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How Can You Feel So Alone With Someone Right Beside You?
The loneliest part was pretending we were okay
There’s a couple in my neighborhood who take a stroll around the block every evening. Sometimes they hold hands. Other times, they tag team to manage their kids on bikes.
It makes me wistful for the kind of connection I once hoped for.
I’m not jealous of them — I don’t want their life — but I marvel that such harmony exists in a relationship. I once desired it, but never experienced it beyond the honeymoon phase.
The more you get to know a person, the closer you become. In my case, it was the opposite. As the hidden aspects of the man I was married to were slowly revealed — the manipulation, deception, and gaslighting wrapped in a charming exterior — the more alone I felt in the relationship.
It wasn’t just the trips that became battlegrounds — every single one ended on a sour note. Now I associate all those beautiful places we visited with fear and extreme sadness.
We lived in the same house, slept in the same bed, worked, ate, and led separate lives. But at parties, we smiled. We pretended.
Or maybe it was just me pretending — smiling on the outside, crying inside.
