#she’s clearly just straight up lying for profit as a career these days

[juniperhillpatient]

it’s so disappointing to follow a YouTuber from the very beginning & watch a promising channel completely devolve from interesting discussion to pretty much constant blatant lies & clickbait 😔 (just peeked at Hailey Reese’s channel for the first time in a while. I knew she wasn’t the genuine & interesting girl I thought she was in 2017 but her channel is really just constant straight up proven wrong misinformation these days huh?)

[septiembrre]

Brio - “stop making empty promises!”

The first time Beth thinks about divorce, it’s several years in. They don’t have any kids yet, but the mortar of Dean helping with her mom’s medical bills is fresh, sticky and binds them to each other. He works and she manages their lives, preparing meals, running their errands, and helps Annie and Gregg and Sadie. Her life with Dean itches, and it blankets her like thick wool. 

She always maintained straight A’s, despite working part-time and babysitting on the side. She volunteered with Key Club, was active in Student Council, even though as she grew older she no longer had enough time for orchestra. Despite all the hurdles growing up, she had hoped she would be the first in her family to graduate from college. She finished twenty credits at Wayne County with an impeccable GPA before her mother’s medical bills became too much. Her mom needed her, Annie needed her, and there was Dean. And now here they are. 

At first, she thinks it’s a mean-spirited, passing thought. Except, it sits with her. With her mother dead, her father gone, all that she has left in the world is Annie, herself, and Dean. And Dean is sweet, goofy and he helped her laugh through the stifling fog of her mother’s illness. However, despite how stable it is, Beth knows that she doesn’t love him. 

A few months later, she becomes pregnant for the first time. Beth is nervous, a complete wreck, and she is also filled with love and hope. She picks Dean. She picks growing her family. She decides to stay. 

Over the years, the thought comes and goes. After three more children, after post-partum, and depression, and anxiety, and soul-crushing boredom - forget love. Beth doesn’t know if she could look at Dean with any warm and fuzzies again. After each birth, it rises, festering, but she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough. She thinks, if it gets really bad, worse than this tolerable bad, she’ll do it. She’ll divorce him. She promises it to herself. 

It’s twenty years into her marriage when she discovers the infidelity. It devastating blow, but she’ll make do. Then, she pieces together the rest and she’s fifteen again, finding herself about to be swallowed whole by the precariousness of her class and financial standing. Worst of all, this time her kids are coming with her, too. It burns. Her thoughts alternate between survival and revenge. They swallow her up. She promises herself that now, or once she figures all of this out, the extent of his betrayal and how she will right it, she will divorce his lying, cheating ass. She promises herself that she will devour him, crush him into nothing after she’s finished. 

In the midst of all of her pain when she’s certain there will never be sex or love or companionship in her life, enters a crime boss. The challenge of him sets her alight in a completely different way. He recognizes her and helps her to better understand herself.

One late night, over bourbon and scheming, he turns to her and asks, “Why you with him?”

The tenor is sexual as it always is with Rio. But, she sees that he’s curious if not confused. It’s funny because just several months ago wasn’t she sitting in a car with him, saying that there was no logical explanation for them to be together, and here he is questioning the existence of her high school sweetheart. The one he shot, but didn’t kill. And she’s still here, alone in a room with him. 

She doesn’t have an answer for Rio.

---

More and more, Beth surprises her sister, her best friend, and especially her husband. She even surprises Rio. But most importantly she surprises herself. She realizes how much she has to learn about who she is and what she’s capable of. However, something that doesn’t surprise her is how quickly she can adapt to things that are unbearable. There’s been a complete upheaval of her life, but at the end of the day, she’s still married to Dean. She doesn’t know how to pull the trigger here. She tells herself it’s easier for the kids. She consoles herself that she’s absolutely going to do it, just not yet.

Time moves forward. The next year is a rollercoaster. What she has with Rio sours. Beth pulls a literal trigger and when she comes to she realizes it’s the last thing she could have ever wanted. She moves ghost-like through her life, and she can’t finish the paperwork for the divorce. Then, Rio reappears, is seemingly resurrected. Business is back to how it used to be. But, they will never be what they once were. She did this. This is absolutely her fault. The unbearability of her life with Dean pales to this pain. She is exhausted by surviving Rio’s wrath and all the thoughts she has of contrition. 

