My Mom Pushed Me to Marry at 32, So I Married a “Deaf” Tech Millionaire. I Learned Sign Language, Left My Career, Got Pregnant. At Six Months, He Looked at Me in Our Kitchen and Said: “I’m Not Deaf. I Never Was.”

I was standing in our kitchen in Palo Alto, six months pregnant, my hands shaking as I held the note I’d just written to my husband.

That was how we talked. How we had always talked.

Through notes on paper. Through sign language. Through small touches and exchanged looks.

Richard was deaf. He had been ever since a motorcycle accident five years before I met him.

Or at least that’s what I believed for the year and a half we’d been together.

He was reading the note over my shoulder, so close I could feel his breath against my neck, when he said, clear as daylight in a voice I had never heard before:

“Margaret, I need to tell you something.”

The note slipped from my fingers. The paper floated down between us, and I watched it fall like I was trapped inside a dream. Or a nightmare.

Because my deaf husband had just spoken.

Let me back up. Let me tell you how I ended up in that kitchen, feeling my world split open like thin ice.

I’m sixty-eight now, and I’ve learned that some stories can’t be told from the middle. Some stories demand the beginning, even when the beginning hurts to revisit.

It was 1991. I was thirty-two. Still unmarried. Still working as a junior architect at a firm in San Francisco. Still living in a cramped studio apartment I could barely afford.

My mother called every Sunday like she was paid to do it, and every Sunday the conversation circled back to the same thing.

“Your sister Catherine just told me she’s pregnant again. That’s three grandchildren she’s given me, Margaret. Three.”

“That’s wonderful, Mom.”

“The Johnsons’ daughter just got engaged. Amy. You remember her. You two played together. She’s twenty-six.”

I would tighten my grip on the phone and stare out at the fog rolling in over the bay.

“I’m glad for Amy.”

“I just don’t know what you’re waiting for. You’re not getting younger. Men don’t want women in their thirties who—”

“Mom, I have work. I have to go.”

But she never eased up.

And if I’m honest, now that I’ve lived decades beyond that year, I can admit something I wouldn’t admit then. I was lonely. I was tired of coming home to silence. Tired of watching coworkers leave early for their children’s soccer games while I stayed late to finish drawings and meet deadlines. Tired of being the only single person at family gatherings, the one people looked at with pity disguised as curiosity.

So when my mother mentioned Richard Hayes, I listened.

“He’s Dorothy Hayes’s son,” she said. “You remember Dorothy. She was in my book club. Her son started some computer company. Very successful. Very handsome. And he’s ready to settle down.”

“Mom, I’m not doing another one of your blind dates.”

“This isn’t like the others. He’s… special, Margaret. He had an accident. A motorcycle accident. He lost his hearing.”

Something about her tone made me pause.

“He’s deaf,” she continued. “Completely. But he adapted. He reads lips well, and he knows sign language. Dorothy says he’s the same charming man, just quieter.”

Then she added the line that should have made me hear the trap, but instead made me soften.

“A lot of women don’t want to deal with that. But you might. You’ve always been patient. You’ve always been understanding.”

I should have recognized manipulation. Instead, I heard possibility.

A man who wouldn’t judge me for being thirty-two and still single. A man who might value effort and kindness. A man who might even feel grateful for someone willing to enter his world and learn his language. A man who, because of a disability, might see me as a person and not a checklist.

“Fine,” I said. “One dinner.”

Richard was everything my mother promised and then some.

He was tall, dark hair already silvering slightly at the temples. Sharp brown eyes that studied my lips when I spoke. He wore expensive suits that fit like they were tailored weekly. He drove a Mercedes. He worked in Silicon Valley doing something in software that felt like a foreign language to me.

Our first dinner was at an upscale Italian place in San Jose.

I had spent two weeks teaching myself basic sign language from a book, practicing in the bathroom mirror, trying not to look ridiculous. But Richard made it easy. He carried a small notepad and pen, and whenever my clumsy signing fell apart, we wrote back and forth like teenagers passing notes in class.

“Your mother talks about you all the time,” he wrote.

“The brilliant architect daughter. The stubborn one who refuses to settle.”

I laughed, embarrassed.

“She makes me sound like an auction item,” I wrote back.

He smiled, and when he wrote his next sentence, something shifted inside me.

