11. The Price of Peace and Stop Cooking Me Fucking Steak for Breakfast
CHAPTER 11
THE PRICE OF PEACE AND STOP COOKING ME FUCKING STEAK FOR brEAKFAST
MARGAUX
S eptember has arrived, and with it comes a stifling monotony that settles over every day like a heavy fog. My life feels like a looped movie with no plot twists. Wake up early, work while Timmy sleeps in—sometimes until noon or later. Then he wakes up, and the routine truly begins.
Timmy’s ‘mornings’ are focused on one thing—an elaborate breakfast. He knows I don’t typically eat breakfast, but he insists on making it for me anyway. Watching him cook should feel endearing, but instead, it feels like an act of control.
Once he’s done, he observes me like a hawk as I sit across from him, waiting for me to eat. I’m not hungry, and I feel like I’m being force-fed, but the pressure in his gaze makes refusal seem like a dangerous choice. So I eat, bite by reluctant bite, swallowing not just the food but the growing resentment I feel every morning while he snores beside me as I write.
Then, as I start to work again, his focus shifts to the TV. When he was in jail, one of his cellmates—an advocate who supports criminals getting off heroin, who was arrested for stealing a scooter—had told him that if he got a Firestick, he could use an app to watch pirated movies. Of course, he pressured me into buying him the Firestick, and he’s been watching anything he can get his hands on that he hasn’t already seen.
He spends hours lost in the flickering glow of the screen, his attention consumed by action sequences and dialogue I can’t bring myself to care about.
Meanwhile, I stare at my laptop, trying to write and keep my author business afloat. The words come, slowly, choked by the tension that has become a permanent fixture in our home.
In the afternoons, the restlessness sets in. Timmy gets antsy and starts talking incessantly about smoking and drinking. His voice, once charming and animated, grates against my nerves as he works himself up.
Soon enough, he’s pouring a drink, and I know the rest of the day will be lost to his spiral—more movies, more drinking, and a stubborn refusal to sleep until exhaustion forces him to.
I had envisioned this place as a paradise, but this was not it.
The beauty just outside these suffocating walls seems like a cruel joke.
But hey, at least we’re not at Matty’s anymore, and I am managing to get some books written.
I’m starting to scream back at him more and more. To say things that have never crossed my mind in any prior relationship. Horrible things. Swear words. Insults. And, most often, I still call him a loser. Because I’ll reach the point I get so frustrated about his complete lack of work ethic, his sleeping in, his mooching, his constant demands and expectations—the word seems accurate. Where is the lie?
But then it feels like I’m just as bad as he is. And I feel guilty and ashamed. Even though he starts every single argument. Even though he picks and picks and picks at me during every waking hour. Even though he physically destroys items around the house on a regular basis. Even though he’s fractured my skull. But the fact I can’t just stay calm and serene and be the perfect little polite fiancée, I feel like I’m as much to blame.
Even though if I was there with anyone else, these situations wouldn’t arise. It’s him. He’s the common denominator.
I know that, intuitively, and based on hard evidence like his criminal record, but there’s a dissonance where I wonder what I could have done differently to have avoided yet another Timmy drama.
And when I haven’t been drinking, I’m very, very good at anticipating emotions and noticing very subtle nuances in body language. De-escalation is my strength.
But, when emboldened by alcohol, I get a little more sassy. A little more empowered to say what’s on my mind. To bring up things that we really should have been talking about as a couple, but that I’ve avoided because I knew they’d result in him automatically shutting me down and using them as ammunition against me later.
“Why didn’t you mention soap at the store?” I ask, when we get back from grocery shopping and he immediately mentions we’re out.
“You told me I’m always asking for things,” he sulks. “So I decided I shouldn’t ask you.”
“It’s a necessity, not a nice-to-have. That’s different.”
I find myself writing little notes, jotting down my thoughts that I store on my Notes app like contraband.
