Because you didn’t cheat on me. Because I didn’t know that I could live my life and raise our kids without you by my side. Because I had been with you since I was twenty-three. Because you said you loved me. Because you said you saw me—saw what my mother had not seen or loved in me. I stayed.
I followed you away from her home, her abuse, and let you lead me into your home and your abuse, crowded with loving words and promises of a future where I would continue to be seen and heard and loved. Until I wasn’t.
At fifty, I found myself stranded in a strained marriage with a man whose words stung and stripped me of the confidence you once grew in me. Until the day you grabbed our son, only sixteen then, and pulled him to you by the loose fabric of his t-shirt and pointed your thick finger in his face, your neck red, your nose touching his nose, your breath hot against his pale cheeks. Until you threatened to kill him because he disagrees with your politics, because he believes in Black Lives Matter, believes in gay rights, because he’s gay and you continue to vote for politicians that promise to deny his rights.
Until he said, “I’m your son. Why are you doing this?” and your only response was, “Because you’re just like her. Just like your mother.”
Marina DelVecchio, Ph.D. is a writer and college professor who teaches literature, writing, and women’s studies. In addition to her online publications in MS Magazine, Huffington Post, and The New Agenda, her book publications include Dear Jane, The Professor’s Wife, The Virgin Chronicles, and Unsexed: Memoirs of a Prostitute’s Daughter (July 2024). She lives in North Carolina with her two children and three feral cats.
Header photograph by Jen Ippensen
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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