Should Have Known... in The First Life

It took me less than three hours and 6 boxes to move my 3 years of life out of that house. My mom always said “I don’t see much of you in that house”…I’d make excuses about how I don’t want things, and how I picked the colors in the extra room that no one goes in, and how it’s ‘compromise ‘

I should have known when we decided to get two dogs, instead of one. When the therapists face would change as she looked over at me “Her reactions are completely normal, and human”. I would die a little inside as she said it…it meant that I was normal, and he was just an asshole, and I can’t fix that.
When I bought the new tv, and declined for him to chip in. How I put my foot down about the one that I knew I wanted, because I knew eventually, when I left, I’d take it with me. When I started to write the arguments down, trying to trace their origins, and read them over and over until I believed it made sense for him to be upset.
Should have known when I cringed as he’d ask me to touch his feet, where before, I would always be mindlessly touching him. When I stopped playing with his hair and brushing the back of his neck as he drove. When I couldn’t forget about that time on vacation where he pushed me out of his way.
I should have packed permanently last year, should have realized that feeling sick as his friends asked when we were going to get married, was the wrong reaction.
I should have stood my ground, multiple times, and instead, let him make me quiet, small, and child-like.
When we stopped making breakfast together on weekends, and how I’d hope every Sunday morning that he would ignore me until we got up to make coffee....or when I stopped even drinking coffee with him.
I had begun to recite every day, like it was the same, and every weekend, every move, every excuse, and even the number of tiny little pecks he’d land on my lips in a rush as I’d leave for work, I knew it all too well. I hated most of it. Especially the pecks. For 2 years we never kissed like it meant anything....Like he never felt a thing.
I should have thought more about his secrets, about what they meant, and why he’d go such lengths to hide them if he is ‘proud of who he is’.

Should have know when I kept running back to the past in search of something I didn’t have. Passion.

Or when, day by day, I’d look at myself and see someone less pretty, less intelligent, and less capable.

Now, I’m searching old boxes at my moms, trying to dig up any evidence of who I was. I threw so much away these past 3 years, not even my poetry remains. I’ve lost photos, art, memories, stories, all because I was trying to fit in that tiny house with someone who never cared about the artist in me. The passion in me. The fire....Never wanted the fire.

I’m settled in my new town, with my dog. I have company over often. And they make me feel great about myself. I forgot what that was like…