We drop our son off at my mother’s and head back home in the growing dark. In my car’s CD player is an album that I have listened to for most of this experience: Joshua Radin, We Were Here. I discovered a song of his when watching Ellen and Portia’s wedding video. His gentle, whispery syllables cradle my soul into silence; listening to the songs on continuous repeat gives me some fleeting sense of peace that is addictive. As D. tries to make conversation, I turn the music up, clinging to the snatches that come through between his sentences.

‘Isn’t it weird how –’
So we’re alone again
‘ – I can watch footy and Match of the Day –’
I wish we were over
‘ – better on your laptop than on our TV – ’
we seem to never end
‘ – because of that bloody satellite, we really need to sort it –’
only get closer to the point
where I can take no more
‘So what shall we have for tea?’
the clouds in your eyes
down your face they pour

When we get home, I find a million and one reasons not to speak. He softens onions in oil and makes soy burgers with salad and chips; we eat quietly, side-by-side on the sofa. He asks if I want to watch a DVD, and against my better judgment, I tell him yes. I curl with my head in his lap, and as always, he combs his gentle fingers through my hair. Hours pass, and the fear begins to rise. It is the kind of fear I have felt only a handful of times before: the kind that comes from your core and makes your gut shudder, the kind that slowly eats at your bones until you are rendered immobile.

The living room somehow seems too benign for my admission. It is the place of habit, the place of routine, the place we come to eat and love and rest our week-weary bodies. It feels somehow sacrilegious to fling a dramatic and life-altering truth into this room. And so I wait until we are in bed. What is the bed, after all, if not a place for sharing?

He knows something is wrong, and when he tells me that he loves me, I stare at the ceiling as tears slide down my temples. They thump gently onto the mattress, a stuttering heartbeat that breaks the silence. He wipes them away, but they come so fast that he cannot catch them all. Still, he says nothing, and neither do I. I stare and stare at the ceiling, trying to find in its blurred white pattern some shred of courage. None comes. He wraps his whole body around me, and I know he is trying to comfort me, but his arm is across my throat and I feel strangled. I work my throat, my mouth, my lips, and still nothing comes. I expect him to ask, but he does not: he only watches me quietly, waiting, knowing. This makes it harder.

I am not sure how long we stay like this, each offering comfort to the other without ever saying a word. Perhaps it is an hour, perhaps more, perhaps less. Eventually, I whisper to him that I am sorry. He only shakes his head sadly, and scoops me back into his arms.

‘I’m sorry I can’t make you happy.’

No. No. I cannot let him walk away thinking this is his fault.

‘D.’ My voice is barely audible, and I feel him go still. ‘I think…I’m gay.’

I burst, and the sobs come so hard and fast I feel I might choke. Between them, I can hear a litany that is soft and broken and I realise it is coming from me.

‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry oh god I’m sorry I’m sorry please don’t hate me I’m sorry.’

He only holds me tighter, sweet man, and shushes me, and strokes my face and back and hair and tells me it will be alright. Oh, I thought the truth would break him, but instead it has broken me. I am in pieces that are razor-sharp and he picks me up with his bare fingers even though it makes him bleed. His love is everywhere, everything, and it is all that keeps me from drowning.

I thought I would never say it out loud. I thought I would never be able to know myself. Oh, it is so beautiful that it hurts my eyes to look at it, but look at it I do, and I have never felt pain like this, I will never again feel pain like this. It is pain that comes from relief, the kind that radiates through your aching limbs when, after pushing them beyond all endurance, you finally get to lay them down.

When calm descends upon me, he asks me questions. He weeps quietly at the thought of what is to come, and turns his face away so that I cannot see his tears even when I tell him not to. Eventually, he tells me he feels empty. I grope beneath the duvet for his hand and grip it tight. He squeezes my fingers until they are numb but I do not let go.

‘Maybe we should hire a lesbian au pair,’ he says, and I turn to look at him and burst out laughing. For a moment, I see in his soft green gaze a microcosm of the future: the point where our relationship has transcended our mutual pain and become something simpler, more honest. Hope flutters shyly in my chest.

