"When I was fifteen, I wrote poetry about a boy I had a crush on. He was a mean popular kid, but I was fifteen and I didn't care. I didn't know then that it would be a pattern, to love boys who were mean to me. When I started writing again as an adult, it was to subdue the sadness I had inside. I wrote about Connor. All the things we could never say to each other's faces. I pretended the typewriter I bought was for show. A new prop for the house.

“Our home was decorated in warm colors. I started working on it when I was warmer. Nothing inside our home back then matched my inside. I want stark white, nothingness. The black typewriter would look beautiful in a white room with nothing but a blue desk. But no, my house was warm reds and tans, a constant reminder of the days when I had hope. That he would marry me and we would create a family here. I kept the typewriter in my office. I typed away when Connor was gone on business trips for his new job. I stashed the little papers I typed in a box behind the file cabinet.”

"Were you afraid of what he would realize if he read your words?"

"Yes. He would see the truth. He barely looked into my eyes back then. When he came home, I didn't hug him. I didn't kiss him. And he didn't complain. I said ‘hello’ and ‘how was your trip’ and his monotone voice filled the space between us. It was vapor, stagnant."

"What did you do with the words you wrote on those little papers?"

"I never thought about posting my poems online. It seemed like a stupid idea. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a lot of things – an actress, a vet, a writer, a poet. I let my dreams slip away because my anxiety was a bigger monster than they were. It crashed into the room of my heart and soul and left no room for the things I desired.

Connor had been gone for a five-day trip when I posted a piece online for the first time. Having it go viral was not in the cards. I had already been working on my first novel for years. I was getting nowhere. The story was too big, too personal. I modeled my character after myself and that was a mistake. It was the only way to tell the story of what my stepfather had done to me, but I couldn't work my way through it. I put it aside for months at a time. I picked a pseudonym from the beginning. Something to hide behind. When I posted my poem, I used that same name. Then I saw it spreading across the internet like wildfire. Every day more people followed my new poetry social media account no one knew about. Not Kate. Not my mother. Not Connor. I was too embarrassed to tell them. It was too raw, the words I was posting."

"But that made it easier, right? To hide behind the name?"

"Yes. How could that ever be the real me? Posting my feelings online when I wouldn't dare utter to them to the man who was supposed to love me more than anyone in the world? The man who ignored me, left the room when family asked when we were going to finally get married?"

"Maybe things would have been different if you had opened up to him then."

I laugh. “Yes, maybe, but he didn't deserve to see my secrets. I trusted strangers with them more than him. They couldn't use them or wound me. But he didn't need random words typed on a paper to wound me. He did it best in his absence. His silence. I should have never moved in. I missed my trailer and the freedom I felt there. I missed knowing that no matter how much someone hurt me, I could just shut them out, turn off my phone, lock my doors. I didn't have that escape there, in the home we shared. I did on the days Connor was gone, but when he was home it was a delicate balancing act. A tightrope tango. Pretending nothing was wrong. Crying in the shower, hoping he wouldn't hear."

"You really think he didn't see how unhappy you were?"

"I know he did. He told me later, after I left him. How do two people become so lost from each other? So distant? Maybe he looked at me differently. It had been over two years since I told him about the abuse right before we moved in together. Was it the truth that drove the wedge between us? Was it living together? Were we simply just not a good match?"

"Do you believe sometimes it just comes down to that? Two people who love each other but are just not a good match? What about work? It sounds like neither of you were putting in the work."

"You're right. We weren't. But I couldn't go, yet. For all the ice I had around me, I couldn't handle the thought of leaving him alone. I would bury myself in a grave of loneliness and despair if it meant he wouldn't hurt. Is that love? That kind of sacrifice? I didn't want to be the woman who sacrificed herself for others. I wanted to be as selfish as I damned myself for being.”

"Do you still damn yourself for being selfish?"

"Yes. And him, too. I was too afraid to be without him so I let us live this gross lie, he did it ,too. He felt it, I knew. He wouldn't let go either. Maybe we deserved each other and that brutal torment."

"What was your biggest fear?"

"Becoming one of them. Every woman I saw, the ones I pitied. In a loveless marriage, loathing their partner. I was no better than those I damned."