I just feel... heavy. My son, he just got divorced. His wife moved out last month. I guess I saw it coming, sort of, but still. It hit me hard. Not just for him, but for me. It makes you look back, you know? At your own life. Your own marriage. My husband and I, we weren't like those American couples you see on TV, always talking things out. That wasn’t our way. Or, I guess, my parents’ way. You kept things inside. You didn't air your dirty laundry. Not to your children, certainly not to the neighbors. Maybe that was the problem, sort of. We fought, of course. All couples do. But it was… quiet fighting. Slammed doors, not speaking for days. Long silences at the dinner table. My son, he would have been maybe ten, eleven then. He was always a quiet boy. Observant. He noticed everything, I think. Even when we tried to pretend everything was fine. He'd just sit there, picking at his food, looking from me to his father and back again. I remember one time, it was over something so stupid. A broken vase, I think. My husband had knocked it over. I was upset, I guess, more about other things than the vase itself. I didn’t yell. I just… froze him out. For a week. No cooking for him, no clean shirts. Just silence. My son came into the kitchen one morning, and he said, "Mom, is Dad mad at you?" I just said, "No, honey. Everything’s fine." A lie, obviously. A terrible lie. His ex-wife, she’s a talker. Always wanted to “discuss feelings.” My son, he always shut down. Like his father. Like me, too, I suppose. He’d just say, “There’s nothing to talk about.” Or, “Can we just drop it?” I guess he learned that from somewhere, didn't he? From us. From seeing how we dealt with things. Or, rather, how we *didn't* deal with them. I always thought we were doing the right thing, staying together. For the children. For appearances, maybe. In our culture, divorce… it’s a failure. A stain. You just endure. You keep going. You push it all down. That's what I did. What my mother did. What I thought was strong. But maybe it wasn't strength. Maybe it was a kind of weakness, in a way. This silence. This refusal to truly engage. To truly fix things. I see my son now, looking so lost. And I can't help but wonder if I sort of… gave him a template for how to mess up his own relationships. How to, I guess, run away from the hard parts. He called me last week. Said, “Mom, I just don’t know how to… talk to her anymore. Or anyone.” My heart just ached. I wanted to tell him. About the vase. About all the things I wish I’d said to his father. All the things I still wish I could say. But I didn't. I just told him, “It will get better, son.” Another lie, maybe. Another way of keeping it all inside. And it makes me wonder if that’s all I taught him. To just… keep it all inside. And it sort of eats at you, eventually. Doesn't it.