Chapter 1

The story I will be sharing is one filled with shame and regret. It’s also a story of love and sacrifice. This is my story, a tale of events that have transpired woefully, in and out of my favor for the last 3 years.

Summer of 2019. I was accepted into a nursing program. Well, a vocational nursing program. I was married with 2 small children. My husband and I got married in 2015. I felt the surge of responsibility to be able to get a decent job to take care of my little family. My husband did not work. Perhaps he felt guarded by the safety net that was his aunts house we lived in. His aunt also took care of everything for us, including buying clothes and other necessities our little ones needed. I worked part time to pay for our own little personal bills. But I felt it was time for us to do better with our lives and really try to take care of ourselves so I enrolled in school. My husband would continue to hang around the house and smoke pot all day and do the minimum.

Soon I became resentful. We started to argue almost every day. These fights were getting out of hand. At the time our children were 2 and 3 years old and the negative effects of our fighting was becoming apparent. I became more withdrawn from him. I moved into a separate bedroom and all physical intimacy quickly ended.

I was in school full time, worked part time and came home every evening to take care of my little ones before bedtime. And I repeated this cycle every day for a year, which is how long the nursing program was. During this year we lived in a constant state of dysfunction and unhappiness.

I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want to work. I was doing all these things and he couldn’t even help bathe the girls at night before bed. I was angry. I completed my program and got my first nursing job at a little nursing home. I was excited to be making better money that I ever had before and I thought if we didn’t have so many money troubles anymore than maybe we would be happier. I was wrong. This only made him more insecure. He would tell me now that I’m a nurse I would leave him. I told him that’s not going to happen. At that time, leaving him was never really on my mind. I knew we had problems but this was my family. I had children with the man. Leaving just simply wasn’t an option. So i just brushed off these insecurities of his and carried on.

Well, I continued to work at my little job and we continued to fight. My children were becoming unhappy. How terrible for them to be so little and see their mommy yell and cry. How could I act so upset in front of them. I think of all the shame I feel throughout this whole experience, it’s their confusion and feelings of being afraid that I most regret.

I was still in my own bedroom and at this point it was about 8 months since we slept together. And I was becoming lonely.