HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.
Darkness. Beside me, Phil, asleep, his breathing calm. Reassuring, though its very regularity reminds me of my piercing fear: Phil gone, the darkness utterly still. We are seventy and seventy-five respectively, him the older. I take not one of those breaths for granted. Yes: age, our happy marriage, the lateness of it. Having lost one beloved husband, having lost the life we had together, the life we thought we’d have, I feel and fear deep in myself another such catastrophe. Always.
Read MoreWhen I was a teenager, I learned from a Chinese calendar placemat in a restaurant that my birth year made me a rat. I was on a hot date in China Palace with Keith, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, and there it was, plain as day, on the placemat…I even moved the bottle of soy sauce to make sure I was reading it correctly and it was indeed clear: 1984, Rat.
Read MoreI almost titled this letter “Dear Man-child” or “Dear Boy with the Napoleon Complex…” but, like most people, I realize it’s hard to convince people to listen to my point of view if I start out by insulting them.
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