Marianne’s name is still there.
I don’t know whether I will ever remove it.
Perhaps I should.
Perhaps I shouldn’t.
I’m not sure.
But I open the statements now.
Every month.
I open them standing at the kitchen table.
Sometimes I laugh at myself.
Sometimes I cry.
Sometimes there is nothing in them worth reading.
And I read them anyway.
Because I spent ten years believing the envelope contained something I could not survive.
It didn’t.
It contained paper.
Numbers.
Marianne’s name.
My name.
A few transactions.
A few memories.
That’s all.
The thing I was afraid of wasn’t inside the envelope.
It was inside me.
I had built an entire life around avoiding four seconds of pain.
And eventually those four seconds became ten years.
So if there is something you are not opening, I understand.
Maybe it’s a bank statement.
Maybe it’s a letter.
Maybe it’s a message.
Maybe it’s a box in the spare room.
Maybe it’s a drawer you’ve stopped looking inside.
Maybe it’s something someone has asked you about three times and you’ve said, “I’m fine.”
You already know what it is.
You probably knew before you reached this sentence.
You have built a system around four seconds of discomfort.
