"Are you even sure you want this baby?"

Delivering my first child was easy, but the recovery was complicated. The placenta had been retained and I was still experiencing the symptoms of preeclampsia for almost 3 weeks afterwards. It seemed like every time we would leave the hospital, I had to turn around and be readmitted. 

One night, just hours after leaving the hospital I told my husband something was wrong and we needed to go back. He asked me, "Are you even sure you want this baby? Every time we finally get home and should be able to spend time together, you always want to leave and go back. Do you even want us in your life? The next time you go back we aren't going with you." 

When we arrived at the hospital I was rushed into emergency surgery. Something was physically wrong with me and I understand he was frustrated and scared but there was no reason to make me feel worse than I already did.

"I would, if only..."

For a long time, I felt like my depression was ruining my marriage, but after I started going to therapy, I finally felt like I was making progress towards being "normal."

One day, my therapist told me that often with her married patients, improving their sex life was pivotal in improving their self-esteem. This made sense to me, because my sex life was nearly nonexistent.

I picked my husband up from work that evening, and told him about what my therapist had said. Before I could go further, he interrupted me to say, "I would want to have sex with you, if only you had a rockstar body."

Even when I was thin, my body image was terrible. But this shot what little confidence I had. His cruelty in that moment made me never want sex again, and I've not since initiated. 

It's been five years since then. He's had affairs. I've been suicidal. He's told me to kill myself. And one day, I might.

"What do you expect me to do?"

I got married at 18 and had my son at 19. My husband is almost 20. 

I went to the doctor's office on my due date and was told that I had preeclampsia and had to be induced for the wellbeing of my child. While I was in the middle of pushing, they though the monitors were confusing our heart beats. They were wrong. My son had no heartbeat. I felt something was wrong, but the doctor kept dismissing my fears and acting like my son was fine. I kept telling her that something was wrong and to get him out of me. 

The doctor just looked at me and said, "What do you expect me to do? How do you expect me to get him out?" I begged her for what felt like forever to just cut me open and take him out. She refused. 

When he finally came out, the cord was wrapped so tightly around his neck that it snapped and he lost a lot of blood. He had a seizure. He didn't breathe for over 5 minutes and he was a deep blue/grey. They had to resuscitate him and rush him to another hospital where they had a higher level NICU. I didn't get to hold my baby for over 3 days because he had to be on a cooling pad for HIE and monitored for seizures. 

All because a cocky doctor wouldn't listen to me. Fuck that doctor.

"You deserve it."

My husband was emotionally cruel to me, and then he had an affair. I went to stay with a friend and I asked my husband for a divorce. 

This "friend" told me, "You're too much. No wonder he treats you bad. You deserve it."

Believing this to be true, I went back to my husband. I was a horrible person who deserved to suffer, right?

I got back, he got drunk. He told me that the next time I want to die, he won't stop me because I'm worthless, I'm fat, and he could always do better. He reminded me that even my family thinks that I'm stupid, and they don't want me. 

I live in utter isolation because I don't have real friends, and I feel like I deserve his abuse.

"A chain-smoking black lady."

A few days after my now ex-wife and I signed the lease on a new apartment, she called me at work to tell me that she went to the manager's office, cancelled the lease, and surrendered the deposit without asking me. 

Her reason? 

She visited the building and saw that the current tenant was "a chain-smoking black lady." 

The smoking part wasn't the problem. Over the next few weeks, she painted the neighborhood as an urban hell-hole full of drugs and rapists. She felt she was saving me from some violent catastrophe. 

I slept on a friend's couch until I had enough money to get my own place. When I left her, people were quick to blame me and slow to ask what happened. Nobody wanted to hear that she would rather be homeless than live with black neighbors. 

I am haunted by the knowledge that fear of strangers can motivate someone to hit the self-destruct switch on their own life or destroy lives around them. Unspoken fear is the true face of racism.

Terrible Role Model

I was in a bad marriage, had a small child and suffered back to back miscarriages. I was also battling depression and really had no one to turn to. 

One day, I saw an email to my husband from his mother stating that I was a terrible role model for our daughter.

This completely crushed me. 

I somehow found the courage to end the marriage, which really helped the depression. I went back to school and got my degree (which my ex never finished). And I have stood by my child as she has battled mental health issues, without her dad. 

I try so hard to support my child in every way possible, yet I will never forget that email.

Those Kinds of Girls

When I was about 12 years old, I was going though a rebellious phase. This meant lots of Anne Sexton poetry, flannel shirts, and awkward, uncertain attempts at trying to establish my individuality. 

One day I was at the mall with my mom, and there was a gaggle of cute, perfect cheerleader types near us. I regarded them disparagingly and said something along the lines of "Ugh, I just don't understand those kinds of girls."

Without missing a beat, my mom looked up at me and said, "Well, those are the kinds of girls that guys marry."

"I never loved you."

During a fight, I told my boyfriend of five years that I was willing to marry him. 

He replied with, "I never loved you. I was just waiting for someone better to come along."

"I don't want you to be alone."

The day my husband told me he was no longer in love with me, I asked why he had waited so long to admit it. 

He said, "Because without me, you'll be alone, and I don't want you to be alone."

Ever since that night, I have made every effort to be okay with just my son and me. But those words still ring in my ears in the middle of the night when I am alone.
 

The first time I felt like I wasn't good enough.

When I was five years old, I was sitting in my kindergarten classroom with a group of friends during coloring time. I remember we were discussing things like boyfriends, girlfriends and marriage - you know, the usual. 

I must have made a comment in regards to myself growing up and getting married, since I assumed everyone got married when they reached a certain age. The little boy sitting next to me stopped dead in his tracks, looked me in the eyes and said, “But nobody will ever want to marry you because...you’re black.”

I went home that night and must have been pretty upset because the next day my mom met with my teacher and the parent of the little boy who had made the comment. 

He was made to apologize and of course life carried on. And even though now, 20 years later, I know people have said many things a thousand times more hurtful to me, that particular moment has always stuck with me.