"But I didn't say that," I admitted. "I just stood there, like an idiot, shocked and the only thing I actually managed to say was—'But you love me?!' Like that was supposed to explain everything. Like just saying it out loud would make it real again."
Dr. Mireille raised an eyebrow gently, not judging, just following.
"Why wasn't the opposite your first instinct?" she asked. "Why not say, But I love you?"
I looked up, surprised at how easily that question pierced through me. The truth hit harder than I expected, but I didn't look away.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "Maybe because I couldn't understand how she could just stop loving me and ask for a divorce, because who am I, if not her husband? Her lover?"
The words came out lower than I intended, almost like I was admitting something shameful.
"I mean, that's what I've been for so long. That's who I knew myself as. October's husband. The guy who got lucky. The one she chose. Even when things were rocky—even when I wasn't pulling my weight emotionally—I still held onto that. Not because I thought I deserved it, but because it felt like the most solid part of me."
I ran a hand over my face, jaw tight.
"And it wasn't just about the marriage. It was about... being loved by her. The way she sees the world. The way she sees me, even when I couldn't see myself clearly. I think I tied my worth to that without realizing it."
I looked up at the ceiling for a second, then back down.
"When she said she wanted out, it wasn't just the relationship ending. It was a mirror shattering. I didn't know who I was without her love."
My voice dropped to a murmur.
"So yeah, I didn't say 'I love you.' I said 'you love me,' because I needed to hear it like a lifeline. Because without it... I didn't know if there was anything left of the person I thought I was. Because her love... that was the one thing I counted on. Even when I was distant. Even when I shut down or missed the mark completely. Even when I failed to show up for her in the ways she needed most. I thought it was still there, quiet, tucked away somewhere. Waiting for me to finally get it right."
I paused.
"I think... I didn't know how to fight for her without also fighting to keep myself from disappearing."
Dr. Mireille turned to me with the same calm, measured tone.
"October. Let's try a different moment. What did you want to say each time Thomas said, 'Don't wait up, I have work to do'? And what did you actually say?"
"I kept saying okay. I stopped asking when he'd be home. I stopped waiting up. The shift was so gradual I barely noticed it—until one night, I realized the dinner table had grown cold long before the food ever did."
She looked up then, first at Dr. Mireille, then at me. I didn't look away.
"What I really wanted to ask was... do you still love me? Do I still matter to you? Did you stop caring and just never tell me? But I didn't. I bit my tongue every time those questions came close to the surface, because I didn't want to be that woman: clingy, needy, too much, too heavy to hold. I didn't want you to see me as a burden. I didn't want to be the thing you sighed about on your way out the door. So I kept quiet. I convinced myself I was being mature, patient, understanding. That you'd notice on your own. That you'd just know."
She let out a breath, and I could tell how hard this was for her. Every word felt like it was being pulled from a place that had been locked for years.
"And then..." Her voice trembled just slightly and turned to our therapist, "I stopped believing him. That's the part that really broke me. One day I just realized that I didn't think it was about work anymore. I didn't think it had been for a while."
I closed my eyes for half a second, and then opened them again. The guilt was immediate. Heavy. Deserved.
"But I never said it," she went on. "I never confronted him. I didn't want a fight. I didn't want to accuse him of something if I didn't have proof. So I kept pretending I believed it. I smiled. I nodded and I started to resent him."
Her voice was shaking now. Mine would've too, if I had it in me to speak.
"What I wanted to say was it hurts when you disappear like that. It makes me feel like I don't matter. But by then, silence had become a second skin. Not out of peace but out of exhaustion. Out of fear. And that's when I really started to disappear, from myself, from him, from the life. Like I was clinging to a version of him I had invented just to survive the version I got."
The room felt frozen. I didn't breathe. She looked back at me then, and what I saw there knocked the wind out of me. Not anger. Not bitterness. Just... heartbreak. The kind that had lived in her so long, it had settled into something quieter.
She finished, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Instead of all of that what I actually said was nothing. I just turned off the light and went to bed."
Dr. Mireille gave a small, solemn nod. "This is where we begin. With the things you were too tired, or scared, or numb to say. We'll build from here."