Clearly, my mother was wrong.
I hated my own face and skin. I hated my negative thoughts and the tears that dripped down my cheeks every night in the shed. I hated everything and felt no reason to live anymore. I wanted to die.
Mama was wrong about therapy, and I accepted that for a fact as soon as Dr. Walden opened his door and smiled at me. He was an older man—most likely in his sixties. But there was a warmth to him as he stood in his turtleneck sweater and khakis, smiling and revealing wrinkles in his brown face. His smile was big and wide and genuine and I felt this urge to jump up and hug him and that said a lot because I didn’t even know him yet.
And when he said my name, “Melanie Raine,” I sobbed because for the first time in a long time I felt seen. I had given him my maiden name and he’d used it, and it’d been a very long time since I’d heard the name Raine. My name. The name I was born with—the name that belongs to me and makes me the woman I am.
(P.S. I know you’re reading this, Dr. Walden, but I’m following your advice and telling my story the way I remember it.)
“Please come in,” Dr. Walden said, and I felt foolish with my bottom lip trembling, my eyes thick with hot tears.
I walked past him into his office and sat on the cozy gray sofa against the wall. His office wasn’t very big—a room inside a building that collided with other random independent practices, but with the gray-blue paint on the walls, the bookshelves, and even his cluttered desk, it felt welcoming and homey in a way.
I placed my bag beside me and as he sat down in a chair across from me, he eyed it. “An expensive bag you got there,” he said, picking up a notepad and pen. “Was it a gift?”
“Oh—uh, no. I bought it for myself a couple months ago.” I glanced at the creamy chevron purse, then back at him.
“You bought it for yourself,” he noted. “Where do you work?”
“I don’t work. I get money from my husband—well, I used to. We used to share an account.”
“Really?” He wrote something on his pad. “How do you feel about that? Spending your husband’s money?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess . . . fine?”
“Fine?”
“Yes. When I was spending it, I liked shopping. He used to tell me I could buy whatever I wanted and never complained when I did.”
“He never gave you a shopping limit?”
“No.”
“Why do you not share an account now?”
“He . . . cut me off.”
“Why?”
“That’s why I’m here. To talk about that.”
“Right.” Dr. Walden finished jotting down a note, then placed his pen and paper down on the table beside him. “Melanie, in our emails, you told me you wanted to talk about your marriage. You also mentioned your past as well, but your marriage was what you spoke of most. So, tell me . . . what is it about your marriage that has been troubling you?”
I stared into his wise brown eyes, then down at my bare fingernails. “I want a divorce from him.”
“So why don’t you get one?”
“Because he won’t let me.”
“He won’t let you? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I told him I wanted one a few weeks ago, and he told me if I go anywhere he’ll make my life a living hell.” I glanced up and Dr. Walden had his notepad and pen again. He scribbled something quickly.
“Tell me more about your husband,” he said.
“What do you want to know?”
“What does he do? What’s his profession? What’s his personality like?”
“Um . . . well, he’s a pro golfer,” I said.
“Ah. Explains the purse,” said Walden, smirking.
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah. He’s been golfing since he was a teenager, went superstar mode right around the time we met.”
“Which was when?”
“About five years ago.”
“Okay. So what about his personality?”
“Well, he can be nice. Giving. Funny in a dry kind of way. He’s a great lover and really smart.”
“These are all positive things,” Walden noted. “So why do you want to divorce him?”
“Because I cheated on him.”
Walden set his pen down on the notepad and tilted his head, but he didn’t frown, didn’t narrow his eyes or look at me with judgment in them. Instead, he appeared confused and mildly stunned by my honesty.
“Normally it’s the other way around. By that, I mean when someone wants a divorce, it’s because the other person cheated and was caught, but you cheated and now you want to divorce him?”
I shrugged.
“Is it because you’ve fallen in love with another man?”
“Not exactly.”
“But he wants you to stay in the marriage? Make it work?”
“Yes, he wants me to stay, but he doesn’t care about making it work anymore. I think he just wants to make me miserable.” I brought a hand up and touched my cheek. “When I told him that I wanted a divorce, he, um . . . he grabbed my face really hard. We were on vacation and it hit me that he deserved better and that I wasn’t happy in our marriage anymore, so I thought I would spare his time, walk away . . .”