28 days later

It's been 28 days since my husband confessed to me that he never loved me.

It's the dead of winter so none of the ceiling fans are on in the house and they so desperately need to be cleaned. The one in the kitchen especially, it's caked with months of cold dust from an old house with too many pets that shed generously, on old vents that don't understand that they're part of an outdated respiratory system. My husband walked in and noted that he needed to turn the fan on, as to not see the months of grime that's collected. If it stays in motion, the problem no longer exists and you don't have to do the dirty work of soiling up your hands to wash it. You can just yank the chain and the problem goes away.

And here I was looking like an idiot, thinking I was going to have to clean the damn thing.


It's been a year and a half of marriage before my husband confessed he has never loved me.

I didn't look at that dirt and for one second think I could just turn the fan on. I saw my options were to either clean it or to live with the grime, come to terms with it. Until I got a wild hair up my ass, that dirt was now a part of the fixture. Part of my life. I would become comfortable knowing that all of the filth was a product of a loving house hold. My children's dead skin cells, our many dogs skin cells, his dead cells, my dead cells, whatever other wretched creatures I dragged through the house. It was all our mess together up there. It was our house, that we created. It was our accumulative lives clinging to the fan and I could come to live with it.

It's been almost 4 years together before my husband confessed he has never loved me.

A few paper towels, some simple sink water, 10 minutes and I could have cleaned all of the dirt off. I wouldn't have to look at that kind of mess for another few months at least. But the effort just hasn't seemed worth it lately. I use to keep the place spotless but over the months the buildup doesn't bother me like it use to. Climbing up on a chair seemed like too much work. If the mess is still up there then I guess it can't be bothering him that much either, right? If it really bothered either one of us I guess the grime would get cleaned off.

Eventually.


It's been 28 days since my husband confessed he never loved me, it's been almost 4 years since I knew.

How many times had I looked at that fan in the past and only saw 2 options? It either gets cleaned or it doesn't. I had never thought about putting the fan into motion and absolving my consciousness of the whole burned itself. Was he aware that turning the fan on just means that the whole mess just becomes mobile?

He was already gone from the room before I had a chance to ask him.