The Thinnest Air

by Minka Kent

And the truth couldn’t care less about what we want to believe.

Sometimes love is wonderful. Other times it’s poison.

I’ve never been more grateful for my immunity to pompous, Rolex-wearing douchebags with bleached smiles and fast cars.

This entire week so far has been a blur, a foggy nightmare where everything feels real and fake all at the same time.

Some of the women in the back chuckle, proving that kicking men in the balls can be humorous at any age.

But there’s something about human nature that makes us shameless opportunists. We stumble across a chance, experience the tiniest taste of something we want, and we can’t say no.

He strikes me as the kind of man who lets his wife do all the worrying and tending to details.

So, like a typical man?

For the first time, I can’t bear the thought of sleeping next to a man who claims to love me so much yet cares so little about my concerns.

He hears me, but he’s not listening.

I love that he takes me seriously, that he doesn’t laugh or brush my fear off like I’m a child complaining about monsters under the bed. Monsters are real. They’re real, and they’re capable of doing the unspeakable. And they don’t hide under beds or in closets—they hide in plain sight. You just don’t always notice them.

I realize now that most people lie. Hidden lives are more common than I thought.

Kid-friendly restaurants with screaming babies and exasperated parents chasing after their overly tired offspring, so desperate to enjoy just one dinner out that they’ll subject the rest of the world to the fruits of their failed parenting labors.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” I say, my hands around my sweating cup. “Neither do I,” he says. “No one does. We’re all just . . . doing the best we can. Trying to make sense of things that probably never will.”

We treat tragedies like entertainment, the American public priding ourselves on being armchair detectives trying to solve these crimes, but the second the sensationalism dies down and the case grows cold, we move on to the next exciting thing.