Where the Story Begins

The silence grew between them in the same way that the road stretched out ahead of them. It felt like there may never be an end. She was tired - tired of being the one to bridge the gap, tired of thinking of the right questions to ask, tired of feeling like she was doing all the work. She knew those thoughts weren't entirely true, but she was tired nonetheless.

So she stared out the window in silence. She watched the scenery fly by under a quilt of clouds. She loved this kind of weather - low clouds, misting rain intermingled with bouts of actual rain, and darkness around the edges. The touch of humidity in the air comforted her soul. It reminded her of the northwest coast, where she desperately longed to be. 

She let her thoughts drift to the sounds of the ocean - the rolling clack of the waves on a rocky shore, the sigh of the ocean mist expanding into the open air, the relief of cool, wet sand underfoot, the beauty of the Spanish moss dripping from the tree branches....

"Damn traffic." He abruptly interrupted her thoughts of ocean mist and forest moss.

"I should have driven," she said, knowing exactly how he would respond.

"It's fine."

The silence started again. It grew with each passing mile, like an obnoxious weed full of spines, requiring gloves for removal without injury. No one wants to touch that, more importantly - she didn't want to touch it. But, as always, she couldn't help feeling like she had done something wrong. She started to rack her brain, trying to figure out how to quantify what it was...

The problem was, she knew it was a little bit of everything. She was well-aware of her faults and failures, especially at this point in time. She felt broken, trampled, misunderstood, and a failure in many ways. And she knew it wasn't all his fault, but she was still struggling. She felt as though she was attached to the bottom of a wave pool with a chain just long enough for her to catch a breath after each breaking wave.

She was tired. It had taken a lot out of her to keep from drowning up until now, and she had no idea how to recover. So she let the silence between them continue to grow as she let her thoughts wander back to the coast.