“How many?”
“Too many.”
She closed her eyes.
“The doctors are still figuring everything out.”
And then, slowly, she began telling me about a life I had apparently shared with her without ever really seeing.
THE PART OF LILA I NEVER KNEW
At first, her sentences came carefully.
One detail at a time.
Then something opened.
She told me the anxiety had begun in college.
Back then, she had treated it like an inconvenience.
Something temporary.
Something she could outgrow.
Instead, it followed her into adulthood.
Then into our marriage.
She told me about panic attacks at work.
Nights when she barely slept.
Mornings when she woke already mentally exhausted.
Days when ordinary responsibilities felt impossibly large.
Eventually, she sought medical help.
At first, treatment gave her some relief.
But when the fear returned, she became desperate to quiet it.
“When one answer stopped helping enough,” she said, “I kept looking for another.”
I listened in disbelief.
During our marriage, she had seen different doctors.
Received different prescriptions.
And hidden most of it from me.
What nearly killed her had not come from one sudden dramatic event.
It had grown slowly.
Years of fear.
Shame.
Secrecy.
Isolation.
Trying to survive while pretending nothing was wrong.
“The morning I collapsed, I was already overwhelmed.”
Her hands shook slightly.
“I kept thinking about the divorce.”
She looked at me.
“About how I had failed at the most important relationship in my life.”
Her voice remained unnervingly calm.
“I made a terrible choice because I didn’t know how to stop the panic.”
I stared at the woman in front of me.
This was not the Lila I thought I had divorced.
Or maybe it was.
Maybe she had always been there.
