#memior

I like:

* fantasy with lots of world building

* Sci-fi, like androids/AI. Think Detroit Become Human

* Found family, especially father-son

* slice of life, character building without dramatic plot

* historical fiction, especially ones that focus on culture, preferably written by an author of that culture

Anyway here’s mine:

Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson

Cover art by Tuesday Riddell

Timber Press, September 2024

This is just a writing piece I’ve been writing that is also going to be apart of my memoir.

Word count: 400

Summary: A reflection on realizing my marriage wasn’t what I thought it was—how closeness turned into distance, love into transactions, and ‘us’ faded away

I have never felt so far apart from someone who was supposed to love me and be there for me.

The beginning of our relationship was great—we had our honeymoon phase, but it felt like it ended faster than I expected. We got married two years into our relationship. The truth is, I married him to help him get a green card. When he asked me, he tried to make it seem like it was only because we loved each other. Or so we thought….

Part of me wanted to say no, my intuition was telling me no, my body was telling me no.

But I said yes because I felt like I owed him. He got me out of my abusive parents’ house. He gave me a new home—a place that was supposed to feel peaceful. What I didn’t realize was that I was walking into the same kind of situation I had just left. Slowly, I started to recognize my parents’ relationship in my own marriage.

I felt so distant from him. More like his opponent than his partner. Sometimes my husband would nitpick and argue with me, and in those moments, he felt less like my partner and more like my father—

and I felt like a child all over again.

At the time, I truly believed he was my forever person—before everything went downhill. Why wouldn’t he be? We were vulnerable with each other, both emotionally and physically. He had seen every part of me, and I had seen parts of him. We had seen each other’s scars. He could point out every scar on my body with his eyes closed. We shared secrets and opened up about things other people might judge us for. I thought that type of closeness was permanent

The hardest part about realizing your relationship is over is losing that sense of safety. You stop being a safe space for each other. You stop asking about each other’s day. Feelings start to matter less. Conversations turn into arguments. Even sharing a bed starts to feel overwhelming.

The relationship became more transactional.

If you do this for me, then I’ll do this for you.

I’ll only show up if you do the same.

We stopped doing normal things together. We stopped watching The Rookie on Sundays. We stopped going to Rocco’s on Fridays. We stopped working out together.