At fifty-one, I thought the worst part of my week would be missing the anniversary vacation I had spent months planning.<\/p>\n
Then I had a sudden medical emergency and landed in the hospital.<\/p>\n
I was weak, scared, and barely processing what had happened when my husband, Paul, called.<\/p>\n
I expected him to say he had canceled our trip.<\/p>\n
Instead, he sounded oddly cheerful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tickets are nonrefundable,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo I asked my brother to come with me. We\u2019re boarding soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re leaving while I\u2019m in the hospital?\u201d<\/p>\n
He sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re stable. Why waste thousands of dollars?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he ended the call.<\/p>\n
I cried for ten minutes.<\/p>\n
After that, I stopped crying and called my attorney.<\/p>\n
The vacation had been paid entirely from an account I owned before our marriage. So had most of the furniture in our house and the down payment on the condo.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t interested in revenge.<\/p>\n
I simply realized that if my husband could leave me frightened and hospitalized because a vacation mattered more, then our marriage was already telling me everything I needed to know.<\/p>\n
By the time Paul returned, I had been discharged and was staying with my sister.<\/p>\n
He walked into the condo and found a letter on the kitchen counter.<\/p>\n
I had filed for separation.<\/p>\n
His belongings had been carefully packed into the spare room, and my attorney\u2019s contact information was attached.<\/p>\n
Paul called immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re ending our marriage over one trip?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m ending it because when I needed a husband, you chose to be a tourist.\u201d<\/p>\n
For once, he had nothing to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At fifty-one, I thought the worst part of my week would be missing the anniversary vacation I had spent months planning. Then I had a sudden medical emergency and landed in the hospital. I was weak, scared, and barely processing what had happened when my husband, Paul, called. I expected him to say he had …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9774,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9772\/revisions\/9774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}