The Monster Behind The Mask

Trigger warning ~ (References to abuse, addiction, suicide attempts, mental health struggles)

She made him a Long Island Ice Tea and he went home and told his mother he was going to marry the bartender. 

It was her first summer as a full time resident of the small fishing village she had visited frequently in her youth.  Her children in another state for a summer visit with her ex had her enjoying a brief reprieve from full time single mom life.  

As for this Long Island Ice Tea drinking customer, she wasn’t thinking about marrying him, but she was thinking about him. 

He was 6’1” with braids and brown skin that glistened in the sun, as he strolled up and took a stool at her waterfront, outside bar. 

He left after that one drink and she immediately pumped his two sisters, who waitressed at the same establishment, for info about him.  It was light hearted and not pursued after she learned he had a girlfriend.  

She went on to have a fabulous summer fling with another local, which lasted beyond the season and finally ended just around the holidays. 

It was at the employee Holiday party that, he who shall remain nameless from now until the end of time, reappeared on the scene.  He also, had  recently found himself single. 

She took him home and he stayed.  That’s the long and short of it. The kids liked him instantly.  He was funny, and easy enough to spend time with.  It progressed so quickly. 

She had assumed he was the older brother to the coworkers she had since become friends with.  A short time later she learned she was mistaken and he was actually eleven years her junior.  Upon hearing this she had said, "oh well, it’s not like I’m gonna marry him”....She was wrong. 

In merely two months time from that fated holiday gathering, she would find they were expecting a child.  Her youngest of the 3 children she had being 7, she had not been planning to have more.  However, when she saw the second line appear on the stick she held in her hand, she couldn’t help but be overcome with a rush of excitement and pure love, for the spec sized seed growing inside her. 

His reaction was equally joyful and he vowed in that moment to always be there for her, her children, and now theirs. 

It’s with great difficulty she ever acknowledges these joyful recollections.  Times in her early relationship when she was filled with love and hope.  She doesn't  typically allow herself to recall the happiness, because of the shame it fills her with.  The shame that stems from knowing that it was she who not only allowed him into their lives, but willfully fought to keep him in them.

Just months into the pregnancy things began to change.  She recognized the signs of active addiction and it brought all the chaos with it, it possibly could.  There were fights, and tears, and cheating, and violence.  Finally it was done, and she stepped into a future where she would continue on as a single mother, now with an additional babe in arms. 

He made it to the birth of their daughter and they briefly attempted to be a family.  The attempt failed quickly.  With him out of the picture, feeling alone and overwhelmed, she struggled with her own demons.  She made questionable decisions and walked some dark paths. 

She walked a road so dark, she found him on it.  They hadn’t made it work in the light, but now in this shadowy world they came together and formed a twisted connection woven together with lies and betrayal. 

She became unrecognizable to herself until one cold January morning, staring at her reflection, she saw a glimpse of the woman, the mother, who she used to be.  She was still in there.  And in that single moment of Grace, the lights, though dim at first, flickered back on. 

She stepped out of the bleakness and back into the warmth of the sun.  Life evolved quickly and smoothly, somewhat seamlessly, as she fully embraced all that felt right.  He joined her rather than lose her and together they, as well as the four young lives on this ride with them, grew. 

There was a wedding.  A beautiful, simple, celebrated wedding.  There was community. There was a church family to be joined, where they worshiped together, where they volunteered together.  There were sports played and coached.  There were family vacations and romantic couple getaways. There was continued education for all. There were good jobs and career paths. There was hope.  There was a life. 

Those are the highlights she held onto.  That is what she knew the world saw and what she so desperately wanted to be real. She doesn't mention the fights behind closed doors.  The general uncomfortableness she felt so often.  She wanted this perfect picture so badly, that she ignored the feeling in the pit of her stomach.  She pushed the dark, spreading dread down so deep, and polished up the shiny exterior.  She exerted an enormous amount of energy into not only playing a part herself, but assisting him in pulling off his. 

She dressed him up and fed him his lines.  It took her a long time to admit this, but that is what she did.  He completed the picture she had strived to create and she forced this jagged, misshapen piece into the puzzle of her life. 

She likes to think her motives were pure.  Her intentions good, but what is it they say...The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Ah yes, yes it is. 

“He’s not the person I would’ve chosen today”...She uttered those words to a confidant many times as the years passed. And though she felt that way, she continued to honor her commitment to this man. 

That changed one early summer morning as she innocently reached into his laptop case and unexpectedly pulled out two packages of condoms. 

The confrontation was met with lies on top of lies. The days and weeks following were a systematical unraveling of what ultimately turned out to be a double life. 

A double life that included secret email accounts, profiles on adult sites, eBay accounts on which items of value stolen from elderly customers of his handyman business, were sold.  Low paid drug addicted employees on jobs were used in place of himself as he met with the women he’d found on the aforementioned adult sites.  And there was the drug and alcohol abuse, abuse that great lengths were gone to to hide. 

He first moved out of their room and into the partially finished basement.  The air hung heavy in the house.  The pain and confusion so palpable.  It was mid August by the time he moved out of the household. Bittersweet relief came with it. 

A brief marriage counseling attempt only to be derailed by the uncovering of yet more lies.  Then the introduction of a new family onto the scene. 

His new girlfriend came as a complete package with a son and daughter.  The daughter strikingly similar to their daughter. Enough so to inspire whispers and rumors. None ever substantiated.  The announcement of a baby on the way in about as quick a time frame as they had found themselves expecting their child.  He had moved onto his “take two”.

The divorce was messy, expensive, and included a custody battle.  A battle she fought with the tenacity of a mother who was willing to walk through fire to reach one of her children.  The standard visitation rights he won, later completely abandoned as the final horrific truth of his masquerade was revealed a full four years after the veneer had first cracked. 

On a summer day she was driving with her then 20 year old daughter who finally found the courage to blurt out the truth she had buried deep inside her years ago.  A truth that four years earlier began to push its way to the top of her memories. 

The struggle between remembering and forgetting led her on a path that included abandoning the elite conservatory her talent had earned her a spot in, and inspired suicidal thoughts that required multiple stays in psychiatric hospitals. 

With the unburdening of these truths she had carried alone revealed, the healing could begin, but first they had to break her youngest child’s heart as they shared these harsh facts with her. 

Her love for her sister strong, and guided by the support of a trusted therapist, she slipped right into a place of acceptance.  As she had digested the information being told to her in a safe environment, neither her heart nor her head doubted the accuracy. 

At 14 years old, this child severed all ties with her father.  Her childhood vision of the man she believed him to be had already been altered drastically in the previous years, and now the last of that illusion lay there quietly on the floor of the room they had all bravely spoken only truth in. 

They went to the police and the police failed them.  With no justice insight their focus remained on the continued overcoming and rebuilding of themselves. 

Perhaps she could have gotten lost in the grief of her own failings.  Lost in all the spaces in time she felt shame and regret for, but she chose not to dwell there, for her not at her strongest would weaken the whole family structure. 

She rose above those failings, and she looked beyond.  She looked at the strength and resilience she played a part in fostering in her incredible, now young adults.  The bond amongst them strong . The course of their lives tethered together with a flourishing thick, sturdy vine impossible to sever.  The momentarily strongest of them always there to pick up the slack when another is at a weak spot.  That is how they do not just survive, but continue to grow. 

This is why his continued attempts to destroy their peace fail.  There are too many hurtful, spiteful actions he still to this day does to even bother to name, but his cruelties fall softly upon the floor of their  lives, where they let them lay.  Unaffected by them, they are ignored and flattened by their footsteps as they continue to stay the course and walk their path in the light.