And I had only seen the surface.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The question came out sharper than I intended.
“Why did you carry all of this alone?”
Lila finally looked directly at me.
Her expression held years of pain.
And something worse.
Shame.
“Because I thought you’d leave.”
I stopped breathing.
“And then…”
She looked down.
“I started worrying you might stay.”
I frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It did to me.”
Her eyes filled.
“If you left, it meant I was too much.”
She swallowed hard.
“But if you stayed because you felt sorry for me, I thought that would be worse.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Either way, I believed I’d lose you.”
OUR MARRIAGE STARTED CHANGING IN MY MEMORY
As Lila talked, the final years of our marriage rearranged themselves inside my head.
The things I had interpreted as disinterest no longer looked the same.
The distance.
The excuses.
The cancelled plans.
The mornings she stayed in bed.
The nights she refused dinner with friends.
I had thought she was avoiding responsibility.
Maybe some mornings she had simply been trying to survive her own mind.
I remembered asking her to come out with friends and becoming irritated when she refused.
I thought she no longer cared about our social life.
Now I wondered whether just walking into a crowded room had felt impossible.
“There were signs.”
I barely realized I had spoken aloud.
“I just didn’t understand them.”
Lila gave me a tired smile.
“I worked hard to make sure you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought if I looked normal long enough…”
She stared toward the window.
“…maybe eventually I would feel normal.”
