It took me four hours to fall asleep last night.

Once upon a time, I could fall asleep by just putting my head on my pillow. When I was married to Ljubica and her mistreatment was especially severe, I would sometimes have a hard time falling asleep. I would lie in bed angry, frustrated, or simply despondent. I would occupy the narrowest sliver of the mattress, nearest the edge of my side of the bed, and try to sleep. Thoughts would race through my head. “Doesn’t she know that I love her?” “Why is she treating me this way.” Sometimes I would despair of life and dread what the morning might bring. Often I would long simply to reach out to her, to hold her in my arms, or even to hold her hand. To know that she was there, that somehow I was accepted, that somehow I was still hers. But I didn’t move. And I couldn’t sleep.

Sometimes I would get out of bed and lie on the floor in the living room. Then I would get cold, go back to bed, and reoccupy my place on the edge. Sometimes I would get up and drink a glass of wine or even a shot of whiskey to hasten sleep. And next to me would lie she-who-cannot-be-touched.

It took me four hours to fall asleep last night. I tossed and I turned. I changed positions. I tried everything but sleep would not come. My mind was a torrent of untamed thoughts filled with the past year’s haunting pain and horror.

When we were together, in order to cope with her abuse, I learned to forget her mistreatment of me but remember my own failures. I believed the lie that I am bad but she is good, that I am unreasonable but she is reasonable. I learned to forget her abuse. “What she did wasn’t so bad,” I would tell myself. But mostly I tried not to think about it at all. Even today my mind mitigate her abuse while accentuating my own faults. “Maybe you were wrong, maybe you were wrong, maybe you were wrong,” it tells me. “Maybe I need to ask her to forgive me. Maybe I need to seek reconciliation. Maybe I need to repent…,” my mind says. “Maybe we need to get back together…,” I think. Or something inside of me thinks. Is it from within or without? Whose voice is it, really?

Sleep does not come. The wall behind which hide the memories of her abuse cracks and crumbles. I am flooded by memories of mistreatment. I am waylaid. I am cut open and my guts spill out. I recall all the times she left without leaving, left without leaving, left without leaving. The times she denied my love, denied my love, denied my love. “You don’t love me, you don’t love me, you don’t love me,” she says. “I’m leaving you; I’ve left you; you’re nothing to me; you’re nothing more than a pile of cow shit to me.” I feel the weight of her words on my soul. My heart is encased in stone. It struggles to beat against the calcified deposits of dismissive and hateful words.

“Reconciliation?” I think. I would rather be dead. I told our minister once, “Nothing terrifies me more than the prospect of being married to Ljubica.” It was true then, and it is still true. I would rather die. Fear makes my body tremble.

Sleep still does not come….