“She didn’t do you justice.”

We started seeing each other regularly, if “dating” is the right word.

We met for dinners. Walked by the beach. Went to movies and sat shoulder to shoulder in the dark, and I would forget he couldn’t hear the dialogue. He watched subtitles and sometimes squeezed my hand at romantic moments, as if the emotion reached him through contact.

I enrolled in real sign language classes after work. Richard was gentle with my mistakes, correcting my hand shapes with warm fingers, showing me how to sign love, tomorrow, beautiful. He was patient, steady, present.

His mother, Dorothy, was delighted.

She hosted us for Sunday dinners at her large house in Los Gatos. She watched us sign across the table with tears in her eyes.

“I was terrified he’d never find anyone,” she told me once when Richard stepped outside to “take a call.” I later learned he was just checking his pager.

“After the accident, he pulled away from everyone. He stopped seeing friends. He ended things with Julia, his girlfriend. She claimed she couldn’t handle being with someone deaf. Can you imagine how heartless that is?”

I couldn’t.

Back then, I thought about Julia often. I pictured her as shallow, selfish, cruel. I couldn’t imagine leaving someone you loved over a disability.

Eight months into our relationship, Richard proposed. Not with words, because he couldn’t speak.

Or so I believed.

He took me to the beach at sunset and wrote in the sand in huge letters:

Will you marry me, Margaret?

I cried. I signed yes again and again, hands shaking, heart wide open. When he slid a diamond ring onto my finger, a ring so beautiful it probably cost more than anything I’d ever owned, I truly believed I was the luckiest woman alive.

We married three months later in a small chapel in Napa Valley.

It was intimate. Beautiful. Just close family and friends. A sign language interpreter stood beside us during the ceremony. I signed my vows with tears pouring down my face.

I believed I had found my person. A man who saw me beyond my age and status. A man who made communication slow and intentional, every word written or signed with care. A man whose silence felt like peace.

On our wedding night, part of me expected him to speak.

Like in a story where the spell breaks and everything changes.

But Richard remained silent.

He communicated with his hands. In sign language and in other ways I won’t describe. I fell asleep feeling loved and safe and chosen.

We moved into a home in Palo Alto. A real home. Backyard. Guest room. An office where I could spread out my blueprints.

Richard’s company was thriving. More than thriving. People were talking about going public within a year.

I started cutting back my hours at the architecture firm.

Dorothy suggested it, and Richard agreed enthusiastically in his silent way.

“You’ll want to be home more once babies come,” Dorothy said over dinner, patting my hand like she’d already decided my future.

Four months after the wedding, I got pregnant.

We weren’t actively trying, but we weren’t preventing it either. When I saw the two pink lines, I ran to Richard’s office, crying and laughing, fumbling my signs until I finally just held the test in front of him.

His face lit up. He pulled me into his lap, kissed me, held me so tightly I could barely breathe. Then he signed carefully:

You’ll be a wonderful mother.

Pregnancy hit me harder than I expected.

Morning sickness that lasted all day. Exhaustion that made working feel impossible.

At five months, I quit my job.

It was the commute, the long hours, the site visits, the strain. Richard made more than enough for both of us. Dorothy was thrilled.

“Now you can focus on what matters,” she said while helping me fold tiny onesies in what would become the nursery. “Being a wife and mother. That’s a woman’s true purpose.”

I was folding a yellow onesie with little ducks on it, feeling the baby kick, when a question rose up.

“Dorothy,” I asked, “did you work after you had Richard?”

“Oh no,” she said immediately. “Richard’s father wouldn’t have allowed that. A man needs to know his wife is keeping the home.”

She always called him “Richard’s father,” never her ex-husband. They divorced when Richard was in college, a scandal she rarely discussed. Something in her tone that day made my skin prickle.

“Well, Richard and I agreed this was best,” I said firmly, even though we hadn’t truly agreed.

We’d written about it. Signed about it. But was that the same as a full, honest conversation?

Could you really have a full conversation with someone you’d only known a year, through notes and signs and assumptions?

Then came the moment.

I was six months pregnant, tired and hormonal, making dinner. Grilled chicken and vegetables, Richard’s favorite. I’d just written him a note asking if he wanted white or red wine with dinner, even though I couldn’t drink. I was clinging to normalcy, trying to be the right kind of wife.

