The word wife should have meant chosen. It should have meant safety, softness, a place to rest. It should have meant partnership, not performance. But somewhere along the way, it became something else.

It became a role I had to survive. Something that asked me to give more than I had, while shrinking in return. It asked for obedience dressed up as love, sacrifice mistaken for devotion, silence worn like a badge of honor.

Even now, years later, when someone casually says his wife or tells me to be a good wife, I feel it in my body before I hear it in my ears. A tightening in my chest. A memory I didn’t ask to revisit.

I’m not bitter. But I remember. I remember what it felt like to belong to someone completely and still go to sleep feeling invisible. I remember being someone’s everything only when it was convenient. I remember the ache of being present but unheld.

The word wife shouldn’t feel like a warning. But for me, it does. And I’m still learning to separate what I lived from what I deserve.