Page 25 of Breathe Again

Sometimes I cry.

Every day I tell myself how lucky I am. And I am lucky, I am, in fact, blessed.

I have a husband who loves me and is committed to our family. He tells me daily, emphatically, that he loves me. Our child is healthy and our greatest joy. She loves her dad and I, and I think she knows she’sloved in return.

We have a happy home despite our challenges.

Our community is safe.

There are opportunities for all of us.

But.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see nothing that would inspire him to reach for me. I press half-moons into the soft flesh of my thighs with my fingernails to soothe the ache.

Sometimes I wonder why he married me in the first place.

Sometimes my heart bleeds, sliced open by his rejection, my throat closes tight around my grief, and my spirit shrinks to nothing inside of me.

Sometimes I worry that I’m a fool to believe he loves me as he claims he does, because surely that kind of love should prohibit this kind of pain?

Sometimes my tears fall in an endless silent stream as he sleeps beside me.

Sometimes I cry.

Overwhelmed by fear and shame,

Beaten by pain and anxiety.

Battered by an inner tyrant who bludgeons my soul, with rarely a reprieve, except for when he touches me. The tyrant does not relent right away, it takes time to drown out her voice.

He loves me with his hands and his mouth and his body. He holds me close. He builds the pleasure low in my belly and snags my attention away from her. She is muted, and I know love, and I know truth. For those fewprecious moments, at the point where the pleasure eclipses the fear, where I am lost in him: lost in him, lost in me, skin to skin, sharing one breath, heat and sweat and tongues and lips, hands grasping, stroking, bodies pressing, straining, giving, and taking, for those precious moments I know the truth of his love for me. The pleasure coils tighter and tighter, then releases in wave after wave.

My body is relaxed, I am limp and cuddly in recovery. Slowly I stretch against him and my sensitized skin purrs against his warmth. For a few blissful seconds I am both empty and full. His hand strokes lazily up and down my side while I come down and then he begins to move away to clean up.

Like ripping a bandage off a third-degree burn, it is then that she comes screaming back, more vicious than before. She knows exactly what to say to incite fear, picking at scabs of shame, causing me to question and then doubt what I knew to be true just moments ago. I cling to him looking for relief, but he can't reach me now.

And he doesn’t know to try.

For the past couple of nights since my appointment, sleep eluded me. Added to that, it had been three or four days since we’d last made love. I was beginning to feel weird in my body. The world around me seemed to move in slow motion, as if I were seeing things through a wave of rippling heat. The anxiety that constantly churned in my gut was rearing up to choke me, grasping the sides of my larynx and pulling it around itself like a mantle.

Again, that night Zale was tired when he got home. I didn’t want to push, because that’s not right, and in any case, I couldn’t take further rejection. I needed something though. I was jittery and untethered. I needed the oblivion that sex offered. I needed the release.

I’d always had a high sex drive. We weren’t having a lot of sex. That, combined with the pressures of work, parenting, and my mother’s nonsense, was what was affecting my moods. I didn’t think the doctor understood the pressures I was under. If Zale and I could get back on track, I could handle the rest. I could see that sex wasn’t on the table for tonight, but I still needed something from him to ground me.

“Please touch me, honey.” I whispered as he curled toward me to go to sleep. I was sitting up reading even though I was sleep deprived. I needed the distraction from my own thoughts, my own anxieties, or I feared I would fly apart.

“What, baby?” he mumbled.

“Please, put your hand on me, anywhere, please,” I whispered back, my throat tight, my chest constricted.

He wrapped his hand around the inside of my upper thigh. I closed my eyes in relief. Took a deep breath. That’s an ownership touch. I love me an ownership touch. Only he touches me there, only he can touch me there. It reminded me I belonged. I went back to my book, focusing on the warmth of his hand on my thigh. After a minute he slid it away. My heart sunk and the tyrant was unleashed.

Of course, he doesn’t want to touch you. Why would he? You pant after him like a fucking dog ... you’ve got legs like tree trunks ... you’re moody, depressed, impatient … who would want you?

He’s just tired... the other voice tried to defend him but could not stand up to the tyrant.

Yeah, tired of your shit.

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