I hadn’t meant to do it. I guess I’d just had enough.
Looking back over the years we were married, it’s hard to pinpoint when it all started. He’d always been a bit of a moaner, it’s just that I didn’t know that he would turn into a professional one.
Nothing was ever really good enough for him. That included anything and everybody. He could find fault where there was none.
I really don’t know why I went along with it for all those years. I suppose I thought I could change him, eventually bring him around to my point of view. I was wrong.
His favourite subject was to whinge about his workmates. At first, I believed everything he said about them. Most of the time it couldn’t have been further from the truth. He told himself so many lies over the years that he didn’t actually know what was fact and what was fiction. He loved to regale his anecdotes to anyone who would listen. As the years passed he had less and less people to tell as he had ostracised nearly everyone we knew.
Going away on holiday or even going shopping together was a nightmare. He just would not let anything rest.
His tirades were continuous like a Möbius strip, a never-ending record of his one sided arguments. He just went on and on. His indignation and self-righteousness gave no room in his life for anyone else.
I thought I had switched off listening to him a long time ago, but now I see that subconsciously his endless moaning had been wearing me down.
I’d woken up with a really bad headache that day and all I wanted was just one day of peace. Was that too much to have asked? He was on his soapbox even before breakfast. Once he had started, I knew he wouldn’t stop.
The throbbing pain in my head was overpowering my mental stability. Evil thoughts flittered across my mind of the many different things I could do in order to shut him up. I remember thinking that if I was going to do this, it couldn’t just be a stopgap measure.
His tongue was a lot harder to cut through than I thought. It was probably all that exercise he gave it.
My solicitor has told me that we could submit a plea of mental cruelty and that would reduce my sentence. Right now I’m looking forward to a stretch of solitary confinement so I can find some peace.
