The Push

by Ashley Audrain

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.

“Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.” She paused and looked only at me. “Listen for each other’s heartbeat in the current. You’ll always find each other. And then you’ll always find the shore.”

I started to understand, during those sleepless nights replaying the things I’d overheard, that we are all grown from something. That we carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden.

That was the only thing you cared about. You wanted me alert and patient. You wanted me rested so I could perform my duties. You used to care about me as a person—my happiness, the things that made me thrive. Now I was a service provider. You didn’t see me as a woman. I was just the mother of your child.

She had a brilliant, beautiful mind and sometimes I longed to be inside it. Even though I feared what I might find.

I looked up and felt nothing for you—not love, not hate, not anything in between. Is this what the end was supposed to feel like?

There are people who work through it, who fight for one another, who do it for the children. The life they thought they needed. But I had nothing to fuel the fire. Nothing to give.

“You know, there’s a lot about ourselves that we can’t change—it’s just the way we’re born. But some parts of us are shaped by what we see. And how we’re treated by other people. How we’re made to feel.”