Whore, n: A woman who engages in sexual acts for money: a prostitute; a promiscuous or immoral woman.
He called me a whore. Whether I was or not is a matter of semantics. I was an unfaithful wife, not for money, and not with many, but with one, the one who found me at my weakest. The one who meant less than nothing. He took advantage, as did I. He paid no price, for the indiscretion was financed by me alone.
I cried and my tears were true. I will not be one of those women who blame it on their husbands when they stray. Robert worked hard, traveled much, and I was alone too often. It was my own emotional frailty that allowed me to forget my vows, to overlook the deep love that I bear for my husband, to indulge in the cheapest of attentions, the momentary respite from loneliness, to enable the failure which cost me so dearly.
Divorce would have been merciful. We stayed together, but Robert forgave me in words alone. I came to understand that where once he saw his love, his partner, his ally, he began to see a thing, an object, a convenience that he does not really know what to do with.
I am the flat, paper definition of a wife.
We have tried to work through it, but I cannot make him love me as before. Can you blame the wine for running out when you yourself have broken the glass?
I was too cowardly to have the tattoo placed on my forehead, where it rightfully belonged. I winced at the sharp pain as the painted woman fashioned the first slanted line of the 'W' on my abdomen. I endured the torment, my modern version of a hair shirt, until she completed the last horizontal line of the 'E'.
Back in my car, I drank again from my half empty bottle of vodka. The worthless woman I had become drove home, drunk.
Naked before myself and my God, I positioned two mirrors so I could clearly read on my stomach what I had made myself into. All those little girl dreams reduced to this one word.
The bottle was full, but there weren't enough pills in the world. I took all that I had, hoping it was enough.
I opened my eyes, and saw not my God, but my arm: bandaged, with a tube running up to an I.V. hanging from my hospital bed. I wept in my own failure as a shadow crossed the wall. Someone was there. Crying, I lifted my head as Robert descended upon me. He dropped his own tears on my cheek as he held me close.
"Oh my God, baby, what did you do?"
"No... no. I killed us. We were beautiful and I killed it.