Beautiful Lies
This is where it begins, a story of child abuse, toxic love, and the survival mechanism that worked: turning maladaptive daydreaming into a life worth romanticizing.
Some kids dreamed about prom. I dreamed of escape.
The soundtrack of my childhood was one of doors slamming and voices yelling, always my cue to vanish. Before I could tie my shoes, I knew how to read the room and listen for the tone of voice over the words being said.
That kind of vigilance takes its toll. To this day, my body is always braced for whatever might come next.
My husband recently mentioned how much physical stress I carry, and it's true. I often catch myself with my shoulders hunched up around my ears or my stomach roiling in anticipation.
I remember that same feeling in my stomach when I heard certain footsteps or my name called in a certain way. That alone told me how the night would go.
I remember rehearsing escapes I’d never make. Accepting apologies no one ever gave and rehearsing entire arguments in my head, coming up with mic-drop responses no one ever heard.
My bedroom was the safest place in the house (which isn't saying much). My mother had me keep peanut butter and saltines under my bed for when she wasn't home, so I wouldn’t have to come out and risk running into him.
Her first husband, the man who gave me my DNA and my nightmares.
She thought it was about his temper and his insults. Which was partly true, but she didn’t know the whole story.
He made me his servant. His verbal punching bag. And behind closed doors, when she wasn't home, his secret.
He used guilt, fear, and shame to keep me quiet about the unspeakable things he did, always with the threat of what might happen if I ever told.
And then one day, I told it anyway.
It was a fourth-grade school play, of all things, with a plot that was way too close to my actual life. That night, I said the thing I wasn’t supposed to say to the people that I wasn’t supposed to say it to.
But even after he was gone, the damage stayed: the guilt, the hypervigilance, that instinct to brace—none of which goes away just because the threat does.
They just…brace for the next impact.
I’ve always needed a story to keep me going.
When I was little, I danced in front of my bedroom mirror, holding my curling iron like a microphone and lip-syncing to Celine, Whitney, or Tina (ah, the '80s).
When I wasn’t nailing dance class routines in our grimy garage under an imaginary spotlight, I was memorizing movies line for line.
Not necessarily because I loved them, but because they were predictable and safe.
Nothing bad ever happened in those worlds unless the script said so.
Real life doesn't offer that kind of guarantee.
Looking back, I don’t know if I ever truly wanted fame. I think what I really just wanted was control, some sort of ‘authority over the storyline’, if you will.
Because when your earliest memories are of a father whose presence did more damage than his absence ever could, daydreaming was the only way to escape to a safer world. A better world.
But eventually, that lifeline of mine became a strategy.
When I was fourteen, I earned a spot in our state's top performing arts school. It was competitive, intense, and full of talent and drama.
I loved every moment of it. I had real chops, maybe enough to make it.
But after graduation, while my classmates headed off to LA, Juilliard, or some obscure-but-impressive theatre program in Europe, I stayed.
I let someone else’s fears talk me out of the risk, and I called it being realistic.
But if I'm being honest (and I am now), I was just scared. Mostly of being seen. That little nugget of fear hasn’t fully left me either. More on that later.
I don’t blame anyone else for the choice I made, but I’d be lying if I said I never wondered what would’ve happened if I’d gone anyway.
Instead, I got married, and I deeply regret everything about that marriage except the daughter it gave me.
I used to think all the beautiful lies were the ones I made up, just daydreams I created to survive. But the real damage came from the ones my first husband told me.
Manipulation was his specialty, and it took me years to stop mistaking it for love. He said allll the right things, and I believed him. I needed to.
I built my entire life around the words he used to keep me anchored to him. In those days, surrounded by a cloud of his false promises, I thought if I just tried harder, stayed longer, and did everything right, I could make those lies come true.
When we met, he was already losing his sight, and I took it on like I'd signed some unspoken contract. He refused to learn Braille, so I read books to him (until he transitioned to audiobooks), put raised touch-dots on appliances, and helped him walk his first steps with his new cane.
Later, he got a guide dog—under the guise of independence, though really he just...wanted a dog (apparently, I didn't have enough things to take care of).
Meanwhile, he rarely touched those dots to help with chores, and most of the responsibility still fell to me. What looked like independence to everyone else was, in reality, just another way of tying me closer.
But it wasn't the blindness that drove me away. It was literally everything else.
For every sweet word he said, there were red flags I pretended not to see.
I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I didn't have much sense of self-worth. I didn’t think I could do any better, wasn’t even sure I deserved any better.
He 'needed' to be cared for, and I needed to be needed. Codependency was the sole driver of our marital longevity.
Still, I wanted to be good-a good wife, a good mom, a good person, useful, supportive, capable. The kind of woman who just…handles it.
So I handled it.
