The Life I Chose To Walk Away From

For a long time, I believed that love required patience in ways that slowly erased the person offering it, and that if I simply remained steady enough, quiet enough, and understanding enough, the man I married would eventually remember who we had once been before ambition reshaped him into someone unrecognizable.

My name is Mariana Maren Alvarez, although for seven years, I lived under a much smaller version of that name, one that fit neatly into the life of a man who needed me to be simple in order for him to feel significant, and who mistook my calmness for a lack of depth, my restraint for a lack of ambition, and my loyalty for something that could be safely taken for granted.

When Alejandro left me, he did not call it abandonment.

He called it growth.

He told me, in the careful, rehearsed tone of someone who had already convinced himself of his own righteousness, that he needed a partner who could “match the speed of his future,” as though I had ever asked him to slow down, as though love had ever been a competition that required one person to outrun the other.

I did not argue.

I did not beg.

I did not try to explain that what he called simplicity was, in fact, stability, and what he dismissed as ordinary was, in reality, discipline.

For Complete Cooking STEPS Please Head On Over To Next Page Or Open button (>) and don’t forget to SHARE with your Facebook friends.