I'm Well Enough to Know - Or am I?

We had Janine and Bill round yesterday, not that I wanted them in the house. I couldn’t tell John no, but what was he thinking? The last time we were on the verge of separating, he told me it was as though he and Janine had known each other all their lives. It’s not that I’m in love or anything, he’d said, not that I’d asked.

John’s at work and so I’m writing in the kitchen. I don’t really want to sit at my desk in the bedroom – it throbs with last night, with the echo of John’s voice, and despite the tall windows, the sun on the floorboards, it feels dark. I know it doesn’t make sense, not really, nothing I do or say seems to.

It’s a peculiar feeling to sit here, though, at the kitchen island knowing we were all gathered round last night. The empty wine bottles sit beside the bin, the glasses by the sink half-empty with red. I’ll have to clean those before John gets home. Anything to reduce his stress. He almost cried this morning. I don’t want my colleagues to see us like that. So, he does have feelings – sometimes I wonder…

I hop off the stool and squeeze Fairy onto a sponge, snatch up the glass stained with red lipstick – hers.

“Fuck, marry, kill,” Janine said last night. “[Female colleague], [female colleague], and me.”

Bill raised his brows and lifted his glass to his lips – she hadn’t posed the question to him, the other singleton.

“I’d kill [female colleague],” said John. “I’d marry [female colleague] and I’d…”

Bill chuckled into his glass, a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

I wipe her lips from the glass… pick up another. I don’t know why she had to dangle him in front of me. I don’t think it’s John’s fault, either, but why would he allow such blatant disrespect? I don’t know if men play dumb or if they genuinely don’t understand women. The third glass. More red wine down the sink like coughed up blood. I was tempted to tell John about mate choice copying but didn’t, that would only hurt his feelings. I wish he understood, though, I wish he understood what he has – just as I understand how lucky I am to have him.

The problem, he said this morning, is that you don’t trust me. But I trust him with all my heart. He’d never do anything to hurt me, and I know it.

The hot water rushes over my hands as I rinse the fourth glass, and I’m tempted to run the sponge over my body, to scratch away the layer of skin that carries John, to sparkle clean, transparent, empty. I love him and I know it’s wrong to feel what I’m feeling, but it feels as though I’ve had a parasite inside me.

This morning, I had to regulate both of our emotions – mine and John’s. Leave, he kept telling me to leave. The house is under his name.

I don’t feel safe when he says things like that, it’s like he doesn’t care about me. Sometimes, I feel like I’m talking to a great big knot of defence mechanisms. It isn’t him – it isn’t him when his eyes go dark, when the last of the embers go out. It’s as though he’s carried away with that last thread of smoke and I don’t know who the charred wood is, the ash.

Maybe that’s why the bedroom feels so dark. He’s yelled at me before, but not like last night. I don’t know who that man was, that man gesticulating at the foot of the bed, the man climbing onto it, the man yelling in my ear. It was the first time I thought he might actually hit me. It was the first time I realised he wasn’t safe.

I wonder what Janine and Bill said. I could hear them outside, the three of them, the light switches, the whispers, the movement as I lay in the ringing silence.

I don’t know what to think, really. This morning, after he calmed down, John apologised for having yelled. I could have fainted with relief. He said he could have been more supportive when I was crying – I’d left the kitchen after Janine’s comments, I’d broken down in our ensuite.

Before he went to work, though, after we made love, he said yelling at me was setting boundaries as he fastened his new leather belt – a Secret Santa gift from a colleague. I never questioned it; I never questioned it until now. I know I’m unwell, I know I’m emotional – I mean, he’s told me a hundred times. But I think I’m well enough to know the yelling wasn’t warranted; I’m well enough to know that this time, at least, my feelings are valid; I’m well enough to know that something is very, very wrong.

Unless this is just another maladaptive behaviour. What if I’m running from love, not John, because I think I’m undeserving? Am I well enough to know? I mean, I’ve been suffering bouts of paranoia; sometimes, I even think he’s hacked my phone. The world’s a scary place when you can’t trust your own perception, and after last night I can’t trust John’s either – not anymore.

But I’m drinking my coffee out of a mug he made me in ceramics. He loves me, I know he does, but how can I help him when he thinks I’m the problem? when he’s convinced me of it, too? It can’t have been intentional, though. It’s a defence mechanism, it must be. He always pushes me away when he’s hurting, always leaves me. He doesn’t mean it, he says, but it feels real to me. You never know what the last straw will be; if I say this, if I do this, it’s done. It’s fragile what we have. It’s this mug that, upon being fired, very well could have exploded into pieces but didn’t. We’re in the kiln, so to speak, and the question is whether or not we’ll come out intact. And it all makes sense now – only I can stand the heat, only I can love him out of it.