The first line in the folder wasn’t about divorce.
It wasn’t about money, the casino, my job, or even the children.
It said: “I am scared by how often I think about disappearing.”
My husband read it twice.
The keys in his hand stopped jingling.
For several seconds, the house was still loud around us.
Our one-year-old was crying from the bedroom.
Our four-year-old was complaining from the hallway because I had turned off the television.
A toy played the same electronic melody over and over somewhere under the couch.
But my husband didn’t move toward the door.
He looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
I almost laughed, because suddenly he wanted clarification.
For months I had been telling him exactly what it meant.
I’m overwhelmed.
I need help.
I don’t feel like myself.
I can’t keep doing this alone.
Every time, he had answered with some version of the same thing.
They’re just kids.
You have every day.
I’ve been working all week.
You’re not my mother.
Now the words were on paper, and somehow paper frightened him more than my voice ever had.
“It means exactly what it says,” I told him.
He pulled out the chair across from me but didn’t sit down.
“Are you saying you’re going to leave?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”
That was the truth.
I wasn’t secretly preparing some perfect escape.
There was no hidden apartment waiting for me, no suitcase packed in the trunk, no relative around the corner ready to take the children.
That was part of what had made me feel so trapped.
Whenever I imagined divorce, my brain immediately answered, And then what?
I already felt alone while married.
What would being actually alone look like?
Three children.
One of them a newborn.
Childcare I couldn’t afford.
A career I had stepped away from.
Medication that had never felt quite right.
No family nearby.
So I had stayed in the same loop and kept telling myself that because I had chosen motherhood, I had forfeited the right to complain about what it was doing to me.
My husband finally sat.
He reached for the folder.
I put my palm on it.
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
It might have been the first time in years I’d said the word to him without immediately softening it.
“You asked what it means,” I said.
“You’re going to listen before you start defending yourself.”
His mouth opened.
I shook my head.
“Not yet.”
From the hallway, our four-year-old shouted that he wanted the television back.
My husband glanced toward him automatically.
“Leave it off,” I said.
