Page 26 of Breathe Again

Nausea rolled over me. I brought my knees up, rested my elbows on my bent knees and covered my face with trembling hands. I tried to breathe evenly.

Distress. Choking. Panic.

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

Oh, God, I need him to touch me.

The need was rising like a scream inside of me.

The geyser burst.

“Really?” I burst out.

He startled, fighting to come alert, his hand out, ready, eyes wide. “What’s the matter?”

Seeing his reaction, self-disgust plowed over me, which only served to aggravate me further, and turned my anger inwards. So many conflicting feelings fighting for supremacy. I choked on my next words, tears streaming down my face.

A plea.

“Is it so fucking hard to just give me your fucking hand?”

His expression composed then shut down. “I was sleeping, Mara.”

“I know you were sleeping; you’re always sleeping,” I hissed.

He rolled to his back, staring at the ceiling.

I curled away from him into a ball.

You ruin everything, I berated myself. Now he’ll be mad at you, and it will take even longer for him to touch you and calm the storm.

I closed my eyes tight but there was nowhere to hide from the despair and the shame. I fell asleep with my face wet with tears, feeling like the bitch I knew myself to be.

The next morning, I pretended I was asleep when he left for work, even when he pressed his lips to my forehead before leaving. Too ashamed to face him. Too ashamed that I lashed out at him after he’d just asked me for support the week before. Too ashamed that I needed him to stabilize me the way I did. All around too ashamed.

There were issues in our early years, jealousy, tantrums, rages, impulsive decisions, and even abuse, the memory of which viciously twisted the knife of remorse in my gut when I recalled the hurt I’d delivered.

Back then, it was trust issues that I believed to be at the root of our problems. If he noticed another girl, it was like a fist wrapped around my heart and squeezed, the life-giving blood oozing out between those brutal fingers.

My emotions flip-flopped between anguish and anger. The anguish would be accompanied by tears, and clinging, and his bewildered reassurances.

If I felt my place of importance in his life was threatened, there would be anger, accompanied by slamming doors, throwing things, and screaming. Zale would shut down, from shock as much as self-preservation. His shutdown increased my panic and despair, and that level of despair and anger could only be relieved with pain.

Pain in the form of the deep crescents left in my flesh from my nails, scratch marks on my thighs and my belly where no one would see, pulling my hair, digging my nails into my scalp, slapping my own face, these were the companions of the remorse and self-disgust that followed the anger.

There was one, and only one, instance where I physically hurt him instead of myself. We were at one of his company functions, an awards night that included spouses. The MC pulled him up on stage and partnered him with a female colleague for a skit. I watched him interact with this slim, successful, attractive woman, watched him smile at her, shake her hand for the demonstration.

Watching him smile and touch another woman filled me with such rage that I could think of nothing else in that moment. When he returned to our table, he sat and drew my hand through the crook of his arm. In my rage, I pinched the tender flesh of his inner arm, and I pinched it hard.

I watched his face as I did this. I saw the blood drain from it. I saw anger displaced quickly by the shuttering of all emotion in his eyes. The effect on me was immediate, my sorrow swallowed up my rage. I apologized immediately. No one noticed what I did. No one noticed his emotional withdrawal. I withdrew my hand. I did not deserve to touch him.

We got through the night and went back to our hotel room. He went straight to bed, unspeaking. I went to the shower, turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, let it turn my flesh hot and red as I dug my nails into my thighs and dragged them across the reddened skin over and over again until I could breathe.

After I scrubbed my skin dry, I crawled into bed beside him, careful not to touch him, my face and eyes swollen from crying. My stinging thighs allowed me to sleep. The next morning, I promised him nothing like that would ever happen again. I don’t know if he believed me at the time, but I was true to my promise. It never happened again, but it haunts me still. It’s a shadow that follows me, perhaps it follows us. I don’t know if he’s ever forgiven me.

Looking back, I don’t know when he learned to trust me again, or if he ever did. After that, more than before, when my emotions ran high, he withdrew.

I learned to lock them down.

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