Richard walked into the kitchen and came up behind me, so close I could feel the heat of him.

I held the note up over my shoulder.

And then he spoke.

“Margaret, I need to tell you something.”

The paper fell from my hand.

The world narrowed. The kitchen lights seemed too bright.

I turned slowly, my belly brushing the counter.

Richard stood there, looking at me, his mouth moving, sound coming out. Real sound. Real words.

“I’m not deaf,” he said. “I never was.”

My mind wouldn’t accept it. The words didn’t fit into reality.

My deaf husband was speaking.

My deaf husband was telling me he had never been deaf.

“I can hear you perfectly,” he continued, voice deep and smooth and educated. “I’ve been able to hear everything this whole time.”

My legs went soft. I grabbed the counter.

The baby kicked hard, like my body’s panic had reached her too.

“What?” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure sound even came out.

“Let me explain,” he said.

“What?” I said again, louder, finally sure my voice was real. “What did you just say?”

He lifted his hands, palms out. A gesture that used to feel gentle, but now felt like warning.

“Please,” he said. “Let me explain. There’s a reason.”

“You’re not deaf,” I repeated, trying to force my brain to accept it.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

“The motorcycle accident?” I asked. “That never happened?”

“I did have an accident at nineteen,” he said quickly. “But it was nothing. Road rash. I was fine.”

It felt like I was watching myself from outside my body.

“You lied to me,” I said. “For almost two years.”

“It wasn’t exactly lying,” he said, weakly. “It was… a test.”

A test.

The word floated between us like poison.

“A test,” I echoed. My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.

“My mother’s idea,” he said. “After Julia left me, I was wrecked. I thought we’d marry. Then she walked away. Said I was too focused on work. Not romantic. Not exciting.”

His words came faster now, spilling out like something he’d been holding back for months.

Which he had. He’d been listening to everything all along.

“My mother said I needed someone who’d love me for who I truly was,” he continued. “Not my money. Not my status. Someone kind. Someone patient. Someone who wouldn’t run when things got hard.”

“So you created a fake disability,” I said, numb. “To audition women like a role?”

“We made a plan,” he said. “I’d pretend I was deaf. If a woman couldn’t handle it, couldn’t learn sign language, got frustrated with the barrier, she wasn’t right.”

“And the woman who did stick around,” I said, voice sharpening, “was the winner.”

He flinched.

“Someone who learned,” he said. “Someone who stayed. That meant something.”

“You found her,” I said flatly. “Congratulations.”

“Margaret—”

“Did Dorothy know?” I asked. “Your mother. Did she know the entire time?”

He hesitated. A flicker. But it was enough.

My stomach dropped.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

I stepped back, hands flying to my belly.

“She knew,” I said. “She knew, and she watched. The tears at dinner. The way she praised me for accepting her ‘disabled’ son. She was acting. She was helping run the performance.”

“She was trying to help,” he said desperately. “She was trying to help me.”

“By trapping a lonely woman into marriage?” I shouted. “By letting me learn a whole language for a lie? By letting me quit my career because I believed my husband couldn’t hear? By letting me build my life around a story you made up?”

“You chose to learn,” he said. “You chose to quit.”

“Because I thought you were deaf!” I screamed.

It tore out of me like something ripped from inside.

“I thought you needed me to adjust. I thought I was supporting you. I thought I was being a good wife to a man with a disability.”

My voice cracked.

“But you don’t have a disability. You have a mother who treats people like pieces on a board. And you went along with it.”

Richard’s face went pale.

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“Fair?” I laughed, sharp and ugly. “You want to talk about fair?”

“I learned an entire language,” I said. “I walked away from my career. I’m carrying your child. I’m six months pregnant and you’ve been lying to me for two years.”

He tried to speak and failed.

“I wasn’t lying to your face,” he said weakly, then immediately sounded ashamed of the words.

“Get out,” I said.

“Margaret, please.”

“Get out of my house.”

“It’s our house,” he insisted.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Go to your mother. You two can keep testing people together.”

He left.

He actually left.

He took his keys and walked out, and I stood in the kitchen while the chicken burned on the stove and my life fell apart in complete silence.

I don’t remember much of that night clearly.

I know I called my sister Catherine, crying so hard she couldn’t understand me at first. She drove over and found me on the kitchen floor, surrounded by my sign language books, ripping pages out like I could tear the lie itself into pieces.

