Vachon Imagined

She saw all the signs.

Don’t wear that. Don’t be that. Don’t talk to him.

It felt like love to her then—the jealousy shrouded in protection, poisoned by a man who didn’t understand his own jealousy because he didn’t understand his own life.

And he could cover himself in religion, too.

That made it harder.

She had been taught what a good woman was.

Be patient.
Be gentle.
Submit.
Forgive.
Respect him.
Keep the home.
Don’t make him stumble.

So when he said, God says you’re not supposed to make me stumble, she listened.

When he said, This is right. This is the way. Respect me, she tried.

When he said, Change for me. Change for God, she changed.

She buried her needs to give him his.

Don’t mess it up again.

Don’t lose him again.

Be the good girl you were always created to be.

So she watched what she wore.

Watched what she said.

Watched who she spoke to.

Watched his face.

Watched his temper.

Watched the room.

Always watching.

Always adjusting.

As if the right version of herself could keep him from becoming the wrong version of himself.

And then he would come back.

Flowers.

A smile.

That soft voice.

Baby, stay with me. I need you.

And then came the promises.

I promise it will be different this time.

I promise.

She wanted to believe him.

No—she needed to.

So she did.

She let herself soften.

She let herself reach for him again.

She welcomed him back as though she were welcoming home someone who had been lost.

For a little while, there was no distance.

Only them.

The flowers.

The tenderness.

The relief of having him close again.

And then she would see it.

The shift in his voice.

A distance creeping back into the words.

A daze in his eyes.

Something she could feel before she could explain it.

Something leaving him.

Something returning.

And she knew.

The promise was already breaking.

The distance was coming back.

She could feel the wound stretching between them again.

Not a clean wound.

A gauging wound, pulled wider by every accusation, every silence, every promise that became another broken promise, every you’re crazy, every moment when she realized she was standing in the same place again.

And something dark seemed to ooze from it.

Demons.

The kind you see in a movie and tell yourself aren’t real.

That’s just a movie.

But these were people’s lives.

People’s memories.

There were no credits.

No lights coming up.

No clean ending.

Just two people standing inside something that had become bigger than either of them.

And still she waited for the phone.

Still she reached for it.

Still, when his name appeared, something rushed through her.

This time.

This time he’ll get it right.

Everyone told her to leave.

Just leave him.

As if leaving were a door.

As if she hadn’t already stood beside it a thousand times.

As if they couldn’t see that she was tethered to more than a man.

She was tethered to the flowers.

To the tenderness.

To the apologies.

To the promises.

To the broken promises.

To the memory of who he had been before the anger swallowed the room.

And strangely, their judgment pushed her closer to him.

Because when they saw the monster, she remembered the man who held her.

When they saw danger, she remembered tenderness.

When they said run, she remembered:

Stay with me. I need you.

So he became both things.

The wound.

And the place she went to be comforted from the wound.

And religion had become tangled in it, too.

God.

Her faith.

His voice.

All twisted together.

She had learned to ask herself:

What do I need to do so he doesn’t hurt me?

Not:

What do I need?

She had spent so long becoming good for someone else that she forgot she existed before she belonged to anyone.

Before she was his wife.

His comfort.

His temptation.

His peace.

She was a woman.

She was a person.

But she didn’t know that yet.

She only knew how to try harder.

How to forgive faster.

How to give more.

How to need less.

Bury my needs.

Give him his.

Don’t mess it up again.

Don’t lose him again.

Be the good girl you were always created to be.

And every time he came back, she believed she had another chance.

Every time he left, something inside her went with him.

She wasn’t simply trying to hold onto a man.

She was trying to hold onto the moment before he changed.

The flowers before the silence.

The tenderness before the anger.

The promise before the betrayal.

She was trying to make the good version of him stay.

And while she was trying to save that version of him, she was losing herself.

Some wounds don’t bleed because someone has just hurt you.

Some bleed because you remember.

And some demons don’t live in the room anymore.

They live in the memory of what happened there.

She was never created to become smaller so a man could remain comfortable.

She was created to remain whole.

To walk in a place that connected her to the sky, to the roses, to the bees, to the wind moving through the trees, to the strange and beautiful rhythm of life itself.

A place where she could breathe without asking permission.

Where she could hear her own voice again.

Where God was not the God he told her about.

Not the God who watched her clothes.

Not the God who made her responsible for his desires.

Not the God who asked her to bury herself so a man could remain untroubled.

Something older.

Something quieter.

Something she could feel in the sky above her and the earth beneath her feet.

But life does not always give us enough time to understand what we have been living.

And toward the end, just before her last breath, she wondered:

How did I get here?

How did it get this far?

She had spent a lifetime trying not to lose him.

And somewhere along the way, she had lost herself.

But beneath all of it—the religion, the fear, the jealousy, the tenderness, the promises, the broken promises, the memories, the wounds—there she was.

Still.

The woman beneath everything they had told her to be.

The woman who had always belonged to the sky, the roses, the bees, the earth.

The woman who had been whole before anyone taught her that she wasn’t.