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[mistkitt]

Originally posted 12/23/2014

 The deep spring of sadness is back, and I must get this heaviness off of my chest. Tell Yourself universe; adult things I wanted to explore.

~

It was what one would call a “sensitive subject.” A fresh, badly hidden wound that bled and ached and screamed. Touching a sensitive subject was widely regarded as impolite. However, they were not that easy to avoid.

When two people suffered in the same confined space, it was impossible not to bump into those wounds. When two people had to look at each other every day, eat meals together, share a bed, there was no point in trying to hide their pain. They’d learned that lesson the hard way back in the early days of their relationship, and perhaps in a moment of youthful naivety, they’d promised it would never happen again.

Then she’d gotten cramps. Then she’d rushed to the bathroom to protect her clothes from getting stained. Then he’d walked in and found her crying, asked her what was wrong, and she could no longer stop herself from crashing straight into the sensitive subject:

“It was late. I thought… this time, for sure…”

She was angry at him. Angry at herself. Every day she faced the room of smiling, innocent children - children that weren’t hers - and a tempest raged inside of her.

Why did he get to pretend that he was the only one hurting?

How dare he shut himself away from her. How dare he hide his heart from her when he was the only person she could confide in about this. How dare he become cold to her touch. And how dare she be angry at the both of them for having equally valid feelings.

Two months passed. Two months of strained and meaningless conversations, of sleeping with their backs turned, of sitting up at night staring at her wedding band in tears because it was only a matter of time before he left her; when finally, she lost it.

She filled their silences with yelling. Closed the distance between them with hands grabbing and shaking and hitting where the hole in his chest used to be. Appealing to the heart he’d buried beneath the sands of his past, the heart that loved her at her ugliest, because she didn’t want to feel alone in that big house anymore, because hurting together didn’t have to be a bad thing. If he was upset with her, if he thought she’d been unfair, she wanted to know. If he was upset with himself, if he was afraid, if he thought he’d failed her because he couldn’t give her a child, she wanted to know.

Anything but this, she sobbed, as she lost the strength to keep hitting him and threatened to collapse on the floor.

But he caught her before she could fall. Caught her and held her against him so tight that it almost hurt. Held her without speaking, but the tears she felt landing on her shoulder were evidence enough that he’d returned to her, sorry that he’d been gone for so long.

They spent the evening nursing each other’s wounds. She told him that she was his, that she would never regret choosing him, that no matter what happened they would face it together. He told her he loved her, again and again, in the heat of passion and in the quiet and uncertain moments after.

They were still scared, of course. There was nothing that wasn’t frightening about trying to make a marriage between two completely unique individuals work. But it was their hearts that had brought them together, and they knew it was their hearts that would keep them that way.

Four months later, she turned up at the shop with a hand resting beneath her navel and an enormous, watery smile on her face.