Elegy for an Illegitimate Marriage

/ˌiləˈjidəmət/adjective: not in accordance with accepted standards or rules

No one ever thought we would live happily ever after. It was such an unconventional pairing with a significant age gap, a wide cultural divide, a socioeconomic incompatibility, and an intrinsic difference of perspective about fundamental moral values. And to add insult to injury, the entire beginning was sheer madness which in turn created a rocky foundation upon which to build.

• I was arrogantly defiant and proclaimed that it was absolutely legitimate. I saw an opportunity to have a relationship that had always eluded me and hoped to build a perfect life together. He afforded me everything I had been waiting for my entire life which had always been steeped in a profound loneliness up to that point.
• He was arrogantly timid and knew that he was so much more than what he had been consigned to. He saw an opportunity to become all the things he could never be without my help. I afforded him an avenue to a new life. A new life where he could reinvent himself to become articulate, sophisticated, worldly, artistic, intellectually sharpened, and masterful in unlimited areas he did not even know existed.

In my eyes, he was the man I had been waiting for year after lonely year after lonely year. He was everything I ever wanted. He was the quintessential partner who…