The Violence of Silence

I can’t quite explain what my husband and I are anymore. It feels less like love and more like coexisting—two bodies moving through the same space but not really touching. He’s suffocating me with his forced kindness, pretending not to see the cracks widening between us. In California, those cracks split wide open.

We had been sightseeing, playing the part of a couple on holiday. For a while, it felt almost normal… until it didn’t. He talks endlessly, needing the sound of his own voice to fill every silence, while I crave quiet, stillness, breath. After thirty-seven years, you would think he’d understand that my silence isn’t rejection—it’s simply who I am. Yet he doesn’t. And lately, I’ve been realizing how much about me he never really knew. That discovery is unsettling, intoxicating in its own way, as though I’m waking up from a trance.

That night, his façade broke. The more I retreated into myself, the angrier he became—rage simmering until it spilled over behind closed doors. The ego he hides came out sharp, violent. When I told him we needed to separate, his fear ignited into something dangerous. He threatened, hovered at the edge of striking me, his words laced with fury: “I should slap the shit out of you right now.”

My reply was steady, almost daring: “Do it.” A part of me almost wanted him to. At least then, leaving would be simple. Clean. But fear has a way of chaining even the strongest souls. And I hate myself for that weakness, for surrendering my strength only to him.

So I ask myself, over and over—when will I finally let go? When will I reach my breaking point? I can feel it coming, like a storm rolling in on the horizon. And when it does, I know it will change everything.