Dear Vice, Thanks for Ruining My Marriage
“You owe me!” he bellowed with demonic spite. “You owe me! You owe me! You owe me!”
His convictions were solid; his anger surreal. How had I spent 11 years living on this mountain, somewhat peacefully, calling it home, only to find out it was a volcano? He was a volcano.
More of my essence escaped with each verbal assault as I sat there in the driver’s seat of my car. My mom’s car actually; my dying mom.
“How could he harbor so much wrath for me, especially now?” I wondered.
She didn’t have much longer to live. After 40 years of meth use followed by a horrific overdose, I sacrificed jobs and opportunities to save her life when no one else would. My family was willing to let her die all alone on her couch, caked in dried piss, mouth flapping like a fish out of water, bones like an archaeological site, eyes grey with death’s curtain.
I saved her. I worked miracles and nurtured her with healthy food and love when everyone said it couldn’t be done.
Mom didn’t just spring back to life, but she even quit meth and made amends with everyone. Instead of a “Thank you,” from my family, I was emotionally gutted by them.
After a couple of months of sobriety, Mom began having strokes; each one leaving her more depressed than the last. The same people that left her alone to die blamed me for her depression, saying I didn’t let her eat enough sweets or smoke enough cigarettes. Then, they swooped in like vultures demanding assets when the woman wasn’t even dead yet. They devoured my entrails and left my carcass to hang from a tree.
The message was clear. I didn’t matter to anyone. I didn’t even exist.
The joy and pride I had felt upon witnessing Mom’s rejuvenation while I danced in her living room to Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” adorned with tiny rainbows cast by crystals that hung in her window… was ripped away from me with Mom’s declining health and the cruel, (yet familiar), scapegoating tactics from family.
“Now, he guts me too,” I assessed, crippled with shock. He continued to scream, “You owe me! You owe me! You owe me!” for about 3 minutes straight.
“He’s just like my dad,” I thought. “I need to get out of this situation. I need to get somewhere safe. This doesn’t feel safe. Is he about to hit me??”
Dad was dormant for the first 10 years of my life. I had no clue that his happiness was a mask and that he was just doing what men are supposed to do, concealing their emotions like a beach ball underwater, hoping it never floats to the surface. It always does.
“He’s just like my dad. The timeline is even the same. Men like this erupt about every 10 years apparently,” I silently noted.
“You’re a whore, and I’m a dog. And, I’ve been a good dog, so now it’s time for you to be a good whore. This is who we are. You owe me.”
My belly grew heavy; my head like a balloon. “How can I owe him someone else’s body? That doesn’t make sense,” I protested internally, still too afraid to speak out loud.
He had been holding the laptop less than an inch from my lip with my pictures pulled up. I thought the hard edge was going to end up making contact and drawing blood with the way he was jamming it toward my face.
The photos were for a Vice article called, “How to Hurt the Ones You Love,” written by Queerie Bradshaw. That experience was one of the few times I had ever been published as a model, and I was proud of the pictures. I still am.
Posted below are behind-the-scenes pics of the Vice shoot. (For some reason, the Vice photos are not in the article anymore!) That’s me on top of the couch for no reason other than I grabbed the spot first.
Finally, I spoke, “These are just photos. There was no penetration and no saliva exchanged, and it’s all female models. Hell, there wasn’t even full nudity! This is PG-13 stuff. If I owe you anything, I guess I owe you permission to do a sexy photo shoot. I don’t owe you a threesome.”
“But you said you enjoyed it. You said you were turned on by the girls.”
That’s when it hit me. I had played a huge role in my own demise. I didn’t owe him shit, but I owed myself a lot more than him. Our relationship was clearly at a tipping point, so I decided to come clean and admit my role.
“I have been trying to be your dream girl since we met when I should have just dumped you early on. I’ll never be enough for you, because I’m not multiple women. I’m one woman. I guess when I told you the shoot turned me on… I was being honest, but it was also another desperate attempt to be your dream girl.”
I continued.
“When we first got together, right after sex, you told me, ‘No offense, but your friend has bigger tits than you.’ When I was sad about that and asked if you thought I was the most beautiful girl in the world, you scoffed and said, ‘No, because god invented Halle Berry.’ When I told you I didn’t want to have another threesome ever again because all I wanted was you, you insisted that being a bisexual, I would change my mind someday and that when I did, you’d be ready. It’s been a reoccurring fight throughout our entire relationship. I’ve been trying to get you to say you only want me the entire time we have been together. The best you can say is that I’m ‘enough’.”