‘I love you,’ I say, and he smiles through his tears.

‘I know.’ His hand reaches out to cup my cheek. ‘I love you too.’

It’s coming. The knowledge of this rolls over and through me, like the shadow before the crest of a wave. There are flickers of fear, of eagerness, of love and pain and wonder and awe – but mostly, I’m still. It will be here soon. There is nothing I can do to change that. And most of the time, I’m okay.

I think he feels it too, though of course I don’t ask. Despite our heart-wrenching talk, he has said nothing on the subject of separation. Instead, he clings tighter to our life, talking about our future as if it’s concrete and grabbing at me like a greedy child. This infuriated me at first, but I eventually made a decision: he can keep his fragile peace for now. It is the holidays, after all.

In the moments between tinsel and candlelight, between crumpled paper and piles of gifts, I have been quietly preparing myself. The practical details of my exit once filled me with abject terror – the vast nothingness where my future used to be was too dizzying to look at, let alone plan for – but now I realise: the blank space only remains so because I have not yet made a mark on it.

And so I worry less and less about the uncertainty of student loans and finances and housing, instead focusing on the solid facts of our situation: there is money, even if it’s not mine. If worse comes to worst, D. and his family will not see us out on the streets. I would rather buy my own way to autonomy, but the truth of the matter is, I am simply not financially able. To reject all offers of help would be martyrdom for its own sake. If it were only me leaving this home, I would happily move back in with my mother – who, I know, would welcome me with open arms – until I finished my schooling and got a job. But it’s not only me: I have a son to think about, one whose needs must come before my inflated sense of pride. As much as it galls to have to depend upon someone for independence, it may be a necessity I cannot avoid.

I know that D. will do all he can to actively co-parent our son, but circumstances alone dictate that I will be the primary caregiver. I have to think about where I want us both to be living. I do not want our son growing up in the red-brick gloom of the city, where the children are wild and the streets are riddled with crime. If there is a way I can live close to this village, to his sweet father, to his friends, and to the school we’ve chosen – even if it means swallowing my guilt and being humble enough to ask for money that is not mine – I will try my best.

There is a gulf between the life that is ours and the one that will be mine; I inch closer to it with every passing day. When I feel strong, I curl my toes at its jagged, fractured edge. It pierces my skin, and I let myself bleed. I hurt. I weep. I fear. I am.

I hope.

Though there is no threat of violence, this situation feels much the same. The walking-on-eggshells anxiety, the crippling indecision, the curling body and constant tension. Am I doing the right thing? Am I being cruel? Am I seeing things how I want to see them, not how they really are? What if I leave and it is a mistake?

I am aware that I sometimes have a ‘grass is greener’ mentality, and that I can occasionally be a bit lazy. I hear so much about people needlessly ending marriages through their own unwillingness to work harder, and I ask myself: is that me? Am I throwing in the towel without even really trying? Is my sexuality just an excuse? I have a good thing here: a caring boyfriend, a beautiful home, a supportive family. Am I tossing it all aside for selfish reasons? Will I ruin my own life, and my son’s, on a whim? Could I learn to fall in love with him again? Should I? The questions flicker across my brain faster than I can process, until I am dizzy and sick with the effort of it.

When I set aside the thorny issue of my sexuality, I know what our relationship problems stem from: D. and I have always struggled to communicate. In the beginning, our vision was tunnelled by passion and our mouths were easily distracted by lustier pursuits. But on dates where this was not an option, the silence broke over us like waves – and while he seemed content with this, I squirmed with discomfort, babbled inanely, and longed for conversation that never came. I remember telling my mother about one of our first dates: I was sitting in a restaurant with D. and staring over at a couple to our left. They were two forty-somethings eating wordlessly with diverted gazes, occupying separate spaces at the same table. In the half an hour since we had arrived, I had not seen them speak once. I asked my mother, with dismay clogging in my throat, ‘Will that be us in ten years?’ And, with the knife-edge of alarm: ‘Is that us now?’

