After the Mask Cracked: The Truth I’ve Never Told
I didn’t just “leave my husband for someone else.” I got trapped in a pattern that kept showing up in nicer outfits and calling itself love. This is the part he keeps leaving out. He tells the shortest, most convenient version: “She cheated.” That version hides the instability, the sexual coercion, the financial exploitation, the way I got turned into his recruiter, his income, his co-parent, his emotional regulator, his cover. So I am going to tell it the way it actually happened. Names and locations changed, details intact. If you have lived even part of this, you will recognize it. The First Exit I Never Truly Got Before I ever met my second husband, I was already trying to leave my first. My first husband had a long relationship with drugs. It started with meth and selling. Later it became “prescriptions” so he could say, “the doctor gave it to me,” but the behavior never changed. He was verbally abusive. And once, in a truck on the highway, he tried to shove me out while it was ...