Fault Lines

by Emily Itami

It was naive of me, to think that expressing your distaste for something means you can resist all the forces of family and society that propel you toward it.

Sometimes the days last forever, and still the weeks and months and years go whizzing unstoppably by.

suppose it’s unsurprising that one might question things sometimes, being in a state of indentured servitude to two small psychopaths.

My children. My life’s work, my greatest loves, orchestrators of total psychological trauma and everyday destruction.

With all the options I had, I chose him, chose him for life, for living, and he’s frozen me out into an existence that isn’t living at all. I’m in a cage without bars and I’m screaming but nobody can hear. I’m not even middle-aged yet and he’s faded me into the background.

My newfound friendship with a restaurateur has helped me see life itself in a whole different light. How unexpected that we should bump into each other quite so many times and get along so well. How refreshing to be getting to know someone new.

Some days I can’t quite work out how I got here; I opted for the guy, I opted for the kids, I just didn’t realize that meant waving goodbye to everything else.

Since he died, and since having my kids, the questions I wish I could ask him are never-ending. I wonder now what decisions he made to keep our tiny family afloat, what inevitable sacrifices there were. Why a heart attack—was it just the makeup of his body and too much MSG, or was it because, secretly, it all stressed the hell out of him, being the sole breadwinner and the only one in charge? Did he want

to give it all up and feel he couldn’t? Did something happen?

It’s hard to remember who you are without people who know you that way.

Having a secret makes me feel like nobody owns me, and that any opinion of me could always be inaccurate; no one has the whole picture, so it’s like trying to judge somebody’s appearance from a shard of broken mirror.

What are we, apart from the stories we tell ourselves and other people?

But as soon as the children were born it was blindingly obvious—your heart can’t break unless it has something to love. The way you love your children, they take your heart with you everywhere they go. Suddenly you realize just how cruel, just how loud and brash and harsh and illogically

cruel, the world is, and it turns out that other mother was right. When they laugh, when they cry, when they’re ill, when they grow, every moment they adore you and every step they take away from you—the whole thing is completely heartbreaking.