I shut down all communication. I lock myself in the bathroom once a day and cut myself with a broken Bic razor. Aaron discovers this while I'm walking around naked one day, after a shower. I let him know in so many words that he's responsible. His clinginess and suspicion, and constant, low-grade criticism of me—compounding my burden as our home's primary breadwinner—have driven me to this extreme; it is my only outlet. I begin taking notes toward a memoir about leaving my husband, hoping I will force myself to finish it, but weeks go by and I can't seem to turn my rough outline into prose.
I don't communicate with Daniel. I act like he doesn't exist. I continue to deny ever seeing him that night, and assume he corroborates my story because we don't hear from Heidi—it's as if we were never sort-of-friends with them.
When we see their baby on Instagram, we don't discuss it. We broke the lock on the bathroom door during one of our fights, so I announce aloud when I have to shit. Aaron comes in anyway to get something from the cabinet. A turd plops. He proceeds to retrieve the item. A small animal has been moving through my colon since the morning after I slept with Daniel. I've learned from WebMD that I can in fact be constipated while having chronic diarrhea because the liquid flows around the obstructions.
The discomfort of constipation blends with the lingering tenderness of my pelvic floor muscles from the abortion. A hemorrhoid on my anus has healed with a flap of skin remaining behind like a flag. I tried to remove it by cutting off blood flow with dental floss, but this only served to cause an infection and has left behind an open sore. Aaron still tries to rim me, which is painful and humiliating, but I can only bring myself to admit this sometimes, trying to spare the last of his manhood.
I'm repelled by the thought of having any kind of sex with him, but if I turn him down two days in a row, he starts crying, and though I think of myself as someone who is comfortable with men crying, I've found this to only be true in theory.
