I don’t believe my wife.
I never believed her.
Never trusted her, even from the day we met.
She always communicated twice, once with her words than with her eyes. They never agreed. It was maddening at first, listening to two consciousnesses simultaneously, but soon I grew intoxicated. Infatuated with the mystery, enchanted with the enigma of finding the truth from the paradox. It was an unhealthy obsession, one I fell in love with, one I engaged, one I married. One I couldn’t sustain.
“I never loved you.”
The quiver in her voice reverberated through her pink cardigan. “ I don’t ... don’t know why I said yes. It was a loveless yes, like... like you could’ve been anyone and I would’ve said yes. I think I said yes to the idea. I wanted the wedding, the ceremony, the marriage.”
I couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. I saw no indecisiveness or remorse in them. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, her cloudy visage protected the truth.
I let out a sharp breath. “What are you trying to get at?” She shifted uncomfortably. “Are you trying to play victim? Do you really think you are the victim? Or are you just trying to convince me that what I walked in on was somehow my fault for not ‘loving you enough’ or some other bullshit.” Her head hung; her chin nuzzled in the corduroy collar. She was defeated, yet my instincts took control. “Do you feel guilty because you just realized you were a married woman?” “Yeah,” I tossed her phone onto the carpet. “ ‘I never loved you.’ What the actual fuck is the point of saying this? Am I supposed to feel bad? Feel guilty, feel responsible for --” I vaguely gestured towards the phone. “This?”
We stayed silent. Save for quiet sobbing, the room filled with tension, had no space for sound.
I walked over to her, each step more measured than the last, foreshadowing the certainty of my next sentence. “I don’t need an explanation from you. I don’t care that you did it.” I stood directly above her, my shadow coldly enveloping her. “ It happened. We divorce. End of story.”