I was a novice writer, 19, and he had found me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, he thought he’d won; I was a lottery and he was a lucky player. We had a lot in common. We both had dreams, mine was to be a big-shot writer, his was being a famous architect. We both wanted to travel and see the world outside of our dorm rooms. But the one thing that made us different was the way we loved each other. He was in love with my writing and I was in love with him, with his gestures, his smiles, his grins, his kisses, his passions. I don’t know how it was that for the 13 years that we were married, I didn’t see that his love was the dying kind, not the everlasting kind. And despite his lack of attention for me, the woman who slept next to him every night, the woman who gave him her whole heart without any exceptions, I was still blinded, maybe because I was too in love to realize his weakness, his inability to give me his heart.
He read every single article that I wrote, every single piece of writing, every poem, every story, but somehow he forgot to read the sadness in my eyes, the pain I felt every time he didn’t tell me he wanted me. But I let it go, I pushed my feelings aside and focused on pleasing him. I wrote about him every chance I got and I let him read. I had become an expert on pleasing him, making him happy and I never asked for anything. I saw him, but he no longer saw me. He kept telling me to write more and tried so hard to encourage me, to make me the best writer the world had ever seen, but he didn’t try to open his heart. And I, I waited. I waited for 13 years before letting him go.