I used to be the woman who could do it all. I hosted Thanksgiving for sixteen, paid off my student loans before thirty, and once dragged a flat tire off the freeway in heels. I was Opal—the dependable one. The strong one. The woman who never asked for help.
Then Lyme disease came for me.
It started with fatigue. Then joint pain. Then the kind of fever that makes you feel like you’re boiling from the inside out. I went from sunrise yoga to barely lifting a fork. My hands trembled too much to type. I lost my job. My independence. My body. And slowly, I lost my marriage too.
David didn’t leave. Not officially. He stayed, but only in the most technical sense. What he really did was abandon me in pieces.
He moved me into the guest room. Said it was “for my comfort.” Said I needed space. But when I asked to come back to our bed one night, he snapped.
“I can’t sleep with you in there! I have to work. You just lie around all day doing nothing!”
I flinched—not from his voice, but from how his words hit something already bruised inside me.
“I’m trying,” I whispered. “I just wanted to be close to you.”
He walked out without answering.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The pain was bad. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence of a house that no longer felt like home.
Then I heard it.
A whisper. Soft. Intimate. From our bedroom.
“Hush… she’s sleeping.”
My heart stopped.
I got up, slowly, quietly. I walked down the hall and stood outside the door. I heard her laugh. His voice. Their closeness.
I didn’t open the door. I didn’t scream. I just stood there, absorbing the truth.
The man who promised to love me in sickness and health was whispering to another woman in the bed we once shared—while I lay alone, sick, and discarded.
The next morning, I packed a bag. Not because I had anywhere to go, but because I needed to reclaim something. My dignity. My voice. My life.
I left a note on the kitchen counter:
“You didn’t just cheat on me. You abandoned me when I needed you most. I may be sick, but I’m not weak. And I will never sleep through betrayal again.”
I moved in with my sister. Started treatment. Found a support group. Slowly, I began to heal—not just physically, but emotionally.
David tried to reach out. Said he was “confused.” Said he “didn’t mean for it to happen.” But I didn’t respond.
Because I wasn’t sleeping anymore.
I was awake. And I was done.
