I want to thank you, unnamed couple, for teaching me what love is not.
While you have always done an outstanding job to demonstrate for me the kind of hate that causes poisonous bile to spill from one's mouth, the last few weeks have truly reinforced your life's message - your legacy, really.
Unfailingly, over the 26 years than span my lifetime so far, you have shown me how to live daily in close confines with someone you abhor. As a very young child, after spending time at your house, I returned to my mother and confusedly asked, "Were they fighting or talking?" She didn't know how to respond, because there was always one answer, and it was always the wrong one.
You've shown me that all that matters is what the other person can do for you, and when they fail (or even sometimes when they succeed), how to properly berate your partner for his or her character flaws and mistakes and accidents -- or perhaps, for simply being alive and in your way. As the decades slipped by, your unflagging dedication to physical, mental, and emotional abuse has been noteworthy.
I have only witnessed your relationship for 26 years, and yet I am so very tired. Aren't you tired, too? After over 60 years together, aren't you just exhausted? In spite of what must be a weariness that has seeped into your very marrow, you soldier on, determined to continue to live and hate one another. You made a commitment to each other. I can see that you will honor your vow to treat one another as contemptuously as possible until your very last breaths.
So you deserve my deepest gratitude, unnamed couple. You have shown me how I never want to live. How I never want to treat my spouse. How I never want to be treated. And I thank you for that.
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