionally recovering, so I’m loving the time at home. I won’t return to work until Summer, also on sabbatical due to Covid so I’m taking a few classes to keep busy.

After the kids are in bed, it’s sexy time. I have to be able to be Lisamarie, wife, lover, ‘good girl’. I like the ‘touchy’ part of my relationship to be in passionate fashion. I like to be choked, squeezed, held down, maybe hold him down, bitten, bruised, and rolled around like it’s a playground. I dress up, dress down, and extremely sexual is putting it lightly. If the kids are occupied, anytime is a good time. Outside, in the car, wherever’s clever. If full intercourse can’t go down, there better be some kind foreplay happening, intimacy is vitally important to me, day and night. That physical connection with my lover is the only time everything else goes away, and it’s just us, something just for me, something just for him. For that time that it’s goin’ down, nothing else exists, the world and everything in it, disappears. He still wants it to be that way. After everything he has said and done to me, I feel like a flower that closes at nighttime, but it doesn’t bloom even in the morning sun, it’s afraid to, it’s resentful.

You can DO everything, and you can BE everything, and some men just love the streets and the grimey sludge who also love the ‘life’. No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you take care, no matter how clean the house is, how comfortable the finances are, how well the kids are nurtured and cared for, no matter how loyal, unique. and sexual you are, some men just find the street trash more enticing. They care more about impressing random garbage and recycled exes more than they care about what is happening on the homefront. He turned my love into disdain.

They hop-skip-and jump away from home to make the hoodrats and homies happy. They answer their phone all hours of the night when they call, they disappear because they don’t care about home-base. They value the street cesspool more than the one-of-a-kind woman they have at home, and their offspring who are growing up without them because they can’t resist staying away from the ugly mutt they used to be with and her trap house (shout out to you nicole, you’re gross, desperate, and basic, proud of a house that is open 24/7, been raided and ‘publicly funded’). And let’s not forget you mikey, from the knock always coming around causing problems at our home, now the ‘dealer’ who says it’s ‘disrespectful’ for me to be around his house, because I call him exactly what he is; a lost, intrusive, and pathetic dude with nothing to lose so he helps everyone lose everything. I intentionally use lowercase letters when naming some of the cast of clowns, because they don’t deserve a capital letter, being low-hanging, rotten fruit and all.

After all this and all that, now the baby-daddy realizes what he had, and has been begging me to take him back for 25 months.

I won’t. Because I can’t. Sometimes hurt runs too deep; the shady behaviour, too much.

From day one when we met, I told him, take heed how he treats me and cares for me, he did not.

I told him to be very careful with my emotions, because the line is drawn and once it’s crossed, it’s done. Now that I’ve been completely drained of absolutely everything, he understands now that not only is the grass not greener on the other side, but there is only mud and bad, infertile, and spoiled soil on the other side.

NOW, I need to just forget that I was taken advantage of, used, humiliated, lied to, betrayed, neglected, and abused. I need to forgive him and give him my best self……. WHAT?!?!?! This is all just so crazy to me that it literally makes my head feel like it’s spinning. How am I supposed to feel bad or wrong for getting out of a situation that was so toxic, an environment that made me so sick, a place that I only wanted to escape from because everything hurt, everything pissed me off to no end. This was a place that made me stop painting, stop writing, stop reading, stop wanting to even move.

Am I wrong for not wanting to go back?

Am I wrong for not wanting to move back into the asylum?

I wasn’t the one who made everything fall apart.

I never put anything before my home and family.

I did right by him. I gave him a healthy, smart, and handsome baby boy. I made the house, a home and now he wants to come back to that home, only his home isn’t with his son and I; it’s God knows where, with God knows who.

He would do anything to have back the love I once poured over him.

All of a sudden, our ‘happy home’ is all he wants, and I’m the ‘stupid bitch’ who won’t give it to him.