There comes a time where you have to make a decision. Where everything that’s stewing inside of your head boils to the surface and starts to overflow.

At first it’s only a drop here and there, a moment of impulse where you grab your keys and stare at the dog, and then your heart calms down as you watch the drool drip onto the linoleum and you carefully hang the keys on the peg and take off your shoes and turn the television on to distract you.

And for most people, it ends there- the thoughts inside their head settle down again, they resolve a fight, get a job, and find a way to keep living. But for me, it was a different sort of problem.

You know how there are people out there who seem forever unchangeable? They have habits so deeply ingrained that they live their life without thinking it; you feel their eyes on your back but you know that they aren’t truly seeing anything- you’re just there, part of the fabric of their daily life.

And that’s how it was for me. Except I wasn’t the dog, or the lamp beside the sofa. And so there was a day when the keys never left my hand, when the dog stood up and trotted to the door instead of letting the drool drop to the floor.

I remembered as I turned the corner and the dog whined that I had left the clothes in the wash, and there was a tiny part of me that started to laugh because my husband would never think to check the washer. I wondered for a second how long it would take the smell to fill the house, and how long it would take him to notice.

He would probably concoct a theory of some sort, but that was comforting, in a way. You see, he wasn’t a bad person- he just had his own little life, and that’s not where I was meant to be.

He used to ogle my sun weathered skin; the tan the color of a baked potato that was cooked just enough to dry out. The garden was my wild place, and to him, I was the wild thing- the fruit hanging from the tree, always tempting, but that he was too afraid to pluck. I was his adventure, his life, his sole prized possession- and yet that’s all I was.

There is so much more to the world than the weeds in the garden and the racetrack visits, and one day, I think I might find it.