The Marriage

For most of Mason's deployment, I believed that distance was the hardest thing a marriage could survive.

Whenever I felt lonely, overwhelmed, or exhausted, I reminded myself that it was temporary. Eventually he would come home. Eventually we would live together again. Eventually life would settle into something normal.

I imagined his return as a finish line.

The problem was that I had mistaken absence for the challenge.

When Mason came home, we had been married a little over a year. Looking back, it's strange to realize how little of that year we had actually spent together. Between military obligations, training, deployments, and life circumstances, most of our marriage had existed in pieces. Phone calls. Video chats. Countdowns. Weekend visits.

We knew how to miss each other.

Actually living together was something else entirely.

At first, things felt good. We were excited to be together again, and for a while that excitement covered the cracks that were beginning to form underneath. Every relationship goes through an adjustment period after a deployment, and whenever something felt off, I blamed that adjustment.

If we argued more than usual, I blamed the deployment.

If conversations felt strained, I blamed the deployment.

If I felt lonely while sitting next to my husband, I blamed the deployment.

That explanation comforted me because it implied the problem was temporary. Temporary problems can be fixed.

I wanted our marriage to work. That's important to understand.

When people hear words like affair or abuse, they often imagine a relationship that was obviously doomed from the beginning. That's not how it felt while I was living it. I wasn't looking for a way out. I wasn't fantasizing about another life. I wasn't secretly planning to leave.

I loved my husband.

I believed we would grow old together.

That's what made everything so difficult to recognize.

One of the first changes I noticed was how uncomfortable Mason seemed whenever I was emotional. If I was upset about something, he became irritated. If I cried, he often withdrew completely. Sometimes he would leave the room. Other times he would sit there silently, staring at his phone while I tried to explain why I was hurt.

I remember one argument where I eventually stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. Mason hadn't said a word for several minutes. He was scrolling through his phone while I cried. At some point I realized he wasn't distracted.

He simply wasn't interested.

The realization embarrassed me more than it hurt.

I remember wiping my face and pretending I was finished talking because I suddenly felt foolish for expecting comfort from someone who had already decided not to give it.

At the time, I explained those moments away. Mason wasn't a naturally emotional person. He didn't know how to handle feelings. He was stressed. He was tired.

I always had a reason.

Over the years, the pattern continued.

So did the insults.

Before having children, I had always been naturally thin. After Caleb was born, my body changed. Not dramatically, but enough that I noticed. Like many women, I struggled with the difference between who I had been before motherhood and who I saw in the mirror afterward.

Mason knew I was insecure about it.

That was probably why he targeted it.

The comments didn't happen every day. If they had, I might have recognized the problem sooner. Instead, they appeared during arguments or moments when he was angry enough to stop caring whether he was being cruel.

One night he looked at me and said, "You're a fat lard."

I laughed because I genuinely thought he was joking.

The comment was so unnecessarily mean that it didn't sound real at first. I remember waiting for him to smile. Waiting for him to tell me he was kidding.

He didn't.

The room just stayed quiet.

Eventually I stopped laughing.

That wouldn't be the last time he said something like that. The exact words changed over the years, but the goal remained the same. When Mason wanted to hurt me, he reached for whatever insecurity he knew would land the hardest.

The difficult thing about unhealthy relationships is that they rarely become unhealthy all at once.

If someone treated you terribly on the first date, you wouldn't stay.

Instead, the line moves slowly.

A comment here.

An insult there.

A fight that goes a little too far.

Then a week of normalcy.

Just enough time to convince yourself things are improving.

Looking back, I can see myself adapting to behavior that should never have become normal.

One afternoon, Caleb was sitting in his highchair while Mason and I argued in the kitchen. I couldn't tell you what the argument was about. Whatever it was, it wasn't important enough to survive in my memory.

What survived was the ending.

At some point, Mason grabbed a sippy cup and threw it.

Maybe he intended to throw it across the room.

Maybe he aimed for the wall.

Maybe he didn't care where it landed.

What I know is that it hit me hard enough to leave a bruise.

I remember staring at the mark on my arm later that night.

I remember feeling upset.

I remember feeling angry.

What I don't remember is feeling shocked.

That part bothers me now.

The bruise lasted longer than the argument. We barely discussed it afterward. There was no serious conversation. No apology. No acknowledgment that something unacceptable had happened.

Life simply moved on.

Despite everything, there were still good moments mixed among the bad. Family dinners. Holidays. Movie nights. Future plans. If every day had been miserable, the decisions would've been easier.

Instead, I spent years hoping the good moments represented who Mason truly was and the bad moments were temporary deviations from that person.

Hope can be surprisingly stubborn.

Dawson knew the truth about my marriage. He was one of the few who did. I was embarrassed to let anyone in, truthfully. He never judged me for trying to make it work. He simply let me unload all the weight I carried.

Maybe I should've seen the signs. Maybe I shouldn't have been so open with Dawson. Nonetheless, he was there in a time I felt I had no one on my side. And I won't let myself feel embarrassed for that.

When Mason and I had our second child, our daughter, I convinced myself things might finally improve. Families tell themselves that story all the time. A new baby feels like a fresh start. A chance to become the people you wanted to be.

For a while, I let myself believe it.

Three months after she was born, we packed our lives into boxes and moved across the country.

By then Caleb was three years old. Our daughter was still tiny. Most of my memories from that move involve exhaustion. We were trying to relocate an entire household while caring for a toddler and a newborn, and there never seemed to be enough sleep or enough hours in the day.

Even so, I felt hopeful.

A new state. A new home. A new duty station.

Maybe things would be different.

For a while, they weren't.

Life settled into a routine. Caleb started getting older. The baby reached her first birthday. I spent my days caring for children while Mason worked long hours.

Eventually, he began talking about people from work.

Most of the names blended together. Coworkers came and went through conversations without leaving much of an impression.

One of those names was Mandy Collins. Collins, he called her as most military address each other by their last name.

At first, she was simply another coworker attached to random stories about work. If Mason mentioned her, I barely noticed.

Then one day, a group from Mason's command came over for dinner. Mandy came. She was nice.

Friendly, even.

She played with my children, hung out on my back porch, watched tv on my couch.

Everything seemed normal.

Over time we spoke occasionally. Nothing deep. Nothing significant. She seemed nice enough, and since I didn't know many people in the area, I welcomed the interaction.

Around that same time, one of my favorite artists announced a tour.

I immediately bought tickets.

I remember being ridiculously excited about it. Motherhood had consumed so much of my life that having something to look forward to felt special.

When I mentioned that I didn't have anyone to go with, Mason suggested inviting Mandy.

At the time, the idea seemed thoughtful.

Maybe he thought I needed friends.

Maybe he thought I deserved a night out.

Maybe he simply wanted me to have fun.

Whatever his reasoning, I agreed.

Mandy and I talked about the concert several times before the date arrived.

Then the artist canceled the tour.

The concert never happened. Looking back, I'm glad it never did. At the time, it felt like a small disappointment and nothing more. I had no reason to think otherwise.

As far as I knew, Mandy was just a friendly coworker.

As far as I knew, my marriage still had problems that could be fixed.

As far as I knew, the hardest years were already behind me.

I couldn't have been more wrong.