Beautiful Lies

This is where it all began, a story of child abuse, toxic love, and turning maladaptive daydreaming into a life worth romanticizing.

Some kids dreamed about prom. I dreamed of escape.

The sounds of my childhood were usually doors slamming and voices yelling, always my cue to disappear. 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 hypervigilance 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 clenching in anticipation.

I remember that same feeling in my stomach when I would hear certain footsteps or my name called in a certain way. That alone told me how my 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 a jar of peanut butter with 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 the insults he hurled. 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, where no one could see, his dirty little secret.

He used guilt, fear, and shame to keep me quiet about the unspeakable things he did to me, always with the threat of what might happen if I ever told anyone.

But then one day, I told someone.

It was a fourth-grade play, of all things, with a plot that was way too close to my actual life. That night, I said the things I wasn’t supposed to say to the people that I wasn’t supposed to say them to.

But even after he was gone, the damage remained: that hypervigilance and instinct to brace never go away just because the immediate threat did.

I’ve always needed a story to keep me going.

When I was little, I danced in front of my bedroom mirror, holding my Ambassador curling iron like a microphone and lip-syncing to Celine, Whitney, and Tina (ah, the '80s).

When I wasn’t nailing dance routines in our grimy garage under an imaginary spotlight, I was memorizing movies line for line.
They were predictable and safe. Nothing bad ever happened in those worlds unless the script said so.

Real life...not so much.

Looking back, I’m not sure if I ever truly wanted fame. I think what I really just wanted was control over something in my life.

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, better world.

But eventually, that also 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 classmates headed off to LA, Juilliard, or some obscure 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, I was just scared of actually 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 choices I made, but I’d be lying if I said I never wondered what would’ve happened if I’d chosen differently.

Instead, I got married, and I deeply regret everything about that marriage except the daughter it gave me.

I used to think that all the beautiful lies were the ones I made up myself, just silly daydreams I imagined to get through my childhood. 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 was just 22 and already surrounded by a cloud of false promises meant to keep me anchored to him.

When we met, he was 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, put touch dots on appliances, and helped him take 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 thought if I just tried harder, stayed longer, and did everything right, I could make false promises come true.

I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I think it's pretty obvious here that 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 wanted to be cared for, and I needed to be needed. Codependency was the sole reason for our marital longevity.

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 cruel words. I got blamed when things broke down between us and dismissed when I wanted to fix them.

And every single time I threatened to leave him, 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 support.

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 headspace for it, no pun intended. My existence had been drilled down to 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 still believed that if I were strong enough, patient enough, and selfless enough, I could fix it all and have the life I wanted.

I was delusional, and no one could stop me from thinking otherwise.

I returned to college (while working full-time and managing our household), determined to create something better for all of us.

But instead of his support, I aroused his suspicion. “You’re just going to school so you can 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 being used against me, but I was still too deep in denial to accept it.

I vividly recall a specific day when I was driving down a busy road, mentally checking off another item on my to-do list.

My husband had 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 thankless responsibilities he refused to share. There wasn’t time for me to breathe, let alone do something sleazy (which I would never do anyway).

And that's when it hit 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 a utility.

That's when I knew I had to leave him. Immediately, but strategically. I didn't want to deal with another tearful guilt trip.

So I simply detached myself. I was still there physically, but I stopped trying to make him hear or understand me. I stopped engaging and reacting. 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.

The truth was, I hadn't loved him for a long time; by then, I could barely 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 just couldn't do it anymore. The promise I made to myself, which 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.

But it was way too late by then; I was thoroughly checked out.

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.

I had taken my vows seriously. I had made promises before God, and that meant enough for me to endure nearly a decade of trying to save something that shouldn't have existed.

I even sat down with my minister because I was so conflicted about it. Among other things, he told me: “Divorce can be a blessing; God doesn’t want His children to suffer".

That conversation gave me much-needed clarity; 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 made those same threats to himself again. But this time, what used to guilt me into staying now just pissed me right off.

Because I finally, finally saw it for what it was—a disgusting manipulation tactic and his last-ditch power play.

So I called his bluff.

I’m not proud of this, but I said, “Fine, go do it in the bathroom with the door shut so your daughter won’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 leave a 'helpless' blind man while he played the martyr.

That day, it all 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, 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 from life and leaned into it.

After years of surviving a toxic relationship that nearly broke 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 things out. I felt so far behind, and I was in a mad dash to catch up to all I had missed out on.

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 keep pushing forward, move ahead, and level up.  

Because if I want to be strong and self-sufficient in my old age, I must continue to show 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 ensure that the damage I experienced 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.

✉️ Too many of us live on beautiful lies. Don’t do it alone. Subscribe and I’ll send you new stories straight to your inbox.

Related Reading

• When all you get are lies, said or unsaid, you'll understand The Silence Was a Choice.
• The same escape method I used in daydreams is 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 P. is an essayist and longtime ghostwriter publishing darkly funny, brutally honest stories about trauma, resilience, and healing.

Her platform, Unfinished Business, has been read in over 30 countries for its dark humor, emotional precision, and raw essays on reinvention, grief, and the absurdity of real life.