I suppose it matters less how we got here than what we plan to do about it. But that’s the problem: we don’t agree. D. is from determined stock: his family are the type to fix things through sheer force of will, and word ‘surrender’ simply is not in their vocabulary. We often laugh at D.’s dogged attempts to complete impossible tasks. I, on the other hand, have always been rather pragmatic about such things, and my attitude is usually along the lines of ‘Why flog a dead horse?’ Naturally, at this point in our relationship – or lack thereof – we have completely different opinions as to where we should go from here. He wants to try, and try harder, and try harder still…and I am longing to let go.

I suppose, when you think about it, neither option is wrong. But I am more likely to be judged for walking away than for staying. His parents have been together since they were nineteen; his mother surrendered her career after the birth of her first child and never went back since. Despite the fact that I can sometimes see undercurrents of bitterness between them, they have just celebrated their ruby wedding anniversary. Even my mother, who was married to a lying, abusive philanderer, found excuses to stay with her husband for twenty-plus years.

So I am not being pessimistic when I say that they will not understand. Where I grew up, ending a relationship for some wishy-washy reason like ‘unhappiness’ or ‘sexuality’ was considered utter bollocks. If you divorced, it was because he gave you a black eye, or because he shagged all your friends and his idea of a thoughtful gift was a couple of STIs. If you divorced, it was because he’d gambled your life savings or gotten arrested (again) for fighting. A good husband was defined by his ability to put food on the table and avoid beating you senseless. By those standards, D. is an Adonis.

So I am back at square one. Do my feelings justify my exit, or am I just making excuses? Do I stay? Do I try? If I go, will I regret it? Is this my fault? Am I lazy? These aren’t rhetorical questions, by the way. Feel free to pitch in.

When the truth comes tumbling out, it is more by accident than design. D. and I put the little one to bed and begin our usual nightly routine of sitting at opposite ends of the couch. I curl with my back to the armrest and open my laptop, using the screen to shield me from view. He flicks through the channels, coming to rest on a cooking programme, and absent-mindedly rubs my socked feet. The silence yawns uneasily between us.

I am watching Ellen and Portia’s wedding video, on mute, for what must be the hundredth time this week. Seeing their happiness, so pure and free and unsullied by doubt or fear or shame, fills me with a hunger that is bone-deep. I have never dared to watch it with D. in the house before, and it is a mistake. The grief in my face is naked and raw, impossible to miss, and it gives him pause. He asks, not really expecting or wanting an honest answer –

‘Are you okay?’

– and without warning, I snap. Sobs roll up my spine and burst out of my
chest, animal sounds that echo against the silent wall of his surprise. He gently disentangles my fingers from the computer and sets it aside; tugging me into his lap, he rocks me as though I am a child.

We talk for hours. The hope in his eyes is sweet and brittle as glass; it fractures with every word I utter, and I watch him fold at the waist with the agony of it. I tell him that I am unhappy, but I do not tell him why. I tell him I know that I am not in love with him, but I do not tell him how. I tell him I am sorry, over and over and over, until the syllables taste strange and foreign and my lips are numb with regret.

He begs. Oh, god, he begs, and it is all I can do not to just give him what he wants. To let him have me, no matter what the cost. He tells me he still loves me, and though I knew this, hearing it and not being able to say it back is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I tell him he deserves better, and he tells me he does not want better – he wants me.

We can make it work. Please, I’ll do anything, anything you want. There has to be something left.

I say it, not just once but over and over, because he does not believe me. No. No. It’s not going to work. I can’t do this. There is nothing left in me to give. Self-hatred rises like bile in my throat, and I want him to slap me, to kick me or bite me, so that I bruise in places he can see.

The silence, afterwards, is almost worse than the tears. The air is open and raw as a wound. I rest my forehead against his arm and quietly fiddle with the seam of his t-shirt.

‘There’s a hole,’ I say. ‘You have a hole here.’

He looks down. A baby-blue cellular blanket is crumpled on the floor by his feet. It is the same blanket, I realise, that we brought our son home in from the hospital, and I wonder what it is doing down here. He picks it up and gently folds it into a square, and then he presses it to his chest.

‘Sounds about right,’ he replies, and I know I have broken him.

