Homewrecker
Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness.
“Can you ask my parents to get divorced? They will not listen to me.”
Being a homewrecker isn’t all it’s rumored to be. It sounds sexy and forbidden because supposedly the only thing that can wreck a home is a beautiful woman. I don’t find it so, maybe because I’m barely a woman but probably because I developed my powers early, before I knew I was supposed to be causing chaos sexily, behind firmly closed doors. I can cause chaos and destroy foundational generational beliefs fully-clothed and on main, thank you very much. According to my older sister, I wrecked my own family first simply by being born. She’s cruel but she’s not wrong- my biological father left my mother while she was pregnant with me and played no substantial part in my raising. The home my sister knew for four years before I showed up was well and truly wrecked, never to be found again.
Then, I ruined a few of my friends relationships by being the girl their man wished would be The Other Woman. My refusals were too loud and I told my friends about the bad behavior of their men, which ruined their blissful teen romances. I plead angry feminist teenager and I’m not all that sorry. You can’t love me but choose to date my best friend (because she’ll fuck you easily and I won’t) and then TELL ME THAT and then say “but don’t tell anyone I’m in love with you.” I believe I will, thanks!
The first one that hurt was when the rich boy from the right side of the tracks fell in love with me and his mother told me she never wanted her son to end up with someone like me. I appreciated her honesty. That pain is poignant now— bittersweet with age and less powerful due to near constant repetition. I wish I could tell younger me that no mom wants their son to love me because they don’t want him to love another woman, ever. It’s not me. I’m not unlovable. Some moms don’t know how to stop being emotionally and romantically incestuous about their sons. Some wives don’t know how to stop being their husband’s mommywife. When I point that out, it breaks something that held that family together. I have some regrets here, but not many. Boys deserve better and they’ll hear about from me, repeatedly, until they believe it themselves.
It doesn’t hurt like that one anymore, not really. Bummer of a personality trait though, if we are being really honest. When the Republican party won in 2016, I decided to divorce my Christian husband, finally wrecking a home that was “mine.” That one was the most fun, I think. Marrying him was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life and the freedom felt like breathing.
After that, I decided to date The One Who Got Away after he separated from his wife which was the second dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I accidentally had his baby and I really don’t think his mother wanted him liable to a rambunctious writer from the wrong side of the class spectrum in custody battles. Oh well. That’s what she has now because she didn’t teach her son how to regulate his hormones when he’s drunk and angry. I leaned into that one a bit too hard, I think. I was so mad at everyone calling me a harlot for dating a “married” man that I bought a literary shirt with a giant scarlet A on it and wore it proudly, obnoxiously. Divorce money is a class issue and those two poetic idiots did not have the privilege necessary to end a marriage legally. Stop being ignorant on purpose, that home was split long before I arrived (full of backtalk) on the scene.
I was able to steer my talents by the time my beloved best friend (not boyfriend!) was in his marriage era. I tried really, really hard to not cause any drama during his very first foray into the dating world. I was wifed up and pre/postpartum, and I am terrible at social cues anyway, so it took me awhile to put this one together but I think I managed it. The best friend’s new (only) girl kept treating me like a threat to her relationship. She wasn’t wrong, but not for the reasons she thought. I had been this man’s bro since our improv days. She would last or she wouldn’t; I wasn’t going anywhere. I decided to drop out of his wedding because I didn’t need any drama in my newborn phase. I couldn’t see, for years, why she felt threatened by me. My truth contains zero chasing of salacious orgasmic highs. In the end, long after I had a chance to call the man out for his behavior, I realized she didn’t know my truth. She knew his. And his truth is that he moved on from her with me IN HIS MIND and so presented me to her as an ex to prove he wasn’t a lonely boy who couldn’t hold a job and who lived with his mom while he was courting her the second time around. (I was firmly married while his story was happening around me.) I’m not a psychic but I bet that comes up in their marriage again.
