I was trapped inside myself. Each day I would go to a job that I hated and come back to a house that didn’t feel like mine and I would drink too much, climbing into a small, dark hole made for one.

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I asked if it was O.K. with you if I quit my job and went to Arizona for a few months, just so I could spend some time alone, to write and think and find my foundation, the bedrock that had been surgically cut and irradiated out of me.

“No,” you said. “It’s not O.K. We’re married. We’re here. I need you to stay.”

I didn’t know it then, but I needed to stay too. I thought I wanted to be alone but what I really wanted was for you to be free of me. I wanted you to be able to move on and to have what I couldn’t give you.

But I know now that you never saw it that way. When my cancer was diagnosed, you never once stopped to think about how your life might be affected by the loss of my fertility. You only thought about me, and what I needed. So you slept beside me each night in the hospital, and went home each morning to shower and walk the dog. You worked all day, went back home to the dog, and then to Whole Foods so I wouldn’t have to eat hospital food, and then came back to the hospital, and slept beside me once more. I was drugged and swollen. I didn’t realize how long the days were, or what it must have taken you to keep going. This is why you now say “we went through cancer.” Not “she,” not “Lauren,” but us, together.

Last year we were in Japan, hiking the Kumano Kodo, when it got dark. I was angry with you for causing us to miss the bus that took us to the trailhead, for causing us to spend four additional hours hiking the ancient pilgrimage route under the weight of our heavy packs. My knees, hips and shoulders were in excruciating pain. I decided I couldn’t take another step. I started to cry. I was desperate and exhausted. “Leave me here,” I said through tears.

“Wait,” you said, and shifted your pack onto your chest, and took my pack and lifted it onto your back. Together, we descended the slippery rocks, hand-in-hand. I pointed my flashlight at our feet, and you used yours to illuminate the path ahead.

It’s been 10 years since the cancer. And those sad years that followed feel almost like another sickness I went through, a fever or drug interaction. I still have no idea why you stayed. Why you tolerated me. But I’m glad you did.

Nobody tells you how long marriage is. When you fall in love, when you have fun with somebody, when you enjoy the way they see the world, nobody ever says, “This person will change. And so you will be married to two, three, four, five or 10 people throughout the course of your life, as you live out your vows.” Nobody warns you. But you, my dear. There is something deep and hard and lasting inside of you. And I wish I had known, when I was searching again for my bedrock, that all I had to do was reach out my hand.