“Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

I feel like the day that the sense of proper judgement was handed out Tess and I were off chatting about something in the corner… She even says that our impulses are too strong for our judgements sometimes. I couldn’t agree more with my fictional cohort, however different her path played out than mine. Like all good stories mine started like the rest with a man and sweet nothings whispered in the dark…

With the crash of the housing market I was one of the last people in the office to still have a job, and then one day I didn’t. Thats where my story begins I suppose. I tried to find another job, lack of experience, education, over qualification, it was pointless. I had to leave my “adult” life I had made for myself at 22 and move back home to nowhere TX with my dad, go to a horrible job at a daycare from 5am to 5pm for just enough pennies to scrape together for car payments, insurance, and gasoline.

I had been a good girl, didn’t drink much, didn’t go out to dance clubs, wasn’t promiscuous… but then I found a book, I devoured it in one night… Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice under a pseudonym. Oh, my! did that lead to an intense amount of googling! leading to chatting on collarme…. Where I met K, months of chatting, lead to meeting up with him. I stayed for a few weeks at his house and after much debate decided to move in with him. It was delightful, I had never been so happy! I didn’t have to worry, I had someone to show me things I never knew existed, I felt safe like the rest of the world just didn’t exist. Before I knew it we were married a few months later. Everything seemed so perfect, like it was too good to be true, but I didn’t care for the first time in so long something had gone right and I wasn’t going to wait for the other shoe to drop.

Fastforward a year and a half we moved around, saw the sights, explored, and we had our first baby things were great we were even moved back to TX for her first birthday. Then the preverbal shit hit the fan. In the middle of the night the doorbell rings, K gets up to answer it. Its the police saying that there was a criminal in the area and they wanted to check our premises to make sure he wasn’t hiding in our home/yard. After they came into the house the truth comes out. Half truths, they were there for my husband. I had I.C.E. invade my home with me in my bed in my nightgown, asking about weapons and who else was in our home, while they handcuffed K in the living room to take him away.

Long story short he had lied about his entire self to me besides his name. He wasn’t from where he professed to be, he had a work visa because he couldn’t become a permanent citizen due to crimes he committed in the past, never completed probation terms years ago and now he was facing deportation because of something he did and hid years ago. My entire life came crashing down due to some paper pusher not doing their job, at that moment I had no idea what was going on, all I knew was that I had to find a way to take care of my daughter and I had to do it fast. Almost a month of being detained I was able to get him out with a bond to try to salvage our lives. Seemed easy enough, we would work through it because thats what “decent” people did, I would learn to forgive him for the sake of our daughter because thats what “moral’ people did.

Almost 5 years later and I haven’t been able to do those things. I can’t find a way to respect him (I cant serve him, any lifestyle choices I prefer have gone out the window), I haven’t been able to fully trust him, all I can do is drag through each day and put on a happy face so that no one knows what our dirty secrets are and that my daughter is never left wanting. At what point is the sacrifice worth it? Loose all shreds of personal happiness, intimacy (haven't been able to have or coerce any form of intimacy for almost 5 years), and self respect for the sake of your daughter having a father? Or destroy two lives so you can move on? If I leave him, he will be deported, she will loose her father and we will be left with an extreme amount of uncertainty. At what point do the scales tip in my favor? Grin and bear it for the next 15 years?



Obviously there is more to my story, half of this just wanting to feel like Ive gotten the truth off my chest and the other half is me begging for a way to fix things. This is the first time Ive ever told anyone any part of my story, I usually just put on a straight face and face the world like nothing is wrong and we are a completely normal family. What would you do? I loved the lifestyle but that is no longer part of my life, I feel like I've been dumped into survival mode.