I once thought the end of our marriage was a clear line: love on one side, betrayal on the other. Now I see it was drawn in shadows neither of us knew how to name. His letter didn’t erase the hurt of those unexplained nights or the loneliness of leaving a life we had built together. But it revealed a man who was terrified of becoming a burden, who chose secrecy over the possibility of being seen as weak. I had mistaken his fear for indifference, his distance for rejection.

I still grieve what we lost—the years we spent apart, the conversations we never had, the chance to walk through his illness together. Yet I also carry a quieter understanding: that love is not always loud or brave, and sometimes the worst wounds come from what is never spoken. I didn’t misjudge his heart; I misjudged his silence. Now, when I think of him, it is not as a villain in my story, but as someone who was just as afraid as I was, and who never found the words to say so.