It seemed inadequate simply to leave you a passing ‘thanks’ after that beautiful letter. And so I sit in my study, drinking green tea with agave nectar, and offer up my own words in return for yours.

I won’t lie: your truth damn near broke me. I read it this morning while I was cleaning the kitchen, my forearms immersed in a sink full of bubbles. I read it once through, and again once more, and then I bent double over the counter and wept until I could not see.

You are right: truth has its own gravitational pull. In the carrying of it, you can scramble for a foothold or shift your position – and sometimes that works. Sometimes it does. But inevitably, your bones begin to shake with the weight of it, until letting go becomes less of a choice and more of a necessity. I am at that point, I think, or near it. As your body fought against your husband’s, so mine does with D. Each time he tries to kiss me, I slip through his fingers like air and I am gone before he has chance to voice a protest. I feel the full force of his sorrow at my retreating back and it brings me to my knees. But still my body will not – cannot – let him in.

The inevitability of this is what left me sobbing this morning in the butterscotch light of the kitchen. It is happening, it is coming, and I don’t know when, but I know it is soon. I can only sit and wait and watch for that moment of heartbreaking clarity – that moment you talked about, the one where you just know – and let it knock the air from my lungs. I can only hope that once it does, I will have the strength to get back on my feet and learn how to breathe again.

You are right, also, in that our communication has been ‘buried’. The sad thing is, it has always been this way. I am a talker: I talk to heal, to resolve, to reach out and comfort; I talk for honesty, for fun, for a challenge. D., on the other hand, has been taught that problems go away when you pretend they don’t exist. I often wonder if things would have turned out this way if I had succeeded in my attempts to open him up. But I am beginning to realise, just as you did, that it is not my job to fix him.

Sometimes I wish that I, like you, had a ‘catalyst’ – a woman whose eyes and mouth and voice gave me reason to doubt the life I was living. Then, at least, I could seek solace and affirmation in her arms, and know that my sacrifice was for her and not just myself. But then that’s not really the point, is it? The whole reason this began was because I wanted to find out who I was. I need to learn the rhythms of my own body before I can explore someone else’s.

And so – to my other questions. ‘I feared for our kids.’ How did they cope? Did they understand? Were they angry? My sweet boy is sleeping off a fever in the room directly above my head. He already knows that something is amiss, and he has been following me endlessly around the house like a wounded puppy. I am not the best mother in the world – I am honest enough with myself to know that – but I adore him. I could not live with myself if I made him hate me.

‘Choosing your own presence and wholeness will only bring more love into the world.’ Oh, Moonchild, I hope more than anything that this is true.

With much love and gratitude,
Bee
xox

I’ve been sitting near your questions for a few days now, aware of them waiting, each an invitation for me to move into a space of remembering the long, agonizing moment that I couldn’t believe at the time would ever live in the realm of memory. I sit here in a dark, cozy lounge, drinking a Cosmo. Wondering where to begin. Knowing that whatever responses I’m able to offer may give you comfort, a sense of not being alone, and knowing how that counts for so, so much. And also that you will move through this in your own days, your own way, finding your own places of what you are able or choose to tolerate, where you are able or willing or unwilling to negotiate with yourself or someone else, your own places of learning that you cannot break another human being, that choosing your own presence and wholeness will bring only more love into the world.

But I know the fear. More like terror. Sheer terror. And later the guilt, the body-curling loss. The disbelief mingled with the laser-sharp clarity.

How did I find the strength to tell the truth?

I’m not sure I did, as much as it was the truth that kept telling me. It was unrelenting, visceral, fierce, raging, refusing to be pushed back just as a river cannot be made to flow upstream. Once I knew–and I knew in an instant, a song, a moment of my eyes catching hers for that extra beat. I knew that the beautiful life I had built stood on a fault line bigger than the San Andreas, I knew without a word, without thought, shuddering, violent, feeling-knowing.

