🦊 The Characters: The Fox

Beloveds,

i met him in June 2018, through a mutual friend.

everyone called him Fox — a play on his last name. i kept it. because he was the clever trap i built for myself when i was desperate to escape something worse.

we met on WhatsApp. then video calls. then I traveled to see him. by September, he proposed. by March 2019, we were married.

whatsApp to wedding in nine months. i thought i knew everything. i didn't know a thing!

my mother died in October 2018. my father died March 14, 2019 — one week before the wedding. i walked down the aisle with both of them gone. i smiled for photos. i performed bride. what i actually needed was to collapse on the floor and be held while i fell apart.

nobody told me to stop. so I didn't.

The Fox wasn't a bad man. he was a convenient one. i didn't marry him because i loved him. i married him because i was running from the Roller Coaster and he was the nearest exit. i needed proof i had moved on. he was the ring.

there was one thing i was genuinely grateful for: when i grieved — really fell apart — he never told me to stop. he let me be broken. in a life full of people who needed me to hold it together, that mattered more than i knew how to say at the time. it might be the reason i stayed as long as i did.

but there's no building a marriage on one good thing.

by the time the pandemic locked us in together, i realized i didn't actually like him. as a person. i was tolerating him.

the marriage died quietly, in the silence between two people with nothing left to say.

i burned the marriage license the day the divorce was finalized in September 2025. then i took myself on my first solo date in a long time.

the full story — the grief underneath the wedding, the financial collapse i carried alone, the slow fade, and the moment i finally stopped running — is in Book 6: The Fox's Den.

or if this is the post that makes you want to read all of it — the full collection is available as a bundle - Speak, Mamacita: Seven Stories of Unsilencing Trauma.

A portion of proceeds from the Speak, Mamacita series supports The Sanctuary Foundation, launching November 2027.

next week: 🚪 Gifftid — the one who broke down the final door.

Talk Soon,
Santana Chevel 🌹