“He’s not deaf,” I kept repeating. “He never was. It was fake. All of it.”

Catherine held me while I shook.

Then the thought hit me like a second betrayal.

“I have to call Mom,” I said.

Catherine tried to stop me. “Maybe tomorrow.”

But I was already dialing.

My mother answered cheerfully.

“Margaret! I wasn’t expecting a call tonight. How’s my son-in-law?”

“Did you know?” I asked.

Silence.

“Mom,” I said again, voice shaking. “Did you know?”

“Know what, honey?” she tried.

“That Richard isn’t deaf,” I said. “That he’s been pretending. That this entire thing was a test.”

More silence.

Then, softly, “Dorothy mentioned they wanted to make sure Richard married someone committed for the right reasons.”

I hung up.

On my own mother.

I threw the phone across the room and listened to it shatter against the wall.

“She knew,” I told Catherine. “She knew I was being played, and she went along with it. She wanted me married so badly she helped them trap me.”

Catherine’s voice broke. “Oh, Maggie.”

That nickname. Maggie. Only Catherine called me that. Not Richard. Not Dorothy. Not my mother. Just Catherine.

“What do I do?” I whispered. “I’m six months pregnant. I quit my job. My savings went into this house. I can’t just…”

I couldn’t finish because I didn’t even know what I meant.

Leave. Stay. Start over. Collapse.

I was thirty-three, pregnant, unemployed, and my marriage was built on a lie.

Catherine stayed with me for days.

Richard called constantly. I didn’t answer. He showed up at the door and I told him through the wood that if he didn’t leave, I’d call the police.

He left letters. Long handwritten explanations and apologies and pleas.

I burned them without reading.

Dorothy came too. I refused to open the door.

“Margaret, be reasonable,” she called. “You’re carrying my grandchild. We need to talk like adults.”

“You lied to me,” I shouted back. “You watched me struggle. You watched me quit. You cried at our wedding like you were grateful someone accepted your ‘damaged’ son. You knew it was all a test.”

“We were protecting Richard,” she insisted.

“You were controlling him,” I snapped. “Controlling who he married. Making sure she was compliant enough, grateful enough, patient enough to tolerate whatever you decided.”

She left, but she kept calling.

Richard kept calling too.

My mother called as well, but I didn’t answer her either.

I was alone with my rage and my grief.

Because it was grief.

The man I thought I married didn’t exist. The relationship I built was with a story. Every written note, every signed conversation, every moment I thought was intimate and intentional felt contaminated.

Had he laughed at me when I practiced signs? When I messed up? When I tried so hard?

Did he find it entertaining that I didn’t figure it out?

And worse, did I truly know who Richard Hayes was at all?

If he could lie about something that big, what else was false?

Catherine worried about the baby.

“You’re not eating,” she said. “You’re not sleeping. This stress isn’t good.”

“None of this is good,” I said.

Then she said something I wasn’t ready for.

“You have to talk to him. Work something out. You’re married. You’re having his child.”

“I don’t even know if I want to stay married,” I said.

The words sat in the air like a verdict.

Catherine looked stunned. “Maggie, you don’t mean that.”

But I did. Or I thought I did.

I didn’t know what I meant anymore.

Dr. Patricia Chen was the therapist Catherine found. She was calm, in her fifties, and worked with complicated relationship trauma.

I liked that she didn’t call it “marriage counseling.” I didn’t want to fix the marriage. I wanted to understand whether it deserved to live.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

So I did. Everything. My mother’s pressure. Richard. The sign language. The job. The pregnancy. The reveal.

When I finished, she said quietly, “That is a profound betrayal.”

I cried again, like my body didn’t know how to stop.

“He says it was a test to find someone who loved him for himself,” I said.

“And how does that make you feel?” she asked.

“Like I was a contestant in a game I didn’t know I was playing,” I said.

Dr. Chen nodded. “Your consent was violated. You entered that relationship under false assumptions.”

Finally, someone said it clearly.

Then she asked something that startled me.

“In those months before you married him,” she said, leaning forward, “did you love him?”

“Of course,” I said. “That’s why I married him.”

“Why did you love him?” she asked gently.

“Because he was kind,” I said. “Thoughtful. Patient. And because he was deaf.”

I froze.