I am in love with this soul
Who is currently inside this giant human frame
Who sometimes hurts me.
Because I see what is inside. But I feel dumb in the meantime.
It’s all true. Timmy is massive compared to me, and he sometimes does hurt me, physically and emotionally. But I see glimpses of his potential, his good parts.
The way he makes me laugh until I cry nearly every day, those fleeting moments of thoughtfulness that feel like sunshine breaking through the storm clouds.
The way he’ll give me little snippets of his attention that remind me of the earliest days of our relationship.
The way his eyes light up when he starts drawing or working on graphic design—tiny sparks of who he could be if he tried.
And we do have sex and it’s decent—it’s not like it was in the beginning by any means, but not terrible, and it makes me feel closer to him.
Once, he wakes me up early with the smell of pancakes. “Surprise,” he says, smiling shyly. He’s even set the table with a vase of tropical flowers he’d found outside.
For a moment, it feels like the Timmy I fell for. But by lunch, he’s calling me a bitch for not buying his favorite brand of chips.
Those good sparks are so rare, and the storm so constant, that I wonder if I’m just a fool. An absolute fucking moron, in fact.
Each time I see a couple on vacation walking past, hand in hand, laughing, headed to the beach, I feel happy for them, but at the same time like I’m being stabbed and the knife being twisted.
That’s what I came here for, and instead I’m facing a prison sentence of my own making, just by virtue of choosing to be with Timmy.
I can barely sleep. I have constant tension headaches. It’s near impossible for me to take more than a couple of bites of food without retching. The stress is building and it’s hurting more than just my mind.
How long am I supposed to wait for him to live up to the version of himself I fell for, or the person he claims to be?
How long do I have to keep holding his hand, teaching him how to be an adult, walking on eggshells, catering to his every mood swing to avoid his tantrums?
How long is it going to take until he consistently behaves like someone worthy of my time?
The frustration builds until I can’t keep it in anymore, so I type out another note:
It’s embarrassing to wonder if you ever really loved me.
Am I a fool?
But then, if I really think about it, it’s not embarrassing for me. It’s embarrassing for you.
Because, if the latter is the case, it means you’re the one going around being deceitful, feeling like you’ve ‘won’ something against a person much better than you.
In which case, you’re the dick. You’re the absolute loser who feeds on being calculating and deceitful.
And now you’re the one who has to live with that.
Not me.
So go away.
Bye bye.
Flutter off and reap what you sow, fuckface.
I want to scream these words at him, to throw them in his face and watch them hit their mark.
But I know better.
Screaming at Timmy only leads to danger—his rage, his cold retaliation, or worse.
The last time I screamed at him, he smashed dishes violently into the sink, pieces scattering like shrapnel. ‘Look what you made me do!’ he’d snarled, and I’d spent the rest of the night in the fetal position, rocking myself to sleep, my heart pounding.
So I save my anger for my Notes app, a hidden vault of all the things I’m too afraid to say out loud. It’s a tiny act of defiance, and something that would piss him off very badly should he ever read them.
I scroll back to a note from last month:
Things are rough, but I know he’ll get better. We’ve just hit a bump in the road.
I almost laugh at my own naivety. No, not a bump—a sinkhole.
Timmy knows nothing of these notes, and he never will.
He’d use them against me, spinning them into ‘proof’ of my instability, my complete craziness.
But they’re my lifeline, tiny threads of sanity I cling to as I struggle to hold myself together. And so it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
As I stare at my phone, preparing to draft another note, I hear Timmy’s voice cut through the room, sharp and angry. I don’t even register the words anymore, but I realize this is my life now. A series of quiet rebellions, a constant battle to preserve the pieces of myself he hasn’t yet eroded.
My body flinches instinctively, my mind already racing to calculate the safest way to respond. I’m wondering how much longer I can endure this—how much longer I can keep convincing myself that Timmy’s potential is worth the price of my peace.
And I know, deep down, that no amount of potential is worth this constant fear.