The word wife once meant love to me. I imagined warmth in it, imagined being held, supported, protected. I thought it meant building something side by side.

But with him, wife became the reason I stopped recognizing my own voice. It became a demand, a performance. A constant bending so I wouldn’t break the peace that was never real to begin with.

He used the word when he needed me to fall in line. When he wanted to remind me who the world would believe. When he needed someone to carry his ego so he didn’t have to hold his shame.

Sometimes I wonder how long I stayed trying to prove I was enough for a definition that was built to shrink me. I thought if I loved him well enough, he’d see I was on his side. I didn’t realize I was never supposed to have a side at all – just a place beneath his.

There were days I looked in the mirror and couldn’t find myself in my own reflection. I wore the word like a costume that no longer fit. I smiled through dinners, jokes at my expense, bruises that weren’t always visible.

So now when people say wife with softness, I still freeze. My body remembers what my mind tries to forget. I’m learning to believe in my own definition now. One that makes room for me. One that never asks me to disappear to be loved.