What Happened to Eden

I lie in bed, flushed and content, stretching my legs in a tangle of sweaty sheets. He strokes my thigh and tries to calm his breathing. This is what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be fun. This is what I’ve missed all these years.

Eighteen years, to be exact. Things get stale after so long, of course, but what if they start timid and awkward, too? Maybe you get more comfortable, maybe you just rinse and repeat. But now, I don’t even want to rinse. I want to be smeared in the sweat of this man who seems to know my body better than I do.

So much time. So much of my life. Sacrificing myself on the altar of marriage. Not all of it regrettable – I have three beautiful children – but so much waste. I’m 38 now, well past my prime and edging toward an expiration date, as far as dating hot men who are good in bed goes, and eighteen of those years have amounted to three precious babies and no love in my life. A cold bed.

And a lying, cheating, gaslighting husband. Ex-husband, mercifully.

Last year, while on the phone with Apple tech support trying to fix my son’s iPhone, I discovered photos of my husband in my son’s photo album. It seems through some tech glitch their photo accounts merged, and in between my son’s experimental photographs of water bottles with blown out contrast were selfies my husband had taken and not sent to me. Some showing his meager biceps, some shirtless in our bed, all with a stupid smirk.

And then, a photo of him, his face obscured by the ass of another woman. The woman took the photo over her shoulder while she lay face down on the bed, and there was the top half of my husband’s face, just below her tramp stamp. He looked up into the camera, nose-deep in a stranger’s asshole. A stranger to me, of course. They seemed to be fairly well-acquainted.

What a thing to see when you’re on the phone with tech support.

“Ma’am? Are you still there? Did you back up the photos?”

I don’t know how that phone call ended. I assume I made a wretching sound and hung up.

And now, I am divorced. At 38. With three children under eleven. After being a stay-at-home-mom for ten years. The last time I went on a date, I lived in a dorm and my phone didn’t have a camera. I feel like a dinosaur. I feel like a virgin. Maybe I’m both.

Dating is both better and worse than I expected. On the one hand, moving on from a lonely, dark place was easier than I expected. On the other, I don’t understand dating – I’m a wife, not a girlfriend. There are rules now that didn’t exist when I was eighteen, and my goals are different now. I feel too old to learn new things, but also hungry for more.

This is What Happened to Eden.