Dear Adrienne,

Will you forgive me?

I just discovered this website with the story of everything you have gone through in recent months. It took me some time to believe it was you who was writing under this assumed name. I read it with growing shame.

When we first met, I saw myself reflected. Everything I wasn’t, you were: beautiful, light, a healer of hearts. For years I was completed in you. Then one day I woke up to realize you weren’t there anymore.

Somewhere in the diapers and the takeout cartons, we had lost each other’s pulse. I still caught glimpses sometimes of your thoughts as you pulled nylons on in the morning, or I heard your whisper before we said goodnight.

I tried in my clumsy way to get through to you, to find time for us to be alone together. But there was always an appointment at the hospital, a patient, a fundraiser, a deadline that came first. We had become partners in the business of affording good schools, colleagues in putting pizza on the table, coworkers in paying the mortgage, no longer together in nourishing each other.

I got up from our bed one night and stumbled to our computer where a few taps took me out across the globe. There were thousands of women there. And their faces turned to me. When I spoke, Zulya answered. She has nothing on you, Adrienne. Not your poise, not your dedication, not your energy, your power to do good. But she was willing to entertain a conversation, and I needed that all these days and evenings alone.

The night you came to Zulya’s apartment was meant to be our last. I only went there to break up with her, face to face. I should thank you for bringing the children, because I saw in their expressions what I was doing wrong. I realized how much I need them, how much they need us to be together.

But it’s not only them. In these days since you’ve been gone, I’ve realized how much I depend on you. Every day you get up knowing what needs to be done, for your patients, for our kids, for our life. If you didn’t always have the time for me I wanted, it was only because you were using it to save someone else’s life. I should never have held that against you.

I know I’ve said some things in my phone messages that I shouldn’t have said. I was desperate, lost. I know I have no right to expect your forgiveness. But if ever you find the generosity to talk to me again, I will be here waiting.

And I love you.

Charlie