Okay so nobody at my church group knows this, but I’ve been faking a lot of it lately.
It’s not even the big stuff, just the quiet things that add up.
Like last Tuesday, when my husband asked if I wanted to go out for our anniversary.
I smiled and said yes, but really I just needed an excuse to sit in my car for twenty minutes.
I kept the engine running because it felt like moving would make everything feel real again.
And I hate that I have to admit how numb it’s gotten.
We’ve been together nine years, Grace, but sometimes I look at him across the dinner table and see a polite roommate.
From someone who’d known him long before I ever did.
I didn’t confront him. I just watched him fold them back up.
He thinks he got away with it. Or maybe he just never noticed me noticing.
Every morning for six years, I’ve made his coffee exactly how he likes it.
I smile at the dinner parties and laugh at his jokes about “work life.”
Brenda Graham still signs off on everything else, though honestly, it hardly matters.
The kids think I’m content. They barely remember the old me.
Not losing him, but losing the version of myself that everyone believed in.
I keep waiting to feel lighter, but I mostly just feel heavy with all this quiet regret.
Some days I wonder if I’ll ever walk into a room and actually belong there.
I still sleep on the left side of the bed sometimes, out of habit.
And I don’t even know why I keep doing it anymore.
The truth is just sitting right there in the corner of my eye.
Waiting for me to finally admit it.