Looking back, I don’t know that I’d say I “enjoyed” horror movies as a kid, despite how many I enthusiastically watched at the time. I think they were more something I put myself through in an effort to make myself braver- one of my ways of dealing with scary real world things that I wasn’t processing very well on my own. They sort of kept things in a ridiculous perspective; sure things were unsettling and and painful- as things tend to be when trauma is busily boring it’s way into an impressionable little mind, but at least I wasn’t really being pursued by sleep demons. At least murder clowns weren’t sending any red balloons my way. Not even a machete wielding stalker in sight. Silver linings, right?
In my old age, I’d become a real wuss when it came to horror movies, but I’d still try. It’s a very odd thing to find yourself so creeped out after watching something that you have to turn all the lights back on and keep texting your husband nonsense to distract yourself from how jumpy you are at imaginary things when you are supposed to be the level-headed adult in the house, one actually in charge of children no less.
I do still love a good ghost story, but since I would have to spend nearly every night alone for most of my marriage because of my husband’s work schedule, scary movies became a thing only bravely attempted on his nights off.
So last year Mark got the bonus entertainment of watching me jump-scream my way through Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House. It took us a few weeks to get through it all because we could only watch it after the girls had gone to bed and, again, only on his nights off. The show blended horror and heartbreak well, which left me feeling unsettled on enough levels to warrant needing to watch something funny before bed as a mental palate cleanser.
Yet there was one end about the otherwise good story that I thought was annoyingly weak. The main characters are each haunted by something in their pasts that gradually reveals itself, and in the case of married mom Shirley, it was that she’d once had a fling with some random guy while on a business trip. She made a mistake, and if she had I don’t know- murdered the guy to keep it quiet, I would’ve been less bothered by it in the context of the story. But what she did instead disturbed me even more; she told her husband.
Obviously cheating on your spouse is an awful, selfish and destructive act, but the thing is- this wasn’t an affair. This wasn’t someone she ever saw again or considered leaving her family for, this wasn’t a pattern of behavior on her part and the fact she could never escape the ghost of guilt she created because of it, it was pretty clear she was never going to do anything like it again. And it was years before! She had a young family with her husband, they had gone through so many things since together and the only thing telling him was going to do was assuage her own guilt while causing him immense pain.
In this exact circumstance, it just didn’t seem to be the right thing to do. In this exact circumstance, it seemed more selfish to confess because nothing good was likely to come from it and it would only hurt her family. She should have just lived with it as punishment.
However Mark’s reaction when I vented this to him was surprising to say the least.
Given his past behavior with his partners, it was a little odd that he not only disagreed with me, but seemed almost mildly offended that this was my take. I reiterated that I certainly wasn’t condoning cheating but that there were certain times where unburdening yourself can do more harm than good. He just seemed so shocked that that was my stance regarding this completely fictional couple.
Mark’s reaction, looking back and given everything he was about to do to us, was telling to say the least.
At the time, I thought it stemmed from his knowing my past so well. We were one of those couples that talked about everything and he was very aware of how I had been cheated on, in a pretty brutal way, by more than one partner. He knew how hurtful and damaging it had been to me. It’s not something I could ever just ‘get over”. I don’t imagine anyone could.
But he had never really been on the other side of cheating, aside from one relationship when he was I think barely, if at all, out of his teens. He never spoke with any bitterness about any of his exes, aside from one, because he was the one always doing the cheating. I’d thought that after knowing me, seeing how deep that pain can go and how it can affect all these different facets of your life and ability to trust down the road, that he had finally realized how fucked up a thing that was for him to have done to all those women.
I wonder if a light went on for him that night. Did he twist my thinking ol’ Shirley Hillhouse shouldn’t have confessed her fling to her husband into his thinking it would somehow be okay to pursue that hostess from work? After all, he wasn’t completely invested in the affair yet, though from what I know now, she had already been flirting with him hard and from his search history, they were starting to lay the groundwork for the start of something truly ugly. It seemed he was just waiting for the best excuse.
So by the end of October, there was already inappropriate, immature behavior on both their parts, but nothing he couldn’t reverse. Aside from odd little scraps of interactions like this discussion that I thought was about some TV show, I didn’t suspect a thing was off. But soon enough, there would be late night video chats around visits to porn sites and online fetish shops, soon she would be sending him pictures and they’d be having secret meet ups. By Christmas, he would be all set and ready to begin burning his family down.
****
Many things cause me to be struck with how alone with all of this I am now. I should be nearly constantly bracing for the next blow, but that would involve looking ahead and I’m still trying to get through one day at a time. Yet that cold punch of loneliness manages a good jump scare now and then.
This month I couldn’t do any of my beloved Octoberween traditions with the girls and not acutely feel his absence. That I didn’t have him there to watch scary movies with, which is such a small thing considering everything else, made my nights stretch extra long and cold. The nights are always the worst anyway…
But forward and not back right? So when the second series from the Hill House folks came out, I decided that I was just going to power through it, like I power through everything else in an effort to normalize this fucking nightmare.
It didn’t go so great.
I made it through the series in three nights- with the lights all the way on the entire time and while writing on the side. The first two nights I had horrible dreams, but not about the faceless ghost-doll people of Bly Manor, but about my husband.
I dreamt he came home.
He came home and cheated on me openly, encouraging me to look through his phone knowing I would not only see vile messages and pics sent from not only that workplace bimbo he actually left me for, but from other women at work as well. And he was just shitty and mean to me all around. He knew that if he pushed me hard enough to force me to kick him out, then I would be the bad guy, I would be the one to give up. It would actually have been a pretty clever and cruel revenge plot.
Too clever for him, I think. But not too cruel.
I think now that when he left in March and would come here everyday and treat me like he did, he may have been waiting to wear me down. I think he was waiting for me to just give up, call time on our marriage and free him from any guilt he was feeling over what he was doing. If he ever felt any guilt at all.
He used to always fall asleep halfway through any movie. But when it came to the scary stuff, I’d joke that it was like he was abandoning me in my hour of need. It was only a joke of course, and so very wrong because as he would end up showing me, there is nothing like being abandoned by the person you love. Nothing at all. To have someone you love violate every bit of your trust and turn away with a shrug is it’s own unique nightmare.
On the third night, I watched the last episode and cried until I nearly vomited.
The next day I spent in the ER with my daughter. The day after that we got hit with a hurricane. Then Halloween, the first of the holidays as a shattered family. Then dealing with my daughter’s deepening depression. And likely mine. It all just keeps going, worse than any horror show because it seems to have no end.
I wake. I walk. I wake. I walk…
At least the writing helps sometimes.
