My Wife, My Abuser

Part 2: A Father’s Day to remember for all the wrong reasons, and what happens after everything falls apart

I briefly picked up a knife from the cutlery set on the kitchen counter, which Ale had cleaned, and cleared of all the medicine bottles and other clutter, thus contributing more to the feeling of emptiness and not living here appearance, and I thought about slicing open my arm and letting it bleed out all over the kitchen floor, dying a slow, painful death as I thought about how my life had turned out like this.

— An excerpt from my journal entry on June 19, 2023.

The Summer of Suffering Starts

It was supposed to be a fun weekend getaway with Alejandra and Paz. Instead, I drove to Table Rock Lake alone on Friday, June 16th, 2023.

This wasn’t how I wanted to start the summer. But I had learned long ago in my marriage that what I wanted didn’t matter. I had to settle for what I got, and so often that meant scrapped plans. Earlier in the day, Alejandra and I had locked horns yet again, this time over Paz’s health and whether she was too sick to go on this trip.

“Paz’s with foot in mouth disease, it’s all over her daycare,” Alejandra said, pulling the blackout curtains shut in our daughter’s…