I kept my mouth shut about a man’s bad behavior, though, however accidentally it happened. Aren’t I such a good girl??? (I’m a good girl and a bad boy all in one, ladies call me! *finger guns*)
My parents are mad at me because I told my littlest sister, who has justifiable behavioral issues, that her OCD compulsions have nothing to do with heaven or hell and that, for the purposes of her battling and regulating her traumatized brain, God doesn’t exist. It’s the first time her body has relaxed in all her years, I think. She slept for 21 hours and woke up a new child. It’s easier for her to see what is her disease talking in her brain and what is her faith talking in her brain. I’m in trouble though. Women are NOT supposed to challenge religious dogma. I can’t help it and I don’t try not to anymore. Religion is inherently racist and sexist; everyone should stop doing the mental gymnastics to pretend it’s not. It’s tiring. When the white men write the rules, the only constant is racism. Faith can exist without dogma infecting it. I know that’s tough to believe but I would love to walk you through it, if you’re queer and can’t see a path forward without feeling sinful. (Later, though, okay? We’re doing homewrecking today.)
I wouldn’t care about that one, I really wouldn’t, except my other, other sister told me I “broke the family” by coming out as non-binary and, well… Sisters are more right than we ever want them to be. Now I can’t unsee the crack in the foundation my demand to be seen and heard caused. I wonder if educating a child about the disease she has to fight until she dies even makes a ripple in the overall hatred for me. I love my sisters more than I love myself; I don’t rock the boat anymore than is strictly necessary. I torture myself at night weighing the pros and cons of telling my dad that he can meet my new girlfriend but my mom can’t. It’s true, but I can’t say it. Well, I shouldn’t.
I cry myself to sleep instead, feeling like I’m lying to my family because I have queer love that I won’t let them hurt, not even accidentally. There is too much queer hurt for me to add to it.
In the morning, in the mirror, I tell myself I’m providing a positive queer example for my son and that it may be the only one he’ll ever get, and to toughen the fuck up. I try not to notice how my face is wrecked, too, from the tears and the sadness. I don’t feel fun or sexy or forbidden. I feel ragged, wretched, loathsome. I’m sorry, I want to scream, I didn’t get to chose my curse! I try to stop being a hurricane and a bad omen, I really do. Then I see another woman of any age being ignored and gaslit and the thunder races the rain inside of me.
There are moments in life that feel like a strike of lightning, when all the pain makes sense for one single second and clarity punches you in the face. I hate and love these moments in equal measure. When my niece asked me to tell her parents to get divorced, the clarity from the lightning burned my heart into ash.
Reader, I tried to ignore her. I really did. I tried to do what society always tells little girls to do, which is to shut up and sit down and take up size zero space. To be seen, looked at, ogled, and never craved for intelligence. Turns out though… little sisters deserve to be heard and their words have value and I only heard the truth- a child needed help communicating her opinion on the subject of her own family’s mental health.
Of course I’m a homewrecker; I’m the only one who can tell my niece’s mother that her toxic marital rut is hurting her kids to the point that they know they need to ask for outside help. Who else could deliver such a message and dare to live afterwards? Only a sister, an auntie, or a homewrecker and I happen to be all three.
I’ve now spent a year, patiently explaining to a pair of grown adults how the toxic marital patterns we pick up in childhood affect our children because I’m keenly aware of the privilege of good therapy. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. I don’t know if I’m good or bad. I wonder how to make people believe me when I say that old patterns being broken is terrifying but the new patterns you painstakingly build from scratch are a peace you can’t forge any other way.
Also, I lied. It always hurts.
I do the work anyway.
I love you. Don’t kill yourself.
-Sav
PS- I listened to all versions of Jolene writing this and I have several notes. Imagine that! A pop culture song I don’t relate to!! Wild, if true.
PPS- I’m serious, you better not kill yourself, we are doing nonbinary thoughts next week. Drink your water and eat a food. I don’t care what kind. Any kind. I love you.
Editor’s note: Due to the above circumstances, I lost my job at the same time my son accidentally flooded the downstairs apartment and I have to pay the neighbor’s deductible out of pocket. Yes, I wish I was kidding and I’m no, I’m not.
If you’d like to help with that:
Venmo & PayPal: @/ladyshanelise
Zelle: 8064336075
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