Another night, there’s no bourbon, but it’s the two of them alone, and they’re talking business. Her phone lights up and she grits her teeth. Dean should know better than to call her when she’s working, and she thinks that he has such little regard for her time that he must have forgotten. She deliberates taking the call for a moment, and then she sends it to voicemail. 

Rio’s watching her and a detached curiosity colors his face. “Why you still with him?”

It’s a good question. Dean has moved out and works at a hot tub store now. She can see how he talks about his coworker and knows that it’s over. Their custody schedule is solid and the kids have adjusted the new routine. Her excuse used to be that they didn’t have the money to go through with the divorce proceedings. But, now business is good. It’s been good since before Rio returned with his vengeance and they continue to be profitable business partners. She doesn’t have much emotion left for her husband, all of it siphoned to nurturing her children, supporting her loved ones, withstanding Rio’s punishing distance and cruel turns of phrase. She has nothing left for Dean but brittleness.

She bites her lip. “It’s easier.” 

There’s a moment where Rio frowns at her. Her heart squeezes when she almost reads concern or disappointment, but the expression shifts and it’s clearly a sneer. 

She takes a breath, and powers through the rest of the planning, with this indispensable person who hates her.  Then she sends him home, and settles into her solitude, with her children fast asleep in their beds. 

-

When it finally happens, it happens little by little. Divorce doesn’t happen in a day. They re-sign the papers. They hire attorneys.  There’s no contest so it moves speedily enough. There’s one long session where they sit down together and with their lawyers and document a custody agreement, officially divide assets that were informally divided months ago. Afterward, Beth humors Dean, and they go out for a celebratory drink. He confirms what she suspected, and tells her that Gayle will be moving in with him at the end of her lease. It’s bittersweet. 

Gayle is amazing. She will be an incredible ally in their co-parenting situation. Beth liked her from the first time they met. And Dean has grown but Beth can’t help but feel worried for Gayle and overall judgey of Dean and his hare-brained decisions. It’s not until she gets home, and relieves Annie from her babysitting duties, that she realizes what she’s also feeling is lonely. Even surrounded by these munchkins she loves, even with the thrill and success of her small-business career and criming, even with her sister’s ad hoc ways of showing support and Ruby’s ways of reminding her to care for herself. Right now, she’s just feeling it. 

-

Eventually, all the paperwork is processed, and the court enters the judgment. Her attorney calls to confirm the good news. She’s free. 

She doesn’t know how she feels, she doesn’t know that she feels anything. It’s finally happened. She calls out sick from the shop. She doesn’t get into it with Ruby and Annie, just says she’s coming down with something and spends the rest of the day in bed. Beth realizes that she feels awful, and it’s not for the loss of Dean or some glorification of their marriage. She feels mournful, devastated by the loss of who she was forced to be for years. She made herself small and pristine and performed a token version of herself as a person, a wife and a mother for so long.  She can’t stop crying. 

It’s quiet tears and then it swells and sobs rise up from her throat. Sometimes she pushes her hot, splotchy face to the pillows and is swallowed by her grief. She toddles around the house, eats a little bit, and collapses in her bed for a second day. 

In the early evening, just after sunset, she startles,  hearing the lock turn in the doors facing the backyard. Rio’s silhouette is in the doorway as he pauses and adjusts to the darkness in the bedroom. He must have used the hideaway key.

There’s nothing boss about her having been in bed crying for a second day. Her hair is matted, her skin is splotching, and she is still so sad. She remembers that he’s seen her worse. The memory makes her feel nauseous, and she hides her face, wrapping her arms around her knees. 

Rio moves towards her and pulls back the covers, sliding into her bed. His arms wrap around her. She leans into the hollow of his throat and he murmurs, “You’re gonna be okay, Elizabeth.”

She smells his cologne and that scent that’s just him. She feels the cotton of his shirt against her sensitive skin, and the brush of his lips at her forehead. And the grief hurts, it really does, but she believes him.