I did not let go easily. I told the truth within a few days of that experience–sat on the couch one night and said, “I have something to tell you.” That was the kind of marriage we had. The kind where we told each other things. His initial reaction was shock, and then to flee, to bail, to say, “This is not what I signed up for.” In the months that followed–and I am condensing a lot here–I feared he would hang himself in the garage. I feared that I had “snapped him down the middle.” I fought with my knowing, or tried to. “How could I leave, how could I leave”–this was a constant question that plagued me. My body was on overdrive for months; I’d wake up at dawn with my heart pounding as if I’d been running. There was deceit. I felt a total rejection of him to my core, cried every single time we made love, or tried, despite my attempts to stay open to him. My body said “NO.” It roared. It raged. It railed against him. All I wanted was to go to her bed, surrender. I read Adrienne Rich and wept. I feared for our kids.

It was tormenting. Torturous. I consulted friends and family. My mother insisted that I turn my attention back to the sacred commitment of marriage. I raged some more. I lost fifteen pounds from an already small frame.

I see the difference here, or part of it at least from what I understand of your story, which is that you are suffering in silence. He may be in denial, but the communication between you is buried. I don’t think one is easier than the other; one of the wrenching things about my process was that he went back and forth between raging, hurt, rejected, terrified husband (and little boy whose father died), and amazing, seeing, loving friend who understood that I needed to come out.

I could no longer cover his pain or take care of the family system. The toll this took on me during the few years leading up to this moment with increasing intensity just exploded, no longer containable. I remember blurting out to a therapist, “I DON’T WANT TO BE MARRIED.” But, you see, I was married, for a decade or more, to a man who loved me beautifully, unconditionally. He used to say he hit the jackpot with me. And we had babies. Magic. And yet. And yet. My other refrain. And yet.

Was there relief?

Yes, in bursts. Fits and starts. Moments of searing freedom, exhilaration, letting go, sexual pleasure and hunger beyond anything I had ever, ever experienced. And there was grief, so crushing I thought I would die. And rage, a lifetime, that poured out over the course of many months. And confusion, and doubt, and longing to go back, to go home again, and enough drama to make up for decades of avoiding drama. So many pictures of each of these in my mind. And yet–you will have your own story, your own pictures, your own moment of moving through the thing that still lies before you, that feels insurmountable, the thing that consumes you, robs you of sleep and presence and appetite.

Finally one day, we stood in the woods. There was no one else to consult, no more time to take to see if “things would shift.” We stood under a tree, summer sunlight streaming down through the fullness of the leaves. And we called it. We surrendered. I told him that this life force was flowing so powerfully through me, from my vagina through my core, up and out of my mouth, a flow that could not, WOULD NOT, be reversed.It was a quiet moment, followed by many harsh moments and deep, illuminating conversations and shutting down and sorting out years of projection.

How could I face myself?

Every single day, I have had no choice to but to keep going. To face myself in the mirror, sometimes looking destroyed, sometimes sexier than I ever imagined, sometimes depleted and aged, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeless and scared, sometimes shaking with resentment or shuddering with guilt. But never once has the mirror cracked.

How do you gather the strength it takes to snap another human being right down the middle?

He did snap. He broke. Bereft. Angry. Hurt. Alone. Lost. Abandoned. But slowly what became so, so clear was that he was already broken. I did not break him. I did not abandon him. His father did that, when he was a small boy. For many years, I protected him. And being with him protected me from myself, too, the raw power I knew was there was did not know how or was afraid to access and let out.

I saw that he was broken the day I met him when he spoke of his childhood. There he was, exposed without my comfort, faced with his own survival. And I could not bear responsibility any longer.

I will close for tonight.

Send me your next questions, and I will share what I can.

Please, Bee: be good and gentle and patient and forgiving with yourself. Feel you way. Trust what you feel. Take your time. Everyone, so many people, told me, “You’ll know.” Oh, how I doubted this. “But HOW will I know?” I wailed. “WHEN will I know?” And then I did. I just did. Not that that was that, but those moments do come, and you can’t force or rush or push them. I hope you can rest a little there.

With so much love,

Moonchild

Where are you going?

Mummy, come back and play with me.

NO, Mummy. Stay here.

