This is the beginning to a story about a woman who becomes alienated from her husband due to her depression.

He looked at me with a look of disgust, confusion, compassion and rage all in one. He took off his pants but I closed my legs. Not tonight. I was never in the mood any more. Don’t believe I ever would be again. I used to love him. I even remember when I did. But that was a long time ago, in another life. This is now and that was over. A distant memory never to be touched upon again. To live was to die. To die would be peace. But the unexpectedness of it riddled my numb mind with uncertainties I was not ready to face.
I thought of my abortion. The pain of it never ended and never would. I couldn’t possibly bring another life into this world. I couldn’t even handle myself.How was I supposed to handle another being? But that didn’t stop me from wondering. Who was it? Who was she? What was she? Was it a boy or a girl? Did it have a soul? Was it created by God? Did God fourm it or was it just a simple process we do as mammals?

“Christine, when is all this going to be over?”
He didn’t understand, he never did and he never would. I didn’t even bother to try to explain anymore or try to get him to understand. It was useless. He would never know.
“Christine, we haven’t spoken for thirteen days now. How long is this going to continue?”
Thirteen days recently but the past several years of interaction could hardly be called talk.
“I’m going to go out with the guys if you don’t want to talk or do anything together.”
Yes, ofcourse. He was always going out with “the guys”. I often wondered if he even cared about me at all. Was he cheating on me? Well he certainly wasn’t getting it at home, hadn’t for years, so he’d probably found other outlets for his desires. And who was to blame him. It was my fault anyway. I was an awful wife, if I could even be called that. I often wished I would die so he could collect the life insurance plan. That was all I was worth. He wouldn’t have to deal with this wretched waste gripped by a dismal existence of perpetual agony any longer and he would have some cash to spend on whores or god knows whatever he did.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I started into the cold lifeless eyes of a woman whose existence had ended long ago yet the unrelenting anguish remained. I looked at the hard pale face and realized I hadn’t worn makeup since a christmas party two years ago. I took in the lines and withering unkempt skin and the unwashed unruly mop of hair atop my troubled head. Hygiene was of little importance. When you expected not to be alive the next day, every day, hygiene was a trivial pursuit only to be forced upon you by others. I hadn’t even reached forty yet and my body had long gone. I was once a quite pretty young woman, full breasts, well proportioned body, slim, beautiful smile but the omnipresent agony had taken over all aspects of myself replacing this former heartthrob bomb shell with a dejected lost soul, destined to be alone forever.. What was left in the wake of years of being ravaged by psychological torment was a broken being never capable of recovery and I have reconciled with that. At once my prospects looked very good. I was the top of my class in law school, despite my protests of attending, valedictorian of my high school class, suma cum lade at my university and yet it all meant nothing to me. I could have everything and anything I wanted but I wanted nothing at all expect to be loved, something I never had and now believe I am not worthy of. Aaaaa, all this rumination was giving me a heahache. I decided to take a shower. I turned on the hot water and let it run for a while, while I sat on my bed contemplating the meaning behind my suffering. The more I pondered, the less I knew and understood and as I delved into the deep abyss of my loneliness and pain I began to come to grips with the idea that I would never fathom why this immense all-consuming burden that I liked to call my insurmountable plight, was placed on me. Well this would not be resolved tonight nor did I have hope it ever would, until death took me, and then I’m still not sure, so best to just muddle through the pain and carry on. I stuffed it further down inside me in an tank already bursting with immeasurable suffering. I took off my clothes and hopped into the shower. I felt the warm water soak into my skin and clung to every drop that poured on me, as if it were my last. I looked at the scars I still had from when I was only eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. A long time ago, but not so long in the grand scheme of things and the pain was still as present as it ever was. I thought about Jack. Did he know what he was getting himself into when he married me? Evidently not. I recalled our first elopement in grad school and how we couldn’t keep each other’s clothes on for more than five minutes. I was only twenty-four, he was thirty-one but the age didn’t matter because for the first time in my life he provided me with some of the security and comfort I had been lacking all along. At the time he didn’t now how badly this tortous diease had afflicted me, nor would he. I had suppressed and repressed is so cleverly. I was a master of disguise and no one, not even the people closest to me, had even the faintest idea of what I was going through.