Chapter 3: Nausea and Thanksgiving

Many people have asked me:

"You have everything. Why aren’t you happy?"

Usually it came in the gentlest tone, over coffee or at church. I’d just smile and change the subject, but inside, their question echoed louder than any hymn.

I’ve asked myself the same question, over and over. What more could I possibly want?

Maybe I’d stare out the kitchen window, watching deer graze at the edge of the yard, and wonder if peace was possible or if I was greedy for even thinking I deserved it.

I read the classic advice columns and etiquette books again and again, reminding myself: this is the old world, this is normal.

Miss Manners never had an answer for a heart that wouldn’t settle. I’d thumb through worn copies of “Emily Post” and “Dear Abby,” looking for wisdom that never quite fit.

But every time I was intimate with David, I’d be seized by nausea and vomit terribly. The scent of his cologne—sharp, expensive—made my stomach twist. I’d scrub my skin raw, but the feeling never left.

The first time it happened, I blamed a bad shrimp cocktail from the country club. By the fifth, I had to face the truth: it was my soul, not my stomach, that recoiled.

Yes, I was sick—

Sickened by the lips that kissed me after kissing others, sickened by the sweet words he spoke to me, words I suspected he whispered to someone else as well.

There were nights I’d lie awake, the scent of his cologne still clinging to my pillow, wishing I could scrub myself clean. It was a kind of poison—slow, invisible, but steady.

This revulsion gnawed at my bones like termites, bit by bit, every single day.

It left me brittle, hollow. Sometimes I’d catch my reflection—hollow-eyed, jaw clenched—and not recognize the woman looking back.

Yet it wouldn’t kill me. This dull disgust lingered for nearly my whole life.

It just made everything quieter, colder. I learned to keep my voice even, my hands steady, while the ache rattled around inside.

On the surface, I still had to act the part—gracious, gentle, generous—playing along with David for twenty years.

I was the matriarch who hosted Thanksgiving for twenty, carving the turkey with a smile, hiding the tremble in my hands as the scent of sage stuffing and pumpkin pie filled the kitchen.

But I’ve played this role for too long, and I’m exhausted. Now, at last, the play can end.

I longed for the quiet—no more scripts, no more standing ovations for a life I never auditioned for.

Sometimes, I’d wonder idly when I would die, and what the world after death would be like.

Would it be another small town, another cycle of pretending? Or maybe just silence—a welcome nothingness where I didn’t have to belong to anyone at all.