It is simultaneously heartbreaking and suffocating. I cannot go anywhere without being followed by the patter of his footsteps, the impatient tap of his hand. Self-reflection requires solitude – at least for me – but he allows me none. The anxious rope of his voice repeatedly tugs me backwards; I am not sure whether I resent this or am grateful for it. Often, it is a mixture of both.

He is not quite three years old, yet he is more attuned to me than D. is. Sweet and exquisitely sensitive, he mimics my moods so accurately it hurts me to watch him: for weeks now, he has been weepy and bad-tempered without ever seeming to know why. As he lacks the all-too-adult capacity for denial, his face crumples in the most innocuous of moments and he gravitates instantly towards me, crawling up my torso like a kitten. It is all I can do not to weep along with him, but instead I do what I know I must: I rock and stroke, whisper and soothe. I rub slow circles on the small of his back. I kiss him.

I lie.

I have learnt that skill all too well from his father. The man worships denial as though it’s his life source. Never in my life have I met someone so capable of ignoring the elephant in the room; it could be trampling over the furniture, crushing everything in sight, and still he would deftly step around it and paste on a smile. I used to find it astonishing, and would try poking him into an argument just for the fun of it – after all, nobody’s that perfect. I used to joke that his loudest expression of anger was a sigh. After growing up with a volatile father whose temper was fierce and unpredictable, it didn’t exactly seem like a problem.

Now, however, I just find it exhausting. I cannot fix anything if he will not admit that it’s broken. My once unwavering sense of honesty has all but been strangled into silence; it takes me months if not years to work up the courage to talk about our problems, and within minutes he has changed the subject.

I’m so tired. I’m so unbearably tired. I need to be strong for my son’s sake; I need to somehow find the courage to confront this before it gets too big. But years of crushing who I am for the sake of everybody else has taken its toll: there is nothing left in me to give. I am finding it difficult to care about anything but getting the hell out of here. My job, my degree, my house, my future – what does it matter, really? What does it matter when I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning?

I’m sorry. I’ll try to be a better mother, a better girlfriend, a better daughter. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anybody. I’m sorry. I tried my best to make you all happy. I’m sorry. I’m gay.

I’m sorry I’m gay.

The books, I think, were a large part of it. It’s hard to read with your eyes closed, but I managed it. Sugar Rush. The Price of Salt. Pages for You. All of them were beautiful, but none contained whatever it was I was searching for. Until then, at last – Dear John, I Love Jane.

Ah, so that’s it. It is possible to – ? Oh, okay. But it doesn’t apply to me, not really. No, no. I’m sure their husbands were lovely, but they’re not D. He can, even now, pull me back from this. He will see the book and its title and he will ask me what’s wrong. We will talk until our voices are sandpaper-dry and then go to a relationship counsellor, who’ll show us spider diagrams about communication and give us ‘intimacy homework’. In six months we’ll be back to normal, and I’ll fall for him even harder than I did when we first met. In six months I will have forgotten.

But. But –

I finished reading a book about ‘ex-gay’ Christians last week. It was rather formal in description, with most of the emotion buried beneath academic lingo – but still, it tugged something loose inside my head. The self-loathing, the fear, the seemingly endless struggle to redirect desire – ah, yes. I know this. And now, whether I want to or not, I am unravelling at a vertiginous speed.

Our son slept over at my mother’s yesterday, and I spent the evening soundlessly begging D. not to touch me. Put simply, I am running out of excuses. Perhaps he sensed my stiffening reluctance, or perhaps he was too tired – either way, he did not try. The only contact we had was when he laid his palm on my right knee, gently rubbing away the residual ache of past injury. I let him, needing the platonic relief of his warmly circling hand.

I read parts of Dear John again, only this time the stories had an echo – the eerie resonance of my own truth, bounced back at me in the words of another. I tried to sleep but could not shift the disquiet that pulsed in me like a second heartbeat; dread formed a cold, hard ball in the base of my throat. Eventually I switched off the bedside lamp, letting the darkness cocoon me from the question of his eyes.

This morning I pressed the imprint of my palms into the steam of the shower screen. I allowed myself to cry, my hot tears indistinguishable from the water that sluiced over my face. I said the words – only in my head, but god help me, I said them – and found myself shaking fiercely, unable to stop. I felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with bare skin, and everything to do with exposing myself to the purest truth.

