ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 46: The Great Unsaid

Ernie didn’t reveal his true thinking about me and about the way I made him feel because he feared this truth would destroy me, or anger me, or turn me against him. He didn’t want to break up the marriage because he didn’t want to be alone. That, he couldn’t risk.

I didn’t tell him what I was really thinking and feeling because I either didn’t know or didn’t want to “hurt” him.

In this way we stayed trapped in deceit. We stayed stuck. And we did what we didn’t want to do: we hurt each other. And we were what we didn’t want to be: alone in our misery.

In our co-dependency, Ernie was the over-responsible one, often neglecting himself to direct Joshua’s life and mine — offering plans, suggestions, recommendations. He needed to be needed. That made him feel indispensable. We would never abandon him if he was indispensable, right?

I needed to be needed and also to be taken care of, and I blamed Ernie if anything went awry. In the end, as he lay dying in our bed, unable to even turn himself, I shouted at him: “Why did you even marry me?” If he hadn’t married me, I wouldn’t be feeling this pain, right? I said to him: “Do you have to do everything the hardest way possible? Do you even have to die in the hardest way possible?”

He didn’t answer me. How could he? To fully respond to each other wasn’t in our history.

The Great Silence. This is what I am finally hearing.

The Great Unsaid. This is what I am finally saying.