At Least He Sleeps on Ugly Pillows

Sometimes abuse victims need to dwell on the tiny scraps of justice

Photo by Jenna Christina on Unsplash

“Please ignore the pillows, they are hers,” this was the caption on one of the early selfies he sent me.

Of course, I couldn’t stop staring at the pillows. They were white with pink faded roses. They were pretty, just not what I would have expected to see in the home of a 27-year-old. In fact, they weren’t too dissimilar to some that my granny kept.

But each to their own. I am really not a judgy person, and what would I care about his ex-wife’s home decoration style anyway? As far as I was concerned this was all a thing of the past. Andy* and I were together now, and it would stay that way until we turned 100. There was enough time for us to set up and decorate our own home and that’s all I cared about.

We planned our dream house

“This,” he said, showing me a picture of a tiny room, “this is the only room in the house I was allowed to decorate.” His style was much more aligned with mine. But then that’s not particularly difficult, since I am a nerd.

It all started out as a joke, during the first days that we were together.

“Can you imagine what our house would look like?” He would say, “we’d have Sci-Fi posters on the walls, robots in every room and a huge lego display. When we move into something big, we can have a game room, with retro game consoles.”

It was as if he had read my diary. Almost exactly how I pictured my dream house.

It was only a few weeks later that we started looking for flats. Not only did we plan the dream house, but the dream wedding, the dream family. And we planned a lot. We planned until 1 1/2 years later he told me that he had moved on.

I was heartbroken. Destroyed. But most of all confused. I couldn’t understand how someone who had always insisted that I was the woman of his dreams and one true love, could just turn around and leave before we ever realised any single one of our dreams. At the time, I couldn’t understand how he could just end a relationship that had never properly started.