When My Husband Became My North Star, I Lost Myself
He set the course for both our lives — until I started navigating for myself
It wasn’t until months later that I remembered: My husband didn’t want me to get a tattoo. By then the wound of it had long since stopped weeping interstitial fluid, a thin amber tinged with blood and ink. My skin had scabbed over, gone dry, flaked. The tattoo was set. There was nothing he could do about it.
I. Due North
I didn’t enter into marriage expecting to be a defiant wife. It’s not that I subscribed to the verses I’d learned in eighth grade Sunday school: Wives, submit unto your husbands. Even at age 13, I laughed at that notion. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. I knew the boys in school well enough to know none of them would ever be the savior of my body. My teacher told me I was a heretic; I laughed at him too.
No, I chose to marry a man who wouldn’t try to bend me to his will. This man would never, would he? He was first drawn to me because I was a free spirit. Independent. Creative. I spent hours in the art studio on our snowy northern campus, painting with oils that smeared the thighs of my jeans from stonewashed blue to ochre and crimson. Before long…
