Unmissing

by Minka Kent

I’ve never met someone who claims to be “all knowing” or anything along those lines, but I do believe people exist who are intuitive. And not in any supernatural kind of way. They’re simply good at reading people—a trauma response.

But I learned long ago that the only person who can save me is . . . me.

Only it turns out, mom life is twenty times more isolating than I ever imagined.

My grandmother once said life is what happens between the curveballs and happy accidents.

Someone once told me that I’d only be my husband’s favorite until we had our first child, and that I’d only be my daughter’s favorite until she becomes a teenager and decides she hates everything about me. But I don’t think it has to be that way. I intend to be everyone’s favorite until my dying breath.

The future isn’t carved in stone—it isn’t even written in pencil on the back of a napkin.

My whole life, I’ve never trusted quiet people; something about their busy brains and all the things they aren’t saying makes me nervous.

When the sun rises outside our picture window, I creep out of bed and tiptoe downstairs to make his coffee and slice some fruit for breakfast. Chopping bananas and strawberries, I make a list of silent promises to myself: to trust my husband, to stand by him no matter what, and to do whatever it takes to keep this family together—because I can’t shake the feeling that Lydia wants nothing more than to see us fall apart. And to be honest, if our roles were reversed and I were her—I’d want the same.

This house of cards is one gust of wind from toppling over, and I don’t want to be that gust.

I realized then that it didn’t matter how strong a person was, how resistant they were to criticism and judgment—life could still wear a person down if they weren’t in their own driver’s seat.

“Yes,” I say. “Turns out the man I married . . . was nothing more than a monster.”

Grabbing a paper clip from the first drawer, I unfold it and jam it into the lock, twisting and contorting it until it catches on something—a fruitless five-minute waste of my time.

“Why is she still alive?”

Never give a horse too much rein lest he think he’s the one leading the excursion.

I was simply missing, and now I’m unmissing.