Still, I came to hate the money over time. It tied him to his family, for one thing. At first, I liked them. They were always nice, treated me well, didn’t act stuck up or anything. But once I stuck around for a while, once they saw I might become a part of the family permanently, things started to change.

It was little things. They would talk about some expensive trip they took to some fancy place and then ask if I had ever been, knowing there was no way that I had. They would talk about some obscure thing they learned at their Ivy League schools and then apologize to me. Tell me they were sorry, and they were happy to talk about something I was more familiar with. As though they were doing me a favor by lowering the conversation to my level.

Passive-aggressive shit like that. Stuff that was small enough that I’d look insecure and petty bringing it up to Terry. And at first, I just laughed it off and tried to ignore it. But as I grew to love him more, I found myself caring more, even though I knew it was stupid and I shouldn’t care what they thought. I started becoming insecure—more awkward when we went out to a fancy place or on a nice trip. I started thinking I wasn’t good enough for him.

When he proposed to me, I panicked. I was in a bad place at the time with all this stuff, and I almost turned him down. Told him he could do better. But I loved him too much for that, to let his shit family psyche me out or let my own weaknesses keep me from the man I loved. So I said yes.

Less than a month later, a friend from high school contacted me. Told me about a clinic they had went to in Iceland. Bear in mind, when I knew this dude, he was huffing glue behind the bleachers and getting Cindy Palino pregnant. But apparently he had gone on to become a semi-successful real estate agent in Seattle. I didn’t know why he was contacting me or telling me about this place, but he was a good enough salesman to keep me on the line.

It was a place where they could give you new memories and knowledge. Totally safe, and really amazing stuff like something from a sci-fi movie. He said they had very flexible financing and had actually done his treatment in exchange for an old speedboat he’d had for years. That now instead of sucking at the financial side of his business, he was able to handle complex accounting like he had been at it forever.