“No,” I rushed. “Not because of that.”

She held my gaze. “Are you sure? Because the man you describe, the deaf version of Richard, had qualities shaped by the situation. He was quiet. He communicated deliberately. He couldn’t interrupt or talk over you. He had to appear to listen to every word you wrote or signed.”

I struggled to speak.

“I’m not judging you,” Dr. Chen said. “I’m saying attraction is complicated. Sometimes we fall in love with what we project onto someone, not who they truly are.”

Was I in love with his silence? With the safety of a man who couldn’t openly criticize me? With the relief of not hearing disappointment in his voice the way I heard it in others when they saw my age and independence?

“He still lied,” I said finally.

“Yes,” she said. “And that’s not acceptable. But the question now isn’t whether it was wrong. It was. The question is what you want to do next.”

By then, I was seven months pregnant. My belly huge, ankles swollen, living at Catherine’s house because I couldn’t be in Palo Alto alone. Richard offered to keep paying bills. I refused.

Taking money felt like swallowing the lie.

“I don’t know if I can ever trust him,” I admitted.

“That’s reasonable,” Dr. Chen said. “Trust is hard to rebuild. Sometimes impossible. But if both people commit to the work, it can happen.”

“What work?” I asked.

“Total transparency,” she said. “Accountability. Brutal honesty. And time.”

I drove home and put my hand over my belly when the baby kicked.

“What do you think?” I whispered. “Do we give your father a chance?”

Another kick.

I took it as an answer. Or maybe it was just my nerves. But I listened anyway.

Richard came to therapy the next week.

It was the first time I’d seen him in a month. He looked wrecked. Thinner. Shadows under his eyes. His suit wrinkled.

He started signing automatically, then stopped himself.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “Habit.”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare use sign language with me again.”

His hands dropped.

“Okay,” he said.

Dr. Chen set rules. I could ask anything. He had to answer honestly. No walking out. And we both had to return.

I asked the first question.

“Why? Not the polished story. Not the ‘true love’ line. Why did you do this to me?”

He stared at his hands, then looked at me.

“Because I’m a coward,” he said.

I didn’t expect that.

“Julia didn’t leave because I wasn’t romantic,” he said. “She left because I’m boring. I’m good with numbers and computers, but I’m bad with people. Social situations drain me. I never know what to say. I’m awkward.”

“So you chose to say nothing at all,” I said.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Pretending to be deaf gave me an excuse,” he continued. “I didn’t have to make conversation. I didn’t have to perform charm. People thought I was brave instead of strange. And I liked that.”

“And I was what?” I asked. “Your proof that you could be loved if you made it hard enough?”

“No,” he said quickly, then swallowed. “You were… incredible. Smart. Talented. Beautiful. Out of my league. But as the deaf version of me, I had a chance. You saw someone who needed you, and I used that. I took advantage because I was scared and selfish.”

“You did take advantage,” I said. “You stole nearly two years of my life.”

“I know,” he said.

“You watched me quit my career.”

“I know.”

“If you want to go back,” he said, voice shaking, “I’ll support it. Money, childcare, whatever you need.”

“I’m about to have a baby,” I said. “I can’t start over overnight.”

“Then later,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready. I’ll hire help. I’ll take leave. Anything.”

Dr. Chen stopped him.

“You can’t erase consequences with money,” she said. “You can’t buy back trust.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But I want to try, if she’ll let me.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

We went to therapy weekly. Sometimes twice.

He answered everything.

Did he laugh when I signed badly? Yes. Sometimes.

Did he read my private journal? No, he said, and he looked genuinely hurt I’d ask.

Did he love me? Yes, with tears in his eyes.

I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t know how to make belief safe again.

At eight months, I moved back to the Palo Alto house.

Not Catherine’s house.

The house Richard bought. The house we lived in. Our house, in whatever way it could still be called that.

But I set rules.

He slept in the guest room. We were not “together.” We were two people living under one roof until I knew what I wanted.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Whatever you need.”

Three weeks later, the baby came.

A girl. Healthy. Loud. Perfect.

They placed her on my chest and I looked up to see Richard crying in the corner of the delivery room.

“Do you want to hold her?” I asked.

He nodded, unable to speak, truly unable for once because emotion had closed his throat.

I handed her to him and watched his face change into something I’d never seen.

