The Unraveling

Another day.

Truman nudged me again, his silent encouragement pulling me back to the present.

I straightened my shoulders, wiped my cheeks, and released a slow, steady breath. The woods were waiting. My life was waiting.

I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I texted Sam:I sat on the fallen log, with Truman panting beside me. All I could hear was the rustling of leaves, and Truman, my English cream Golden Retriever and loyal companion. I knew I wouldn’t have gotten through the last two years without him by my side. He pressed his wet nose against my leg, resting his heavy head on my thighs to signal that our walk wasn’t over, so I scratched behind his ears.

My mind spun wildly, thoughts crashing into each other like the distant waves I could hear against the shoreline of Lake Ontario. A tightness gripped my chest, and fear settled deep in my insides. My breath came in shallow, rapid bursts. Sweat clung to my skin despite the cool breeze through the trees and the scent of fresh lake water. I wiped my damp palms on my leggings and willed myself to quiet the rising panic clawing its way up my throat.

“Truman,” I whispered, barely audible, “what’s happening to me?”

His deep brown eyes studied me, his head tilting slightly as if to say, “You already know.”

The tears came fast and hot, spilling before I could stop them. My body curled in on itself, hands in my hair as sobs wracked my frame. I hadn’t expected this—a simple hike, a moment to clear my head, to unravel me completely.

I gasped through my ragged breaths, Tate’s words playing on a loop in my mind.

“Mom, you don’t have to keep putting up with this.”

A lifeline. A dagger. My eldest son saw what I had tried so long to deny—what love was costing us. He had grown up observing his father’s fear and his grandmother’s control, and through the manipulations, he saw the suffocating expectations that had slowly eroded all of us. And now, as he built a future with Rachel, he wanted better. For himself. For me. For our family.

He wasn’t the only one.

I had been unraveling for years, but I could pinpoint the moment I started to pull free, not in some grand, life-altering way, but through the smallest act of defiance: a minor rebellion in a life where I’d spent decades trying to prove my worth.

It had been over Truman.

It was spring during the COVID lockdown when I met a Golden Retriever, an English Cream, named Ghost. I fell in love with the breed, and an idea began to take root. But when I suggested it to Sam, he didn’t even look up before answering.

“We are not getting another dog.”

No discussion. There never was.

Sam had been raised in a family where “no” was the first and final answer. He had learned that obedience meant love and that questioning meant disloyalty. I had spent our marriage navigating these unspoken rules, gently pushing past them and coaxing him over weeks, months, and now too many years. Our children had also picked up on the pattern, preempting every request to Sam with, “I know the answer is no, but…”

That spring, I snapped.

“Why am I asking for permission?”

Sam wasn’t home all day. He wouldn’t be training the dog, walking him in the early mornings, or cleaning up after him. Why did his answer—his knee-jerk rejection to something outside his comfort zone—get to dictate my life?

That same day, I called the breeder and put down a deposit.

Two months later, over breakfast, Sam leaned forward on the kitchen island and placed his elbows on the counter as if he had come to a profound realization.

“Maybe we should get a dog.”

I didn’t even hesitate.

“Good, because we pick him up in two weeks.”

Sam blinked, stunned, unprepared for this version of me—the one who hadn’t waited for his approval. But the usual blank look I got when I questioned his and his family’s strange behaviors wasn’t there, nor was his resentment. There was recognition; perhaps he, too, desired more.

And for the first time in a long time, I glimpsed the man he might have been outside of his mother’s control—the man he still might be.

Sam wasn’t like his mother, Susan. He wasn’t cruel, dismissive, or manipulative. He wasn’t a liar, even though he didn’t always tell the truth. He had been saying yes to his mother because he didn’t see another option.

I had spent my life waiting for him to see it, for him to fight for us, for him to choose the family he created over the family he came from.

I wasn’t waiting anymore.

Susan had built an empire of control, and her every action was calculated to keep her children tethered to her. They and her husband, Jerry Sr., obeyed out of fear, not love. Mark had embraced it. Jerry Sr. and Jr. had caved to it. And Sam—Sam had spent his life afraid of losing her approval and money.

But that grip? It squeezed tighter yearly, draining the lifeforce from all within her grasp. Now I could barely breathe.

Her cruel, subtle remarks have repeated in my head, incessant and unbidden, ever since I unwittingly joined her empire. I remember her offhanded comment, so expertly aimed, as I stood in a bridal boutique all those years ago, my hands skimming over satin and lace.

“You aren’t going to wear an off-the-shoulder dress, are you?”

I had swallowed those words then, choking them down. But now, they sat in my throat like bile—the judgment, the manipulation, all of it.

I exhaled sharply, forcing myself back into the present. A small branch fell in the breeze, and my phone started ringing. It was Sam calling. I pushed the call to voicemail.

The forest was my space. I wouldn’t let Susan’s presence invade it.

Instead, I focused on the sunlight filtering through the pines and the rhythmic in-and-out of Truman’s breathing. He placed a paw on my thigh, a silent reminder.

You are here. You are real. You are not alone.

I swallowed the last of my tears and met his gaze.

“We’ll figure it out, buddy.”

It was time to stop pretending. I wouldn’t drown in silence while my husband remained caught between two worlds. I couldn’t live like this for another year. Another month. Another day. Another minute.

We need to talk; I’m choosing our family, and it’s time you did too.

I hit send quickly, so I didn’t erase my message.

“C’mon, buddy.” I stood up from the log, Truman ever ready beside me. “Let’s go home.”

The path out of the woods didn’t seem so uncertain now. I knew there would be more tears, more hurt, but I wasn’t waiting any longer.