Tag: betrayal

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews – To Thee I’m Wed by Deborah Dykeman

Title: To Thee I’m Wed

Author: Deborah Dykeman

Print Length: 239 pages

Publication Date: December 29, 2015

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

Language: English

ASIN: B019YT5NC2

They were in total bliss when Jason and Kathy Miller married in June 1985. Like any young couple, they are happy, giddy, and excited to start their lives together. A little too happy for things to be all peaches and cream.

Twenty years and three children later and the fire dies. Once happy-go-lucky, Kathy is starting to feel unfulfilled. The life of a housewife is now her duty where it had once been so much more. It had once been fun. Now that the children are older, Kathy seeks work to rekindle the excitement in her life, but her husband is not pleased.

Jason can’t understand why his wife is so discontent and is unsure of Kathy’s love for him. After revealing that she’d like to start work, Jason is unhappy but leaves it to Kathy to decide. She decides to work, and though it makes her feel like she has a purpose, things do not improve.

When Kathy meets the owner of Giordano’s restaurant where she works, everything she feels she is missing in Jason is handed to her on a gorgeous silver platter. Kathy is feeling Antonio Giordano, and as hard as she tries to fight it, she begins to change, and so does her marriage.

I like how the author lets us into the not-so-good parts of marriage and the realness of Jason and Kathy’s feelings concerning their responsibility in the relationship. The author developed the characters’ persona well so that it is easy to see them as real people. I enjoyed knowing what each person was thinking, how they were wrong about the other, and ways in which they were right.

Kathy is representative of many women who feel differently after children, especially if they are stay-at-home moms and have focused so many years on raising children and taking care of husbands that they forget how important their self-care is.

Jason is representative of many men who also get comfortable in the relationship. Too caught up with work that they don’t realize how they are neglecting their wives in ways they might not be consciously aware of.

Ratings:

Plot Movement / Strength: 4/5

Entertainment Factor: 4/5

Characterization: 5/5

Authenticity / Believable: 5/5

Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall Rating: 5 / 5

To Thee I’m Wed is Available Now on Amazon

(Isn’t this cover beautiful? I love all Deborah’s covers!)

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Be Sure to Also Follow This Author on Social Media!

Website
www.deborahanndykeman.com
Facebook
facebook.com/deborahanndykeman
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Ann-Dykeman/e/B01B2BYPK6

To Lose a Friend

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From crayons

To paper

To dreams

To memory.

We tied our wanting into a bow

And placed it on each other’s laps

Where neither trial

Nor thunderstorm

Could wash away our fairy tale.

Did not occur to us that neither plastic bags

Nor happiness

And not even the future was strong enough

To hold us.

We were brave.

We were warriors.

We were safe in each others ears

Promises to each others secrets

No one could tell us any different.

Calendars did not lend us its eyes

Did not carve reality into the sticky notes we placed

On our destiny’s

We merely rode on the backs of memories

We created out of air

That smelled of hope

And lullabies

That felt like oxygen to lung

Breath to life

Truth to wisdom

But that bled deception underneath the surface

Of blue lines

On white paper.

That smelled of jasmine

Now shattering glass

Hopelessly pasted together

Encoding our hearts in one anothers chest

We opened up

Fearlessly vulnerable.

Stored our futures away

With the ease of speech

Letting them hide behind our eyelids

Trapping falling tears into bottles for fear

Of losing sight of the other

Amidst the blurs it birthed

When doubt crept in.

And we held onto these bottles

Like we babysat the others gaze

Too naïve to understand

That there were no guarantees

That we must not put our hopes into fallen stars

And wishing wells

For now we bleed

Both apology and need

For our broken wings

Pierced diamonds

Both myth and martyr alike

Legend to sacrifice

Do you know what it’s like to feel every twist

And turn

Of a dying bow?

To be undone?

Shackled to the worst part of your life story

Prisoners to the memories you created

In each others smiles

Now dangling regret

In the sky.

Betrayal

What happened when you read the title of this post? Did you hearken on a definition, or did your mind replay the events of the past?

They say betrayal is something people do to the ones they love. How profoundly interesting a thought. The TV show The Strain, for instance, shows how the infected return to murder their loved ones first. And in the history of the relationships we’ve had throughout our lives, chances are its the closest love that got us. People who admire our work are those who have a history of hating us for the very work they wish belonged to them. Not all admirers but those who secretly hate when we improve. Like the song says, “Smiling in yo face, all the time wanna take yo place, them back stabbers.” They say some do it with a bitter look. Some a flattering word, and others a sweet kiss. And in the words of Dennis Haysbert (the All State Guy) in a clip from the movie Love and Basketball,  the most bold is right at your front door.

Deception.

It comes in many different shapes, sizes, and motives, and often enters under the banner of love. A smile, a wave, or a joke or two that happens as the knives enter your lower torso. Since hate transforms itself into an angel of light, the love we have for these people makes for an invisible wound; a wound that is not instant thanks to our blindness but that appears later. Dripping from holes unnoticed by the sister you called friend, or the brother you thought loyal. The pain has no calendar to which it wishes to disappear into, and is not interested in evaporating so that you have the privilege of time, in which you decide when to trust again. Not likely. Know that the pain will  sit there long enough for you to put up the proper walls that only true love can tear down. As for trust, it is a mirror that only time can restore. Yes, betrayal, it is a broken bone of trust capitalizing on the scars already on our backs.

So what’s the good news? What’s encouraging about this post? Well, nothing. Nothing except that while Betrayal shows up often, it really only has one job.

To make you stronger.