Two Worlds Under One Roof
In July, I entered a weekly writing contest with a prompt that was begging for drama: “I Have To Tell You!”
I didn’t want to tell. I wanted the reader to experience.
To sit inside the contradiction of two people who love each other but live fundamentally different lives under the same roof. To feel the 3:30 a.m. blue glow. The coffee at 7:15. The silence during evening dog walks.
So I wrote it as a hybrid essay—half my voice, half his. Two parallel worlds that only collide at bedtime.
The contest declined it, but the piece found its home in Still Here magazine’s Issue One: “Staying Even When it Hurts.” Published in November 2025, it’s about a house. A marriage. A life lived in stark contradiction—where urgency and slowness, ambition and presence, achievement and feeling exist side by side without resolution.
Because sometimes love doesn’t require agreement. Sometimes it just requires staying.
This piece was originally published in Still Here magazine, Issue One: Staying Even When it Hurts, October 2025.
I have to tell you about the 3:30 a.m. blue glow.
How I don’t open my eyes, but feel the shift in the mattress.
The ding of another email.
Another Slack update.
Another investor asking for numbers, updates, proof of progress.
I hear him exhale as he types.
Not a sigh of frustration—
just the familiar sound of a man carrying the weight of something he swore to build.
He brags about not having a life,
then quietly resents those who do.
And here I am, practicing presence—
teaching people to live fully, notice deeply, laugh wholeheartedly.
Living a daily rebellion against the mindset that shares my bed.
****
I have to tell you that:
My wife sips her coffee—or is it ceremonial cacao these days?—like it matters.
She lets her thoughts stretch out like a cat on a sunny ledge.
She writes essays. Essays! Not bullet points.
She talks to strangers on Zoom about breath and grief and glue sticks.
Somehow, she calls that work.
She says I’m running from something.
I say I’m running toward something.
I’m not sure what would happen if I stopped.
****
I have to tell you that COVID taught me I’d been married to a stranger for seventeen years.
Suddenly trapped in the same house 24/7,
I could hear him through our thin walls:
“Okay, I gotta go… Hi! Sorry I’m late. Yeah, so I looked at the slides and…”
The way he shapeshifted—vendor, engineer, board member—without pause.
The way I watched our daughter eat breakfast alone while he made deals from the garage.
The way I realized he wasn’t hiding—he was surviving.
For him, life is too short—he must achieve more.
For me, life is too short—I must feel more, live more.
I schedule two hours between calls just to remember who I am.
I place my hands on paper.
I remember to breathe.
I lead gatherings in our backyard filled with silence.
Hands moving. Hearts guiding.
We cry when we make something imperfect.
He thinks I’ve built a career on purposeless meandering.
He doesn’t know the wandering is the work.
****
I have to tell you that:
She naps. On weekdays.
She journals. In cursive. With a yellow fountain pen.
We are two philosophies sharing a bed.
My urgency enables her slowness.
Her intentionality steadies my ambition.
Sometimes I wonder if I even matter to her like I used to.
****
We have to tell you: it’s complicated.
We are proof that love doesn’t require agreement.
You can cohabit without co-authoring a worldview.
You can intertwine fingers while still holding opposing truths.
Our parallel lives intersect every evening for fifteen minutes,
walking the dog with our daughter—
she skips ahead, the Australian labradoodle tugging at the leash,
asking questions about stars and death and the color of plums.
Sometimes we don’t say a word to each other.
Sometimes we laugh. About different things.
Sometimes we remember that this, too, is a kind of love.
****
I have to tell you that tomorrow morning,
my coffee machine will hum at 7:15.
He’ll already be four hours into his day.
I’ll light a stick of incense.
Rinse my Frida Kahlo mug.
Move through my rituals slowly, because they matter.
He’ll take his next call without pause.
And we’ll both be exactly who we are.
Still here. Staying.