I handled his moods, his dog, his appointments, our daughter, our house, our jobs, and his lies. I got blamed when things broke down and dismissed when I tried to fix them.
And every single time I threatened to leave, he’d threaten to kill himself.
And every single time, I believed him.
I begged him to come with me to see a couple's therapist. He told me, “Going to therapy means admitting there's a problem.”
Which, ironically, might be the most honest thing he ever said.
💡 Know someone stuck in a cycle that needs breaking? Share this with them. Sometimes bravery needs backup.
Meanwhile, I was drowning.
I didn’t stop escaping into my imagination because I was more mature by then; I just didn’t have the bandwidth for it. My existence had been drilled down to enduring and fulfilling what I thought were my duties.
I forgot what it was like to imagine a life I wanted, let alone believe I could have it. Even then, I convinced myself I could fix it. I believed that if I were strong enough, patient enough, and selfless enough, I could save us both and carve out a normal life.
It became yet another lie in the cloud of delusion that blinded me.
Still, I went back to college (while working full time and running our household), determined to create something better for all of us.
But instead of his support, I got his suspicion. “You’re just going to college to find someone better and leave me,” he said.
Le sigh.
More red flags than a matador parade, and still I stayed.
You ever wish you could go back in time and just…smack the stupid right out of yourself? I know I do.
But I stayed because my hope was constantly used against me, but I was still too deep in denial to accept it.
I remember very clearly a specific day when I was driving down a busy road, busy checking off another to-do list.
He’d already called me several times that morning, constantly checking to make sure I wasn’t out doing anything he wouldn't approve of. God forbid I have a moment to myself or speak to someone who wasn’t him.
The irony of it all was that I was swamped with responsibilities he refused to share. There wasn’t time for me to breathe, let alone do something sleazy (which I would never do anyway).
There were no thank-yous, no "I see you. I appreciate you." It was just more weight on my back, more expectations, and damn near everything except help.
And it struck me like a bolt of lightning:
This is it.
This is the rest of my life.
This was all it would ever be.
The same arguments, loneliness, and the treadmill of thankless obligations would be exactly the same when I was fifty as they were that day, and that terrified me.
Not long after that epiphany, a colleague at a business lunch asked me: "So, tell me about yourself."
And I had no idea what to say. I had nothing.
I had no identity that didn’t involve me taking care of someone. I wasn’t a beloved wife. I didn’t even feel like me.
I was nothing but, and would never be anything else but, a utility.
That was my long-overdue epiphany, and I knew I had to leave him. Immediately, but strategically. I couldn't take another tearful guilt trip.
At the time, I didn’t have the language for it; I was just sick of playing the part of the dutiful, doting spouse in a one-woman show, so I detached.
I stopped trying to make him hear or understand me, and I stopped engaging with and reacting to his words. I was just...there.
Nowadays, they call it gray rocking, and he noticed pretty much right away, of course. He called me out on it before crying that I didn’t love him anymore.
I wouldn’t lie anymore. The truth was I hadn't loved him for a long time, and by then, I could hardly stand him.
"I don’t want to be in this marriage anymore," I told him, my voice flat and emotionless. I couldn't even muster a skosh of fake sadness for his benefit.
I couldn't do it anymore. The promise to myself that kept me strong enough to do what I had to do was that I wouldn't do this anymore.
And that’s when he suggested therapy.
Too late, I was already checked out. I didn't even care about trying to fix something that never should have been built in the first place.
Of course, the first thing he asked was "Is there someone else?" As if he couldn’t imagine that he might be the reason I was done.
That accusation pissed me off; I had taken my vows seriously. I had made promises before God, and that meant something to me.
I even sat down with my minister after I left because I was so conflicted. I’ll never forget what he told me: “Divorce can be a blessing; God doesn’t want His children to suffer".
That conversation gave me much-needed clarity; I hadn’t been lying for the past nine years, and I wasn’t breaking my vows. I was finally honoring the part where I mattered, too.
Back to the conversation:
After I told him I was done, he volleyed with those threats to himself again. But this time, what used to guilt me into staying now just pissed me right off.
In that moment, I finally saw it for the disgusting manipulation tactic it was, his last-ditch power play.
So I called his bluff.
I’m not proud of this, but I said, “Fine, do it in the bathroom with the door shut so your daughter doesn’t have to see it.”
Was it harsh? Maybe. But I'd spent years ignoring red flags, putting up with abuse, and feeling guilty for wanting to divorce a 'helpless' blind man while he played the martyr.
That day, I finally stopped.
Because even in that moment, I was the only one thinking about what was best for our daughter, and I needed him to know I wasn’t buying his theatrics anymore.
Don't worry, y’all, he’s still very much alive.
Probably still waiting on that Oscar.
