Lying Next to Me

by Gregg Olsen

She seems to inhabit the fringes of her own world. As if Frank rules their world and allows her to coexist with him as long as she keeps the house clean and does his laundry.

It’s hard to be genuinely enthusiastic if you can never have what’s in front of you—when it comes so easily to others.

I didn’t know that when I married her. I saw her as she showed herself to the world: fun, smart, sexy. Funny how those things are often a smoke screen from one’s true self. It’s easy to act all those things. Up for adventure. Head nods at complex scenarios when she’s not really listening. Ready for bedroom play even when there is no bedroom. In the beginning, Sophie was all those things. I didn’t know they were a construct. I thought they were key parts of who she was.

But learned personality traits aren’t often based on present reality but on a past from which there is no escape. Our marriage is quietly rocky. Silently in shambles. I love her without a scintilla of doubt. But Sophie? I don’t know how she really feels about me. If she loved me at all, she’d have never done what she did.

“The ones that test the limits sometimes do the most amazing things in life. That’s what I’ve always thought.”

It is always easier to sleep at night if the monsters outside your house only knock when you give them cause.