Dear Husband,

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."

-Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

It makes me very sad that I'm feeling compelled to write letters to you again. When I'm wanting to write to you, it means that I'm feeling like it's impossible to find you, like you're lost to me. I see you there. I see your body. I see your face. I see your eyes, hurting. But I can't see you, and I'm sure you can't see me. I see someone who is hurting me. You see someone who is hurting you. We don't see each other, and it makes it worse.

I don't know how to move past this part, but I hope that we can. More than anything, I want our marriage. I want it in my guts. I want it all over me on the outside and all the way down in the deepest most inside part of me. I want our life together to work, and I spend every day in fear that I'm losing you.

After talking to each other this morning, I left the house and started thinking about all the things we said and how much we keep hurting each other. I don't want to hurt you, and I don't think you want to hurt me, but we can't seem to stop. It's like our words leave our mouths and change, and what we meant to say falls away before it reaches the other. All that's left is a cold, hard thing, sharp-edged. It's all pain, fear, shame, guilt. It's awful, and it has to stop.

I wonder what is the other option, and I wonder how we'll find it. There has to be another way. There must be a way to make this relationship possible. I love you. You love me. We're both hurting, and we're both feeling alone. It doesn't make sense that we should feel this way when we spend every day and night together. It doesn't make sense to hurt separately when we could drop the walls and fall into each other's arms.

What if we both stopped considering separation as a possibility? What if we decided, together, that it's not possible not to be together, and it's not possible to keep doing this anymore. What if we decided that from this day forward, we were going to give this relationship everything we've got...that we were both going to make sure that each day, we both did our very best to regard one another with loving kindness, compassion, and the deep affection that keeps us tied together in spite of all the pain we've experienced? I am willing to try.

I love you, and I'm sorry for my part in all of this.

Your Wife.