☕ I used to live on beautiful lies. Now I live on caffeine and hope.
If you want to help, buy me a coffee.
After our separation, his relatives left me voicemails calling me selfish and demanding that I “do my job.” I was scolded and yelled at about "who's going to take care of him now?"
Like I was the hired help or something. In reality, they knew what they'd raised. They just refused to acknowledge it until it had finally inconvenienced them.
But I had a daughter watching all of this, and I was not letting her grow up thinking that any of this was what love was supposed to be like.
That became my line in the sand.
The divorce should’ve been the end of it, but it wasn’t at first.
Even after the divorce, he kept calling, ostensibly about visitation schedules, but it was really about keeping access to me, and for a while, I let him keep it.
Part of me wanted him to see just how much better I was doing (I wasn't) and to finally hear me (not to reunite, just to acknowledge me).
Codependency is a bitch to overcome, after all.
But eventually, I remember thinking, “Didn’t I pay a lot of money to not have to deal with this?”
I hadn’t accomplished very much by getting the divorce I thought would magically change me. I had to set boundaries and stick to them.
That was what finally ended the cycle, and slowly, I returned to the version of myself who used to imagine more and leaned into it.
After years of surviving a toxic relationship that nearly crushed me, I learned to live with intention and stopped believing the lie that wanting more for myself made me greedy and foolish.
I figuratively stumbled about in that age-old quest to 'find myself'. I didn’t even know what I liked anymore, so I tried new things, even stuff that felt ridiculous and I completely sucked at.
I didn't care, though; I was in this weird, no-man 's-land of figuring shit out. I felt so far behind; I was in a mad dash to catch up to all I had missed out on attempting, learning, and experiencing.
I stopped waiting for everything to be perfect enough for me to be ready and just started acting like I was.
That was the beautiful lie that changed my life.
These days, I still live in my head, probably more than I should. But now I use those visions to move forward and level up.
I already have good reasons to keep going that go beyond the visions in my mind. If I want to be strong and self-sufficient in my old age, I have to keep showing up for myself through diligent self-care and discipline.
If I want peace in my home, I have to be the one to create it every day. If I want to be sure the damage I lived through doesn’t become a family tradition, then I have to be the one to break the cycle.
And when all that gets too hard, hell, I'll just keep on going out of spite.
We all have someone out there rooting against us who gets a little thrill at the thought of us giving up.
Keep 'em waiting and watching, 'cause nothing inspires a comeback like a real-life villain.
When I used to run marathons (okay, mostly halves, but whatever), I didn’t really care about the medals (still have them, though).
I cared about proving I could embrace the suck and finish the race when everything in me wanted to quit.
And now I get to say things like “when I used to run marathons,” which is just...obnoxious, I know. I promise I’m working on it.
And now, after a decade of digging out of the brutal winters up here, I've decided I'm moving somewhere that doesn't even sell snow shovels.
Not maybe, it’s gonna happen.
I picture my grocery runs, beach walks, the everyday rituals of that life I’m building, and I plan accordingly. I make choices like that life already exists, because in my mind, it does. I just haven’t caught up to it yet.
Using delusions to create solutions. (Too kitchy? Too cliché? Yeah, probably, but hopefully you get what I mean.)
Same tool, different direction.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the future, especially the big, audacious goals that still make me nervous.
At eighteen, I didn’t know how to picture myself in a life that wasn’t handed to me.
I’d internalized this idea that big, ambitious dreams were for people who were…better. Thinner. Prettier. Smarter. Special.
I had already decided I wasn’t, so I built a life around whatever seemed realistic for me instead.
But now, when I'm working and the doubts creep in, when I think I can’t possibly do this, I ask myself the one question that changes everything:
“What if I can?”
That one thought is my secret to my success, and I’m nowhere near done yet.
I want to take the life I scraped together and make something amazing from it.
Even if some part of me still wants to crawl under my desk and hide every time I hit “publish”. You can't create something authentic and stay invisible.
I’ve tried; it doesn’t work.
As O’Shaughnessy wrote: "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams...yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems."
For too long, I only lived in those dreams.
Now I turn them into reality.
Related Reading
- When all you get are lies, whether spoken or unspoken, you'll understand The Silence Was a Choice.
- The same escape method I used in daydreams appears again in Movies: Escape or Compass?
- For the version of me who finally stopped imagining and started healing, read The Easiest 50 Pounds I Ever Lost.
- For the career curveball that made my life better, see The Best Thing I Never Got.
Heather is an essayist and longtime ghostwriter publishing real stories about trauma, reinvention, and the absurdity of real life.
Creator of Unfinished Business, a platform reaching readers in nearly 20 countries for its dark humor, emotional precision, and refusal of performative healing, whether the story is about grief, growth, or just getting through Tuesday.
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