The Things I Never Said

To the man I married,

There are so many conversations that never happened between us.

Not because I didn't have words.

Because somewhere along the way, I stopped believing my words could safely exist between us.

That realization has taken me months to admit.

For a long time, I told myself I was simply trying to keep the peace. I thought silence was another way of loving you. I thought choosing my battles meant choosing our marriage.

Now I wonder how many little pieces of myself quietly disappeared each time I swallowed another sentence.

There were days when I wanted to tell you that I missed you.

Not because you had been gone for weeks.

Sometimes you were only at work.

I simply wanted my husband.

I wanted to hear your voice in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. I wanted to know that you thought about me while we were apart because I was certainly thinking about you.

Instead, I slowly learned that even saying, "I miss you," could become something I regretted saying.

So eventually, I stopped saying it.

Not because I stopped missing you.

Because I stopped believing it would be received with tenderness.

There were nights when I wanted to tell you that I felt lonely lying beside you.

That sentence never escaped my lips.

How do you explain to your own husband that you feel abandoned while he is lying inches away from you?

There were mornings when I wanted to ask whether you were happy.

Whether you still wanted this marriage.

Whether you still wanted me.

But I became afraid of the answers.

Or perhaps even more afraid of the arguments that would follow the questions.

So I stayed quiet.

There were moments when I wanted to tell you how beautiful I thought marriage could have been.

Not the marriage we were living.

The marriage I dreamed we were building.

I wanted to grow old with you.

I wanted our children to roll their eyes because their parents still held hands after decades together.

I wanted ordinary Saturdays, grocery shopping, little inside jokes, prayers before bed, family dinners, and all the simple things that become extraordinary when shared with someone who loves you well.

Those dreams slowly became conversations I only had with God.

Sometimes I wonder whether you ever realized how much I stopped saying.

Maybe you thought I became calmer.

Maybe you thought I finally accepted things.

The truth is much sadder.

I simply became tired.

Not tired of loving you.

Tired of wondering whether my heart was welcome.

I wish I had understood sooner that peace built on silence is not really peace.

Love was never supposed to require the disappearance of one person's voice.

I don't write these things because I wish I could go back and finally say them.

Strangely enough, I no longer need to.

God heard every sentence that never made it out of my mouth.

He witnessed every tear I cried in silence.

He knew every prayer I whispered after the conversations that never happened.

Perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps He has always been the keeper of the words that were never safe to speak.

If that is true, then none of them were truly lost.

They simply found a different listener.

And maybe...

that is why I can finally let them go.

— The woman who married you 💜