Wonder.

Pure, unfiltered wonder.

“She’s perfect,” he whispered.

“She’s ours,” I said.

We named her Claire. Claire Margaret Hayes.

And she changed everything.

Not instantly.

I was still furious. Still hurt. Still unsure whether forgiveness was possible.

But Claire needed both of us.

And in those brutal early weeks of feedings at midnight and diapers and exhaustion so deep it felt like drowning, Richard was there.

He was steady with Claire’s crying. Calm when I fell apart. Competent when I was terrified I’d fail.

“You’re good at this,” I said one night at two a.m. when Claire finally slept after an hour of screaming.

“I had to be,” he said. “I already failed you. I couldn’t fail her too.”

We kept seeing Dr. Chen, sometimes with Claire sleeping in a carrier through the sessions.

Slowly, painfully, we started building something new.

Not the relationship we had before. That one was dead.

Something honest.

“I’m still angry,” I told him six months after Claire was born.

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t know if it ever goes away.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t get to control my timeline,” I told him. “You controlled enough already.”

“I understand,” he said.

And somehow, he proved it. He gave space when I needed it. He showed up when I needed that instead. He started individual therapy, digging into whatever made him think deception was an acceptable foundation for love.

His mother was another battle.

I didn’t speak to Dorothy for a year.

She called, mailed cards, left messages. I ignored all of it.

When Claire was fourteen months old, I agreed to meet her for coffee.

Dorothy looked older, more fragile, but she didn’t hide behind softness.

“I owe you an apology,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “You do.”

“I believed I was helping Richard,” she admitted. “But I was really trying to control his life because I couldn’t control my own marriage. I hurt you terribly. I’m sorry.”

It would never be enough. But it was something.

“If you want a relationship with your granddaughter,” I said carefully, “you need to understand I am not the obedient, grateful daughter-in-law you imagined. I have boundaries. I have a voice. And I won’t tolerate manipulation.”

“I understand,” she said.

“You need therapy,” I added. “Real therapy. Whatever made you think that test was acceptable can’t be anywhere near my child.”

Dorothy looked stunned, but she nodded.

“I’ll find someone,” she said.

And she did. She started therapy. She worked on control issues. It didn’t rewrite the past, but it made family gatherings possible.

My mother was harder.

She insisted she was only trying to help and claimed she didn’t know how far Richard’s deception went.

We’re polite now, but something broke between us and never fully healed.

Richard and I had a second child three years after Claire. A boy we named James.

And somehow, through two kids and no sleep and endless laundry and the chaos of real life, we found our way into something that resembled love.

Not the fairy tale I wanted at thirty-two.

Something rougher. More honest. More real.

On our ten-year anniversary, we renewed our vows.

Small ceremony. Just us, the kids, and a few close friends.

No interpreter. Just spoken words.

“I promise I’ll never lie to you again,” Richard said. “Even when the truth is uncomfortable. Even when it makes me look bad. Even when I’m scared.”

“I promise to keep choosing you,” I said. “Even when I’m angry. Even when I remember. Even when leaving would be easier.”

That was twenty-eight years ago.

We’re sixty-eight and sixty-five now.

Claire is married and has two children. James recently got engaged.

Richard and I are still here. Still working. Still choosing.

It hasn’t been simple.

Some mornings I still feel the ghost of that betrayal. Sometimes I look at him across the breakfast table and I’m back in that kitchen, watching the note fall, watching my life crack open.

Some days I wonder what my life would have looked like if I’d left. If I’d started over. If I’d never forgiven him.

Then I remember Claire’s wedding last year, watching Richard walk her down the aisle with tears streaming down his face.

I remember James calling his dad for advice about rings.

I remember quiet evenings on the porch, his hand in mine, talking about nothing and everything.

We talk now. We actually talk. About fears and feelings and mistakes. About the past and the future and the messy present. In ways I never did with the silent man I believed I married.

And sometimes I think Dr. Chen was right.

Maybe I fell in love with a version of Richard I helped create in my head. Maybe he fell in love with a version of me too, the endlessly patient woman who would accept whatever he presented.

But we stayed long enough to meet each other for real. And we made the decision, over and over, to love those real people instead.

Was it worth it?

I don’t always know.

Some days I think yes.

Some days I think no.

But it is my life.

The one I chose.

The one I still choose.