3. If The Walls Could Speak #3
Two years into our marriage, I opened my private practice.
At the time, I was so career driven that I put us on the backburner, but when I saw that her needs were going unmet and I couldn’t find a healthy balance, I closed my clinic, and we worked on us until we were happier than before.
LaBrina got pregnant and although we weren’t planning it, we were overjoyed.
Nine months flew by with no issues. Brina did makeup full-time and even traveled for some clients.
The problem came with her refusing to sit down, so she worked until she was thirty-nine weeks.
The morning before she was scheduled to be induced, I went to rub her stomach.
We’d gained a routine with baby girl and there was never a time she didn’t move under my touch.
That particular morning was different. I talked to her, read a book, and even poked around her belly with no movement.
It was unusual so we rushed her to the hospital for her OB to confirm our nightmare, our firstborn had passed away.
LaBrina had undiagnosed preeclampsia which led to having a stillborn birth.
For a while, I was angry with her and even blamed her mentally for the loss of our child.
I couldn’t understand why she didn’t take heed to my countless warnings telling her to sit down and her stubbornness cost us.
The shit was painful, but I had to remove my selfish thinking and realize that if it was in God’s plans, our daughter would’ve been here.
When our child died, so did a piece of each of us and a chunk of our marriage.
I recommended counseling, took her on dates, booked her all types of spa days.
I thought if I could get her back to herself then we’d eventually back to us .
LaBrina didn’t want it, no matter how hard I fought.
Every day, the bed got colder and the body on the other side became a person I didn’t marry.
She never wanted to talk about our loss, so our grief was processed differently.
LaBrina drank and unbeknownst to me, fucked her way through while I processed my emotions and worked it out in therapy.
It took a year for her to come around and when she did, I didn’t realize that it was because of guilt, I just knew it felt good to have my wife back.
It felt like the old days again and when she got pregnant in our fourth year of marriage, I thought we would have the best redemption story.
She carried another baby full term healthily.
I wanted to name her Venus, but LaBrina named her Nylah. The first time I saw the baby, there was love there, but I didn’t feel that deep love that every parent talks about when they see their child. Instead, my heart sent warning signals to my brain that I ignored.
The day Nylah turned two months, LaBrina and I had a bad spat. Knowing that she ran to her father’s house for the smallest shit, I went over there once I’d calmed down. When I stepped into the living room, everything became clear, even the doubts in the back of my head.
LaBrina, Nylah, and my first cousin Nash were all laid out on the couch like a big happy family.
I wanted to kill everybody, the baby included because that was the first time I realized that she had his entire face.
Everything hit me at once, the matching names, her cheating, lying, the embarrassment.
Not only had she been fucking several men, but her main nigga was my family.
To this day, I don’t remember walking away or anything between until I was standing in the divorce lawyer’s office with her on the other side of the table.
She took me for almost everything I had, but I didn’t give a fuck as long as I was free.
For a while, I felt that life was unfair, but when it was time for what was written by God to come to pass, there wasn’t a thing we could do to stop it.
I had to heal and rediscover myself. For four years, I defined myself as a loving husband, and father only to find out that shit was a lie at the age of thirty.
As soon as I got wind of ‘having it figured out’ , I was forced to start over.
That alone made me push the world away because people could cause too much fucking hurt.
Two women that were supposed to be safe havens betrayed me, so I put up a shield I refused to let down and I never wanted to.
Until now.
Another vivid image of Miss Lane surfaced in my brain.
Were these thoughts fueled by lust or the fact that she could be someone I could want a friendship with? Even that was scary because it required getting close to someone again. It was much easier to heal everyone else while still adding pieces to the puzzles of my own soul.
If the walls could speak, what the fuck would they say? That question replayed since leaving the jail. Was I was adding pieces that actually connected or burning unpromised time? It’s been almost five years since the divorce. Was I torturing myself or denying myself feelings with good reason?
I couldn’t tell. My legs slowed and I glanced down at my watch.
Even after almost five miles of running, I still didn’t have a fucking clue.
After stretching, I checked inside the gym before heading home.
About a mile from my house, there was an ambulance and police cars everywhere, looking like someone had run off the road.
As I said a silent prayer for them, my mind thought back to my cousin Nash.
Somehow, his brakes went out as he was driving home one night which ended with him colliding head on with a tree.
The nigga died on impact, and I imagined his scene looked identical to the one I’d just passed.
To this day, his death was ruled as exactly what it was, an accident .
Hearing someone repeat those words made me chuckle every time because Nash played a stupid game and won a stupid prize.
But what mutha’fuckas really didn’t know was that LaBrina still had breath in her lungs because Nylah needed the love of at least one parent.