I dreamed of happiness, planned my future, and ended up with nothing but insults!
My name is Helen Carter, and I live in Thornton, where the quiet streets are sheltered by towering pine trees. I met him again at a class reunion—20 years later. Stephen stood before me, slightly broader in the shoulders, with tousled hair, but his eyes—large, deep, and filled with the same yearning—pierced through me just as they did in our youth. He asked me to dance, just like when we were a couple. I felt his warmth, his breath, his strength, and my body trembled as though time had slipped away. That night, he invaded my dreams once again, and I realized that old love hadn’t died.
Why did we part ways? I don’t remember. For three years, we lived as husband and wife, made plans for a cottage with a garden, a small flower and candle shop, thought up names for our children—Maggie, Matthew… And then he disappeared—without a word, without a trace, leaving me in a void. At the reunion, after a few glasses of wine and dancing, we both knew: this was a chance to start over. Six months later, I moved to his place in Canterbury, to his house. His wife had passed away, and I hadn’t found someone to build a life with. Initially, things were good, but dreams of happiness turned into a nightmare.
I wanted love, but received only humiliation. Stephen had two sons—16 and 18 years old, Adam and Nathan. I didn’t try to be their mother—that would have been foolish. I just wanted friendship, understanding, to be accepted into their lives. I tried my best: surrounded them with care, cooked, bought gifts, compromised for the sake of peace in the home. But instead of warmth, I received coldness. Things got worse when the parents of their late mother visited. I respected them as much as I could—they were part of the family after all. But every visit was a trial: they looked at me like I was an outsider, and I felt like a shadow.
At 38, I wasn’t used to the new city, new people, or their home. The constant attempts to please everyone exhausted me. I was suffocating from the mess left by the boys, from their indifference. Adam, the eldest, started bringing his girlfriend over while I was at work. They lounged in our bedroom, in our bed, and stained the sheets. She used my creams, my brush, my slippers, and wrecked the kitchen so thoroughly that I spent hours cleaning up her chaos. Nathan, the younger one, was always complaining: about the clothes I bought him, about the food not being like his mum’s. “You’re just a housewife, sitting around doing nothing,” he’d throw in my face. I endured it as long as I could. And when I tried to talk to Stephen, he brushed my words aside as if they were meaningless.
I hoped to befriend the neighbors—they say they can be closer than family. But there, too, I found disappointment: all anyone talked about was how perfect his late wife had been. And me? I’m alive, I loved him all these years, left everything—my job, city, familiar life—for him and his family. I decided: if I had a child, everything would change, and I’d be respected. But when I brought it up, Stephen shut it down: “I have kids, I don’t want more.” And me? Left empty-handed, with dreams of motherhood crushed.
After that, everything fell apart. Stephen changed—he was no longer the boy from my youth. Life had burned the warmth out of him, and he looked at me with irritation. He found faults in me, criticized me like his sons did. I tried my hardest, but it was futile. The last straw was when I got home from work to find Adam’s girlfriend in my robe. She paraded around the house as if it was hers, even using my things. I held back and quietly said, “Please don’t touch my things.” She laughed in my face, “Oh, don’t be crazy!” Why did she treat me like that? I fed her, cleaned up after her as if she were my own, and she spat in my soul.
I snapped and ran out of the room. Stephen dashed out of the kitchen, livid with rage, and started shouting at me. I stood there, numb and disbelieving. He called me lazy, yelled at me to get out of his house, throwing things—a cup, a book, whatever was at hand. Tears blurred my vision, I grabbed my bag, and raced out in what I was wearing. I boarded the first train back to Thornton, to my parents. By morning, my belongings arrived by courier—coldly, without a note, like rubbish.
They say time heals. I try not to dwell on it. The pain may fade, but the wound remains. I believe I will find someone who loves me for who I truly am—with my dreams and scars. Stephen was my first love, but not my destiny. I wanted happiness, but was left with fragments. Now I’m back in familiar Thornton, learning to breathe again, hoping that light awaits me ahead, not new heartaches.
