I’ve blamed my wife, silently, for every single thing I didn’t do with my life. The music, the move to Oregon, the business I talked about starting in 1997 and never did—I’ve kept all of it filed under her name, even though she has never known she was holding the file. She never once stopped me. That’s what I can’t get past when I’m being honest. She would have said yes to all of it. I’ve always known that, and I needed her to be the reason anyway because the alternative was admitting that I was the one who chose not to go.
For twenty-eight years, I’ve looked across the kitchen at my wife and felt something rise in me that I called disappointment. It took me most of those years to realize it was actually accusation. Every unfinished song, every abandoned plan, every opportunity I didn’t take became another quiet reason to resent her. She didn’t even know there was a trial happening. I had turned my own fear into a crime my wife was somehow responsible for.
She never once told me I couldn’t go. She never told me to give up the music. She never said we couldn’t move. She never said the business was a bad idea. In fact, when I mentioned those things, she was usually the one asking what I needed to make them happen. But I didn’t follow through, and instead of admitting that I was afraid, I made her existence the explanation for my inaction. It was easier to resent a woman who loved me than to admit I had been the person standing in my own way.
She found the old notebooks in the loft this spring. The plans, the songs, the business notes—all of it was in one box. She was delighted. She sat on the floor going through everything for almost an hour, smiling at the things I’d written decades ago. Then she looked up at me and asked why I’d stopped. I almost gave her the answer I’d rehearsed for years. Instead, I finally told her the truth: “Because I was afraid, and blaming you was easier than admitting that.” She stared at me for a long time and said, “I knew you were afraid. I just never knew you were making me carry it.”
