Page 5 of Stay Away from Him

My husband is going to kill me.

I’ve never said those words out loud, never even written them out until now. But I’ve thought them plenty over the years of our marriage.

My husband, Thomas Danver, is going to kill me.

You know what’s ironic? Thomas was the one to suggest this journal.

He posed it as an alternative to the therapy he refused to pay for anymore, because he said it wasn’t working.

(Is that really true, Thomas? Did you really care if my therapy was working or not?

Do you actually want me to be well, to get better?

Or are you more afraid of me spilling our secrets to a stranger?) He said this could be a way to keep track of my negative thoughts, to record them and interrogate them.

See, my husband thinks that most of my thoughts are irrational, and that I’ll realize that if I sit with them long enough.

I wonder if he knows that my negative thoughts—irrational or otherwise—are mostly about him. Specifically, my fear of him.

I wonder if he knows that my first words in the journal he suggested I keep are about how I think he’s going to hurt me someday.

Maybe he does. Maybe he simply thinks it’s safer to have me writing them than to risk me saying them out loud.

***

Do I really believe Thomas is going to kill me?

I’m honestly not sure. Even when I think it, I don’t always mean it literally.

No, most of the time it’s an exaggeration, a bit of anxious hyperbole that runs through my mind when everything’s going sideways.

I think it in the way wives think such things when they know their husband is going to be so mad at them, mad enough that words like angry, furious, or livid don’t seem to measure up to the reality.

When I forget to bring the car in for an oil change for months on end, until smoke starts rising from the hood.

When I spend the day in bed instead of going to get groceries and he and the girls come home to an empty fridge.

When I knock a vase off the shelves, bump a picture off the wall, break yet another wineglass after a midday drink or two—or five.

Oh, Thomas is going to kill me.

It is an irrational thought. It has no relationship to reality.

Because not only is Thomas not literally going to kill me, most of the time he doesn’t even get mad at me—making the thought irrational on a figurative level too.

It doesn’t matter how big my mistake is.

Things don’t seem to faze him. Everything just rolls off his back.

Last week, for instance, I had another one of my bad days.

(They’re happening more often lately.) To begin with, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed that morning.

This happens to me sometimes—more than sometimes, actually, as my depression’s been getting worse.

Though in the mornings, it feels like too much, and too little, to call what I feel simple depression.

Depression is something that lives in the mind.

In the thoughts, the emotions. That’s what I always believed.

But this—this feels more like something that’s settled into my body, a bone-deep wrongness that’s bled from my brain into my flesh, invading my cells like a cancer.

When it hits, I’ll stay in bed, listening to Thomas’s and my girls’ hushed voices coming from the kitchen, whispering to each other, wondering what’s wrong with me.

Or worse, not talking about me at all. Not caring about me, just wanting to get away.

That’s what happened that morning last week.

Thomas asked me if I’d be getting up, and then he stomped out of the room after I turned over without answering (he’s going to kill me), he went downstairs and made breakfast for the girls without me (he’s going to kill me), and then he was the one to take them to school, even though technically that’s my job most days (he’s going to kill me).

Then the house was silent, and I was alone, negotiating with myself to get my pathetic, worthless, chronic fuckup self out of bed.

But I couldn’t do it, and couldn’t do it, and sometime around noon I had the idea that maybe I could trick myself into getting up by promising myself a treat if I did.

Chocolate for breakfast, a pastry on my way to do that day’s errands.

No, my brain said, a glass of wine .

So that’s what I did. I got out of bed, went downstairs, and poured myself a glass of wine, threw it back in a single gulp.

I’m sure that was great for my sad little brain. A big glass of white wine on an empty stomach, after I was feeling depressed and wrung-out like yesterday’s dirty dishcloths. No? Not good? Huh.

Well, good or bad for me, one glass became two, two became three, and three became the whole bottle—and by the time I was done, there was no way I was getting anything done that day. I went back to bed.

Thomas is going to kill me, I thought as the clock ticked toward the time when he usually came home.

I imagined him walking in on me in bed, still in my pajamas and smelling of alcohol.

The look on his face as he realized what I’d become.

The pathetic thing he married. An anchor, weighing him down, something he was stuck with.

But the thing is, he wasn’t even mad.

“Oh, babe,” he said when he got home. He sat next to me on the bed, pressed the back of his hand against my forehead. “Are you not feeling well?”

My face was red and tear-streaked, my skin lined all over with the wrinkles of the pillowcase I’d spent most of the afternoon crying against. I must have looked terrible.

“I’ll take care of dinner tonight,” he said, either not noticing the smell of wine on my breath, or pretending not to notice. “Don’t you worry. Just rest.”

***

Thomas always takes pity on me. He never seems to get mad, rarely raises his voice, no matter what I’ve screwed up this time. He’s never killed me, metaphorically or literally.

You win, Thomas. This thought is truly irrational. What was it my therapist said, before Thomas made me fire her? Your brain is lying to you.

Except…

Except sometimes there’s a cruelty in Thomas’s kindness. A deep meanness in how nice he is all the time.

This doesn’t make sense, I know. But bear with me.

Thomas is perfect. So perfect. Everyone says so. He’s, like, the perfect man—you’re so lucky to have him. Lucky—because he’s got it all together, while I’m a mess. Everyone knows it. I know it. And he knows it.

Not only does he know it, he uses it against me.

I swear he does. He loves to be the good one, the together one, the perfect one.

The one who makes the meals and brings the girls to school.

The one who’s great at his job, who makes all the money.

The one who contributes. The good doctor, good husband, good father.

And I swear, he never loves it more—never loves being perfect more—than when I’m a fuckup.

***

But also—there was one time when I’m pretty sure he actually wanted to kill me. When the thought wasn’t just figurative, wasn’t remotely an exaggeration.

His voice hissing in the quiet dark of the hotel room. The girls next door, a thin wall separating us, cowering in the dark of the night, wondering what was going to happen next.

“It was just an accident,” he seethed at me, his voice a quiet roar, just barely held at bay. “An accident. That’s all.”

I blinked, unable to meet his furious gaze. Tears coming hot at the corners of my eyes.

“There’s something wrong with you,” he said. “You’re not right. You’re crazy.”

In that moment, I truly did believe he was capable of ending my life. That the next person to have an accident would be me.

I’ve tried not to think about it. Tried my best to forget. But it’s colored every interaction we’ve had since—the day my husband really did want to hurt me.

Maybe it’s not such an irrational thought, now that I think about it.

My husband wants to kill me.