Dear Karen,
I thought it was over. I think you did, too. You went on dates. You struck out on your own; tried new things, went new places, met new people. You laughed a lot and smiled even more. You were free. You had started over. And I was secure in my heroism. We had vanquished evil and were now enjoying our hard-fought peace.
But then Hank got out.
I don’t know the exact date he was released from jail. I don’t think it matters all that much. He was locked up. He was irredeemable, the boogeyman we had pushed out of sight and out of mind and therefore out of our fears. Until he wasn’t.
And then, somehow, some way, he got back into your life.
I wonder how it happened. Did he show up out of the blue on your doorstep one day, his attempt at some scene out of a cheesy romantic comedy? Did he send you a bouquet of flowers again, like he tried to do at work right before he went to jail, but that you threw away as soon as they were delivered? Did he call you from lock-up before he was released to let you know what was happening? Or did he just send you a text, just enough message to get your attention, a little electronic bug that was able to worm its way inside your consciousness and nest in your brain, secure in the fact that now you were aware he was out there somewhere?
I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter how. But little by little, so incrementally that I didn’t even realize she was fading away until she had already vanished, my warrior woman disappeared. Gone were the Facebook posts about being stronger than your past. No more Instagram photos of you climbing mountains or partying with your friends.
Instead, there was only the secrecy. You started taking your personal phone calls away from everyone else. You’d go to the hallway or the bathroom or outside the building in the hot sun to talk to whomever was on the other end of the line. You unfriended a lot of people who care about you on Facebook. Including me. I asked you about it, and you laughed and gave me some silly answer about starting a new chapter in life, and I didn’t question you on it. Why should I have? We had won, after all, and I was naïve in my victory. There was nothing to worry about. No dragons anymore, just windmills.
And then you told me the truth. The dragon was not dead.
We were driving in my car again, this time on an errand for the office. Driving almost the same route where you first confessed to me that he beat you. In the same car where that horrendous giggle first issued forth, and where I swear it still lives, biding its time in between the cracks in my seat cushions until one day it will echo up into my ears all over again.
Just like the First Drive, there was another confession. And just like the First Drive, there was horror that continues to haunt me even now, a year later. You looked at me, and then, with a sheepish smile that almost bordered on shame, you admitted to me that you were seeing Hank again. I’ll never be able to forget that smile. It was such a peculiar, uncanny mix of pleasure and pain, wrapping both together in a flash of teeth and mirth that demonstrated just how thin the line separating the two concepts really is. It said everything and nothing simultaneously. It must have taken a lot out of you to admit that to me, and I’m thankful that you trusted me enough to confide in me. But that smile will terrify me until the day I die. Because of what it represented. Because it didn’t quite mean what a smile is supposed to mean. Because it wasn’t quite real, yet you presented it as the truth.
I am glad that you trusted me enough to let me into your personal life. At the time of the Second Drive, I was going through my own break up, so a part of me felt relieved that you had someone, that you weren’t experiencing that terrible separation from a piece of yourself that I was. That you weren’t alone. I felt for you, and for some reason, I also felt for him. After all, hadn’t I always liked the idea of second chances? Wasn’t I a believer in forgiveness? Wasn’t I raised to accept the idea of redemption? You said he had successfully completed counseling; that he was changed. When you told me all that, I was at a low point. I wanted something to believe in. And so I told you that as long as you were happy, I was okay with it. I wanted to hope.
Almost a year later, I think that I should not have had hope. I think that hope might have been dangerous. I don’t believe in forgiveness in this case. Redemption can be something for other people to chase, but not him.
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s all just my own disappointment at not being able to stake my claim to heroism anymore. Maybe it’s some weird patriarchal bullshit where I feel the need to try and help a “damsel in distress.” I don’t know. But I do know that I’m not okay with any of it.
I’m not okay with you trying to hide the fact that you’re back together with the man who hurt you. You don’t talk about him in front of most people because you say you don’t want to be judged. I don’t know much about love, but it seems like it shouldn’t be something you have to hide. I’m not okay with the fact that he’s split you in two. You have one life with him, the life no one ever gets to see. Then, you have the life that you show the world when you’re at work and in school. But the two never seem to intersect, and it seems like more and more, your life with him takes up more and more of your being. We don’t see or hear from you, and you and I don’t hang out like we used to. As soon as you’re done at work, you vanish into an all-encompassing void, and I stand at its edge until you reappear.
But most of all, I’m not okay with you changing your life to be with him. Before you two were even married, you told me that you thought you and Hank belonged together because, “we always fight, but then we always come back to each other. It means we’re meant for each other.” Before he beat you, that statement concerned me. Now, it’s terrifying. It’s the sword of Damocles waiting to drop, ever-present thunderclouds ready to burst and flood our lives with more pain and tragedy. That sentence is the splinter in my brain that I can’t remove. The more I worry about it, the deeper it pushes into my mind. And lately, I’ve been worrying about it every day.
Two months ago, you told me that you and Hank were trying to buy a house together. Even though you already own a condo more than big enough for him to move into, you said you wanted something that you both owned. Together, you two picked one out and applied for a loan. The application fell through. Hank has convictions, and the bank didn’t want to take a chance on him. Then, one month ago, you told me that you and he were going to try and have a baby. This, despite your admission to me last year that you weren’t sure that you wanted kids because you want to travel the world. These past few weeks, it was all you could talk about. Every time I passed your desk, you were on baby name websites, or looking at cribs on Amazon, or browsing upcoming parenting classes for the two of you. You wouldn’t stop mentioning it to me. But there was no happiness behind your words, no excitement. Only a sort of nervous anticipation. Like you wanted everything to happen already so you could say that it happened. Like you wanted to be past the point of no return. Your decision would be made, and then everything would be out of your hands.
And then, you told me the news. After your first doctor’s visit, you found out that you’re infertile. You only have a partially developed uterus, and you don’t have any eggs in your ovaries. Your uterus isn’t formed enough to allow for implantation, so even IVF is out.
It’s been a week and a half since you both realized you can’t have your own kids. And every day since, you’ve been a shadow person. You’ve been that smile personified: real, but not. You hardly talk. You’ve been falling asleep at your desk. There are dark bags of exhaustion under your eyes in the exact same places and exact same colors as the bruises that he put there years ago. When you walk, you don’t make any noise, and you hold your head perfectly still and stare straight ahead into a distance only you can see. You’ve said so little to me. Except that you’re tired. You keep saying that you’re tired.
Today, you missed work, and no one knows why. In your email to the office, you just said that you needed to take a ‘personal day.’
I wonder, uncomfortably. I wonder about your insistence that you and Hank are meant to be together. I wonder if this insistence is what has driven your recent attempts to make such momentous life changes. I don’t know. And since we usually talk so much, I wonder if you don’t know either. Do you really want a house and kids at this point in your life? And if you do, is it because you want the joys and challenges that they would bring? Or do you want them because they are things that can bind people to one another? Because then you could fulfill the prophecy you made so many years ago? Are you finding meaning in life together? Or are you desperately trying to create meaning in order to give yourself a reason to stay with him, to justify a life with the man who once thought so little of your own that he told you that you deserved to be hurt and then did just that?
I don’t know. And that terrifies me. Because what comes next?
Why couldn’t it be over?
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