“Kristen,” St. Louis, Missouri, 56
Growing up, my parents were very liberal. My dad’s gay, he’s been with his husband now for over 40 years. That was my normal. My mom remarried a guy who’s very liberal. I was taught that everybody is equal. But when I was at school, I heard the N-word dropped. I heard Jewish people spoken of very negatively. My step-dad’s family was Jewish. So what do you do? You kind of laugh it off to fit in. In high school, I also had a major drinking problem, but I got great grades so I could fly under the radar. Fast-forward, I was an art major at this big university where I really didn’t fit in. All these girls had curling irons and were rushing sororities, but again I didn’t want to rock the boat. So I just kept partying more. Then at the end of the year, I was raped at a fraternity house and didn’t say anything about it.
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So I go home and I meet this guy. I’ll call him Geoffrey. He was a big Republican, and I wasn’t, but he was also a big drinker, like me. We started dating. It was a kind of revenge, that I could get a guy like the guy who raped me — I could get him to be nice to me. Looking back, it was all very strange. But then [Geoffrey and I broke up], and I got married and then had my son, and that relationship lasted for about 14 years. After we got divorced, I got sober, and then in 2010, I found Geoffrey on Facebook. It looked like he was single and had grown up a lot, and we started talking. We had a good time together. I didn’t really want to get married again, but I didn’t want to make anybody mad. So I said, “Sure, let’s get married.”
When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, it was a wake-up call. I couldn’t believe that the cops left his body lying on the road for hours. I also felt embarrassed that this was the first time I was seeing this. Where the hell had I been? I never went to the protests, though, because Geoffrey didn’t want me to. And instead of saying, “Screw you,” I said, “I’ll protest in my heart” — some stupid shyt. That was when I started feeling resentment.
I don’t think Geoffrey voted for Trump. But he might have voted for John Kasich or Jeb Bush. I think they’re all idiots. But I didn’t get involved in the Hillary campaign. I just knew she’d win. So when she didn’t, I fell into this black hole. Then in January 2017, I was watching Rachel Maddow, and this guy Ezra Levin popped up, explaining how he and a bunch of ex-congressional staffers had put together a manifesto about how to talk to congresspeople. I thought,
shyt, it’s a workbook and I’ve always been good at workbooks. So I started a group called Indivisible St. Louis. I think Geoffrey figured it would be like the needlepoint pillow I never finished. But we started having these meetings. We decided to have a march to protest this Muslim ban. All of a sudden, I was in charge of a march for 1,000 people. I bought poster board, we made signs in Starbucks. The day of the march, I said to Geoffrey, “Hey, come with me.” He said, “No, that’s okay — how much money did you spend on that poster board?”
I was really energized. The people I was meeting were so bright and interesting. The world opened up. I thought,
Oh my God, I’ve got so much reading to do. Every week I was also going to [Missouri] Senator Roy Blunt’s office with a group of people. I took a class called Witnessing Whiteness and realized that racism is at the core of the problem of this country and that the only thing I can do is be an ally and show up and shut up. Geoffrey never went to one rally or meeting. He just didn’t care. When I left for a protest after [former St. Louis police officer] Jason Stockley wasn’t indicted for murdering another African-American kid, Geoffrey was like, “Have fun!” It was so tone-deaf.
Things started falling apart at home. Then a girlfriend of mine got cancer, and I realized if I got cancer, I would’ve lived my whole life pretending to be something I’m not. All of a sudden, I thought,
I can’t be married anymore. There’s no time for complicity. There’s just none.
Geoffrey was absolutely shocked. He said, “Are you 1,000 percent certain?” I said, “I am.” I told him I really wanted to work on making the world a better place, and I didn’t feel I could do that within the confines of our marriage. He downloaded a divorce agreement, and we went to the notary public at the UPS store. The music playing — get this — was “Landslide,” by Fleetwood Mac, and “White Wedding,” by Billy Idol. I left feeling free, like in high school when your parents are out of town. I’d found a passion and wanted to spend all of my free time doing it. And that’s exactly what has happened.
It’s kind of sad, that in this horrible time I found myself, but I’m also grateful, both for what I had with Geoffrey and for where it allowed me to end up. Finally, I’m the feminist I should have always been.
