The day I finally came close to understanding Wendell began without any warning.<\/p>\n
There was no argument.<\/p>\n
No confession.<\/p>\n
No sudden change in the way he treated me.<\/p>\n
It began like an ordinary day, which was perhaps why I wasn't prepared for what it would mean to me later.<\/p>\n
I had grown used to living with unanswered questions.<\/p>\n
They had become part of the relationship, as familiar as his quiet manner and his habit of keeping certain subjects to himself.<\/p>\n
I still didn't like them.<\/p>\n
But I had learned to live around them.<\/p>\n
That was not the same as accepting them.<\/p>\n
I knew that now.<\/p>\n
At the time, I was still trying to convince myself that a little patience would solve everything.<\/p>\n
I had never wanted to force my way into Wendell's private life.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to invite me.<\/p>\n
There was something important about that distinction.<\/p>\n
If I had to insist on being included, I would always wonder whether he truly wanted me there.<\/p>\n
I wanted the invitation to come from him.<\/p>\n
I wanted to feel that the door was opening because he had decided I belonged on the other side of it.<\/p>\n
It sounds simple when I put it that way.<\/p>\n
It wasn't simple to me.<\/p>\n
I had spent months learning how to be close to him without asking too much.<\/p>\n
I had become skilled at reading the moments when a question would make him withdraw.<\/p>\n
I had learned to let silence pass without trying to fill it.<\/p>\n
And I had grown accustomed to the idea that there were parts of Wendell I might never know.<\/p>\n
I didn't like that thought.<\/p>\n
But I was afraid of what might happen if I challenged it.<\/p>\n
I still had the memory of Dwight's last days in my mind.<\/p>\n
I remembered how quickly a life could change, how ordinary moments could become precious only after they were gone.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to spend whatever time I had left being afraid to care about somebody.<\/p>\n
So I kept caring.<\/p>\n
I let myself enjoy Wendell's company.<\/p>\n
I let myself laugh when he made me laugh.<\/p>\n
I let myself imagine a future that included him, even though I couldn't see all of it clearly.<\/p>\n
That was progress, or so I thought.<\/p>\n
Then the question of his home returned to my mind.<\/p>\n
It had never really gone away.<\/p>\n
I could ignore it for a day, sometimes longer, but it always came back.<\/p>\n
I would think of Wendell sitting in my house, comfortable enough to relax in his chair, and wonder why I had never been offered the same comfort in his.<\/p>\n
I would remember his explanations and realize that none of them had brought us any closer to a solution.<\/p>\n
There was always another reason to wait.<\/p>\n
Another unfinished task.<\/p>\n
Another detail that made a visit inconvenient.<\/p>\n
I began to wonder whether he would ever invite me at all.<\/p>\n
That thought hurt more than I expected.<\/p>\n
It made me feel foolish.<\/p>\n
I had been telling myself that I was building a relationship with a man who cared for me.<\/p>\n
Yet I couldn't answer a simple question about where he lived.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what he was protecting.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether he was protecting himself, somebody else, or something he couldn't bear to explain.<\/p>\n
I only knew that his reluctance had begun to matter more than I wanted it to.<\/p>\n
Still, I didn't confront him.<\/p>\n
I wasn't ready.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I was waiting for a moment when I felt stronger.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I was hoping that the right words would come to me naturally.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps I was simply afraid that if I asked the question plainly, I would finally receive an answer I couldn't explain away.<\/p>\n
There is a special kind of fear that comes from knowing the truth might hurt more than uncertainty.<\/p>\n
I had lived with uncertainty for so long that it had begun to feel safe.<\/p>\n
At least I could still hope.<\/p>\n
I could still imagine that Wendell's secret was something small, something harmless, something he would eventually tell me with an embarrassed smile.<\/p>\n
I could imagine him apologizing for keeping me at a distance.<\/p>\n
I could imagine us laughing about how much trouble I had made for myself by worrying.<\/p>\n
I held on to those possibilities because they allowed me to keep loving him without asking what that love was costing me.<\/p>\n
I didn't understand how much I had invested in the answer until I began to realize that I might never get one.<\/p>\n
The strange thing was that Wendell never seemed to doubt my affection.<\/p>\n
He didn't appear worried that I would leave.<\/p>\n
He behaved as though the arrangement between us was perfectly reasonable.<\/p>\n
We could spend time together.<\/p>\n
We could care about each other.<\/p>\n
We could share the parts of our lives that were comfortable.<\/p>\n
And I could continue wondering about everything else.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he thought I was satisfied.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he believed his explanations were enough.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know.<\/p>\n
I had never told him plainly how his refusal made me feel.<\/p>\n
I had expected him to notice.<\/p>\n
That was unfair of me, although his silence was unfair too.<\/p>\n
People cannot always guess what we need.<\/p>\n
But they can choose whether to listen when we ask.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand that I had not really asked.<\/p>\n
I had hinted.<\/p>\n
I had joked.<\/p>\n
I had circled the subject and waited for him to open it.<\/p>\n
Then I had treated his silence as a final answer while secretly hoping it wasn't.<\/p>\n
That was my part in the problem.<\/p>\n
I could admit that much.<\/p>\n
What I couldn't explain was why he seemed so determined to keep his home separate from me.<\/p>\n
I tried to picture it.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the place was in poor condition.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had let things pile up.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had unfinished work scattered through every room.<\/p>\n
None of those possibilities frightened me.<\/p>\n
I had lived in a real house with a real husband.<\/p>\n
I knew that homes were not always tidy.<\/p>\n
I knew that life could leave marks on a place.<\/p>\n
A worn carpet was not a moral failure.<\/p>\n
A broken cabinet was not a reason to keep somebody away.<\/p>\n
If that was all Wendell feared, I wished he would tell me.<\/p>\n
I would rather have seen an untidy room than continue feeling that I was being kept outside his life.<\/p>\n
But I didn't know how to say that without making him feel cornered.<\/p>\n
So I waited for him to decide.<\/p>\n
I waited because I loved him.<\/p>\n
I waited because I was lonely.<\/p>\n
And I waited because I was afraid of discovering that the man I trusted had a reason for keeping me at a distance that had nothing to do with the condition of his house.<\/p>\n
Those were the truths I carried into the next stage of our relationship.<\/p>\n
I didn't know that the answer would begin to take shape in a place I had never expected to find it.<\/p>\n
I only knew that I had reached the point where another excuse would no longer be enough.<\/p>\n
Something had to change.<\/p>\n
I just didn't yet know who would make the change first.<\/p>\n
The day I finally came close to understanding Wendell began without any warning. There was no argument. No confession. No sudden change in the way he treated me. It began … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36529,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36509\/revisions\/36529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}