He looked down at his knees.
“Instead of dumping you, I stuck around and spent the last 10 years trying to impress you. I figured if I could become a big actress or model and make the world see me as beautiful, then you would too. But, it backfired. It clearly backfired. My photos made you love me less and made you want other women even more.”
He stayed quiet. I started the car and drove us home.
Mom died a few weeks later. No one was there for me, but that’s OK because at that point I had shut off my emotions entirely, like a faucet. When the pain became unbearable, I figured it was a survival tactic. My soul began to peel away from my body. Bye bye.
I got a call from the cremation center to pick up Mom’s ashes on my birthday.
Mixed martial arts classes saved me when I spontaneously wandered into a gym and said, “I need to fight in a safe and structured environment.”
Sparring was a way to let out the demons. It made me see all of the negativity in my life as nothing more than strength training because fighting is a philosophy. Fighting is a way of life. It is life.
Every day we fight to live. Modern conveniences can conceal this truth most of the time. But, when hardship strikes, we fight or we die; it’s that simple.
I never made it as a big actress or model, but I did accumulate hundreds of images and memories; each one of them like a brick that contributed to the construction of my self-esteem. I know that it sounds superficial, but it’s about more than looks. It’s about body confidence, self-respect, and happiness.
Those images made me see myself differently. They gave me the confidence to leave him finally.
Our marriage didn’t last much longer. I gave it a few more months after that fight to see if I could ever love him again, but it was like trying to force a fart. If it’s not there, it’s not there.
There were many eye-opening conversations between that fight and the divorce, like the one where I asked him why he fell in love with me in the first place. He said, “The biggest reason I fell in love with you is because you said you liked girls, but now that you won’t have another threesome with me, I’m beginning to think you are a liar.”
Like I said at the beginning of this read, most of our relationship had been peaceful, and 10 years is a long time to be with someone. So, before I left, I offered him one final option to remain together; a completely open relationship. Game on. “You fuck whoever you want, and I’ll fuck whoever I want.” I was being serious and not mean about it.
Tears welled up in his eyes. Actual watery tears. He said, “I can’t bear the thought of you with some other guy.”
He continued to sob when I walked away and tried to say that he had been there for me throughout my toughest times when he had actually made the toughest times of my life harder.
He didn’t just withhold support when I needed it the most; he brought the hammer down when I was emotionally vulnerable.
“No one else in the world cares about you except for me! All of your friends are fake,” he yelled as I walked out the door smiling in excitement to meet up with my “fake” friends. I had no fucks left to give. All of my pain had already been felt.
It was time for adventure.
When I moved out, I didn’t have quite enough money for my own place right away. He had never contributed to me financially, but moving is expensive and I didn’t make much money at my 2 part-time jobs.
I celebrated Independence Day by sleeping blissfully in the wilderness on set for a horror movie that never got finished. That’s me crying in the first scene, and later almost getting hit by a car.
I illegally lived in vacant apartments that I was getting paid to clean. I was wild and free; homeless and happy. It was the finest summer of my entire life.
Vice… Thank you for ruining my marriage.
The article that my photos were featured in, “How to Hurt the Ones You Love,” taught me a lot about relationships. In it, Queerie Bradshaw opens a discussion on a provocative topic; rough foreplay and really rough sex. She explores when it’s OK to choke and slap your partner in the bedroom, how far to take it, and how to know if your partner is OK with it.
Q.B. basically says it’s all about communication and consent.
I never consented to another threesome with my husband, but he kept trying to force it. He never consented to my nude photos, but I ran over his requests because I figured, “fuck that guy.” The photos made me feel more beautiful than he ever did.
It’s funny that he didn’t hesitate to call me a whore during a fight, but refused to call me dirty names in the bedroom when I asked him to.
If we had both been more mature, we would have decided earlier on that we were not good for each other, but you live and learn!
Katy Langston is the owner of Seen and Green, a lifestyle blog. Her writing covers a wide range of topics: sobriety, addiction, codependency, emotional trauma, health, fitness, nutrition, environment, sustainability, beauty, and horror fiction. You can find more of her work at In The Rooms.
