Chapter 2 #3
Robin reached across the table and squeezed Amy's other hand. "Listen to me," she said firmly. "You are not fat. You're recovering from a major medical procedure that changed how your body works. Richard is being an asshole, and his opinion doesn't get to define your worth."
Amy wiped her eyes with a fresh tissue from the pack Robin had apparently brought just for this conversation.
"He used to love my body," Amy said quietly, her voice hollow. "He used to tell me I was beautiful, sexy, all those things husbands are supposed to say. Now he looks at me like I'm this embarrassing thing he's stuck with."
I wanted to drive to Amy's house and punch Richard in his smug, judgmental face. Instead, I squeezed her hand tighter and tried to channel the anger into something more helpful.
"His opinion doesn't define you," I said. "You know that, right? Richard being cruel says everything about who he is and nothing about who you are."
"It's hard to remember when you live with someone who makes you feel worthless every day," Amy said, looking up at me with red rimmed eyes that held years of accumulated hurt.
"I've stopped eating again. I know it's stupid and dangerous, but I keep thinking that if I just lose the pounds, maybe he'll love me again. Maybe he'll look at me how he used to."
"Amy, no," I said, my heart breaking. "Starving yourself isn't going to fix what's broken in your marriage. And it sure as hell isn't going to fix what's broken in Richard."
Amy nodded like she knew I was right, but I could see in her eyes that knowing something intellectually and feeling it emotionally were two different things entirely.
When someone you loved repeatedly told you you weren't good enough, that inner critic started to seem like the truth even though every rational part of your brain knew it wasn't.
"Have you eaten anything today?" I asked.
"Coffee. That's it," Amy said, her voice small and ashamed. "I can't keep anything down. Everything tastes like cardboard, and my stomach hurts all the time."
"That's not about your size," I said firmly. "That's about stress and heartbreak and living with someone who's emotionally abusing you."
Emotional abuse. I'd said it out loud, the thing we'd all been dancing around for months.
Robin nodded slowly. "Lauren's right. This isn't about your body, Amy. This is about Richard being a controlling asshole who gets off on making you feel small."
Amy started crying harder, but it looked different now. Less defeated, more angry. Like something was waking up inside her that had been sleeping for too long.
"I used to love myself," she said through her tears. "Before Richard, before all his comments and criticisms and constant disappointment in who I am. I used to think I was pretty and smart and worthy of love."
"You still are," Robin established. "You just forgot because someone who's supposed to love you keeps telling you you're not."
I looked at my friend crying over her coffee and felt something fierce rise up inside me.
Amy was one of the kindest, most generous people I knew.
She volunteered at the animal shelter every week, brought meals to new mothers, and remembered everyone's birthdays.
She deserved so much better than a husband who made her hate herself.
"What about you?" I asked Robin, thankful for any excuse to shift the focus away from Amy's pain for a minute. She looked calmer than usual, more settled somehow. "How are things in your corner of suburban hell?"
Robin stirred her latte and let out a long breath. "I think I'm done," she said simply.
"Done how?"
"Done pretending I'm attracted to someone I can't stand to be in the same room with. Done having sex with someone who bores me to tears. Done acting like our marriage is salvageable when we haven't had a real conversation in two years."
Amy looked up from her tissue, momentarily distracted from her own misery. "Are you thinking about divorce?" she asked.
"I'm thinking about a trial separation," Robin said, her voice firmer than I'd heard it in months. "See if some space helps us figure out if there's anything left worth fighting for. Honestly, the thought of not having to pretend to be happy around him anymore sounds like freedom."
"Have you told him?" I asked.
"Not yet. I keep waiting for the right moment, but there never is one. We're so good at avoiding anything real that I could probably move out and it would take him three days to notice."
We sat in silence for a moment. Three women in our fifties who'd somehow ended up in marriages that felt more like prison sentences than partnerships. Around us, the Saturday morning crowd moved with energy and laughter. Families and couples and friends who seemed to enjoy each other's company.
"What about you, Lauren?" Robin asked, wrapping her hands around her mug. "How are things in paradise?"
I almost laughed at the question. Paradise. If only she knew about this morning's disaster of a conversation, or how Brett looked right through me like I was furniture, or how I'd been lying awake at night feeling like I was disappearing one piece at a time.
"Brett thinks everything's fine," I said finally. "Which is part of the problem."
"Men always think everything's fine," Amy said bitterly, her voice still thick from crying. "As long as their meals are cooked and their laundry is done and we're not screaming at them, they assume we're happy."
"I tried to talk to him this morning," I said, feeling the ache of rejection all over again. "Really talk, about how disconnected we've become. I made his favorite breakfast, created this whole scene, and he looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language."
Robin nodded knowingly. "David does the same thing. Like relationship problems are just something women make up to create drama."
"Brett asked me what more I wanted from him," I continued, feeling the anger rising again just thinking about it. "Like providing financially and not cheating should be enough. Like love is just a checklist of things you don't do wrong instead of things you choose to do right."
"Jesus," Robin said, shaking her head. "What did you say?"
"I told him I wanted him to want to be with me. To notice me. To care about what happens in his own house." I laughed, but it came out bitter. "He told me I was being dramatic and went to play golf."
"When? I had called after him as he walked away. When will we talk about it? Because later never seems to come."
Amy reached across the table and touched my arm. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know I'm falling apart over here, but that sounds awful too."
"It is awful. But it's also... nothing," I said, trying to find the right words. "It's the absence of everything instead of the presence of something terrible. Does that make sense? Richard is cruel to you. Robin is done. Brett just... exists near me without really seeing me."
"Maybe that's worse," Robin said quietly. "At least Amy and I know where we stand. You're in limbo."
Amy wiped her nose with a fresh tissue. "Maybe we're the problem," she said so softly we almost couldn't hear her. "Maybe we're just too old and too demanding and too complicated for our own good."
"Stop it," I said, feeling something fierce rise up inside me.
"Richard calling you fat doesn't make you too demanding.
It makes him cruel. Robin wanting to feel something for her husband doesn't make her complicated.
It makes her human. And me wanting to feel like I exist in my own marriage doesn't make me dramatic. It makes me alive."
Amy started crying again, but this time it looked different. Less defeated, more angry. Like something was waking up inside her that had been sleeping for too long.
"I used to have opinions," she said through her tears. "I used to care about politics and books and art. I used to have friends Richard didn't choose for me. I used to be a whole person, not just his disappointing wife."
"You still are a whole person," Robin said. "You just forgot because someone who's supposed to love you keeps telling you you're not."
I thought about my old journal upstairs, about the woman who'd wanted to travel the world and capture beautiful moments with her camera. That woman had believed she deserved extraordinary things. She'd been hungry for life and love and adventure. She'd been brave.
"We're all drowning," I said, surprising myself with the clarity of it. "We're drowning in marriages that don't see us, in lives that don't fit us anymore, in versions of ourselves that we never chose but somehow became."
Robin raised her coffee cup with a sad smile. "To drowning women everywhere."
"To figuring out how to swim again," Amy added, her voice stronger than it had been all morning.
I lifted my cup and clinked it against theirs. "To remembering who we used to be before we got lost."