He Took My Story, So I Made a New One
'I am not capable of maintaining relationships,' I said.
'No,' she said, 'he was not capable of being honest.'
My 60-year-old husband had told me out of the blue that he wanted a divorce so he could find someone with whom he could start a family of his own. And then he left. I was shocked. Nothing about this had ever come up in the decade we had been together. He was my second husband. I already had children from my first marriage.
Randy listened as I described our latest conversation in minute detail. She lived in Boston; I was in New Hampshire. This was our afternoon call, and I heard an ambulance siren through the phone. At my end was the sound of noisy, mating, insistent birds — it was spring.
'How could I have missed his unhappiness?' I said. 'I'm a therapist.'
'Even you can't mind-read,' she said. 'He was a master at hiding.' Randy is as fast a talker as I am, and her hair is as curly as mine. During this time, she was endlessly patient as I told identical stories over and over and over.
All I wanted to do was not see anyone, not talk to anyone. In the weeks after my husband left, my immediate back story was that I was unlovable — an ancient tale rooted in childhood, and I was stunned by its force as it spewed from the depths.
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