I am coming undone.

Now that I see him with clear eyes, I remember everything: his palms are square and callused, and my fingers are longer than his. His lips are a plump blush of surprise in the angular planes of his face. His eyes are the softest kind of green, like spring lime. I remember what he looks like when he wakes up (sulky-eyed and bushy, with hot red cheeks), and how he likes his coffee (one sugar, a generous splash of milk). I remember how long his hair has to grow before it starts to curl, and what his favourite dish is when we order Indian food. So how is it, with all these details, I have never known him less?

I collect the memories like valuable coins, displaying them in frames and on shelves; they are the glittering punctuation in my family stories. Look, I say, holding them aloft in my outstretched palms. Look at how well we fit.

I am trying to convince myself more than them, I think. Besides, they already believe it’s true – and there is a small part of me that grieves over that. Because even as I fight to prove the perfection of our union, I am thrashing for release. I am praying that someone will know me well enough to look past the colourful blanket of my words and see the dropped stitches, the threadbare wool, the gaping holes that I seem to be carrying everywhere with me now. I have pretended so hard for so long that I cannot remember what is real any more. And I wish more than anything that someone would show me. That I would not have to make this decision alone; that in finding answers from a third party, I would be absolved of guilt. That I alone would not be responsible for tearing my family apart at the seams.

That wish will never come true. I am honest enough with myself to know this, even as I hope otherwise. I allowed myself to get to this point and only I can choose where I go from here. Whether or not I will ever have the courage to say the words out loud is still a question mark at this point; even thinking them threatens to snap me in two. I have to wrestle with my conscience in silence, until I figure out whether I can handle the weight of one essential truth: I cannot heal myself without breaking somebody else.

My previous misgivings, and the shapeless terror that had tugged me from sleep at the thought of moving in with D., surrendered in the wake of my awe. Somehow, miraculously, this was ours. With all this at our fingertips, how could our family do anything but thrive?

In my state of wide-eyed ignorance, I failed to grasp one essential truth: that space is created through distance. The two are intrinsically linked; as one grows, so the other swells in its path. Sure, we have space. But sometimes all it does is allow us to get lost.

Not long after we moved in, the baby exploded into our lives like a cannonball. My reaction was not what I expected. Instead of slipping comfortably into my new roles as housewife and mother, I felt as though I was in fancy dress. I shuffled through my days in a mass-produced, ill-fitting costume that tripped me up at every turn. No matter how hard I tried, everything felt far too big for me. The person I had once been disappeared into the cracks of the floorboards. I did not have the energy to search for her alone.

My son was a difficult baby, and his near-constant cries tore into me until there was nothing left but holes. Each day, I put him down for a nap and then walked to the other end of the house, putting enough distance between us that I could not hear his shrieks. I tried desperately to keep on top of the housework – dusting, mopping, ironing, vacuuming – but there was so much of it that I eventually gave up trying. Every room I entered was littered with toys, paperwork, clothes, plates, cups, bottles. Just looking at it made me want to scream. But in the end, I had nowhere else to go.

D., having been raised in a house three times the size of ours, was accustomed to space. He used it as a shield. When he came home from work at the end of the day, I would pepper him endlessly with questions. I hoped that he would share some of his life with me, since I no longer had one of my own. He never did. I could not reach him no matter how hard I tried – and I did try, every chance I got – so eventually, I gave up on that too. I retreated inside myself, seeking solace on the internet and in books, not listening to him even when he did speak. Most of the time, he barely even noticed.

This house – our house – was a curse as much as it was a blessing. When my heart hurts so much that my body wants to jackknife with grief, I can drift out of sight before D. notices I’m gone. I can slip into another room, shutting the door, shutting my eyes. I can pretend that my son and I live somewhere small, a place where my outstretched arms will touch him no matter where we are standing. I can pretend I am in a relationship where I am not always alone. I can pretend I am somewhere I don’t need to pretend. I can pretend I am elsewhere, everywhere…anywhere but here.