The Husband Checklist

5. replay

The memories that came flooding back in those subsequent moments were far more overwhelming than the overthinking I'd done in the past few hours.

I remembered the time he told a female friend in the mall that I was easy.

The time I found him with another girl on the stairwell.

The time he told me he'd been out with other girls but couldn't get his mind off me.

I felt like Taylor Swift then, with my mascara streaked down my cheeks, and her music playing in the background.

After a while, Taylor Swift disappeared into my black hole of sins, and I was left to tend to my aching heart alone.

Despite what he put me through - the lies, the games and the torture - I loved him, and I tolerated his every mistake. They say that love and hate are so closely linked that often is difficult to differentiate one from the other. Hate, being so unsustainable, often turns into the type of love that tears you apart.

I'd cry myself to sleep some days, grinding my teeth and ripping my skin apart as I blamed myself for every one of his actions. He had betrayed me in ways I had never expected, but it was my fault. I was sure of it. He wanted other girls because I wasn't sweet enough. He said I was easy because I was too clingy. He didn't want to make it official because I wasn't good enough.

Enough, enough, enough. I was simply never enough for him.

Somehow the person who had listened to all my sorrows had been the cause of most of them.

Lust. Infatuation. That's what my feelings for Yusuf were.

He checked every box on my "Boyfriend Checklist," and I fell for his unmistakable charm. His witty jokes, Nick Bateman looks, easygoing personality and bad boy vibes had be spellbound.

I was so caught up in the magic of loving him that I failed to realise that magic is just an illusion.