ixhanti lam

This blog post might come as a surprise to some of you: yes, I was married. For three years. There was no big wedding, no big announcement, no change in surname. We did it the way we wanted to. Perhaps that's one of the biggest disappointments I have from the experience because we intentionally did it our own way (perhaps that was part of the problem) and things fell apart. But this is not about the sordid details about what happened. This is a reflection about what I learned after he left and I had to pick up the pieces of my life. I'm still putting myself together again. I'll always grieve the relationship and parts of myself I lost in the process. But in the bigger scheme of things, I've learned to appreciate my freedom. And perhaps that is what this post is about: freedom.

It's important to note that I'm writing this blog for myself: a heterosexual Black woman who was raised on a good dose of heteronormativity about what it means to be a man and a woman. Th…