The reintroduction between Charlie and me was okay. More okay than I braced for. The house was in better shape than I imagined. She didn’t look as ill as my fear had painted her. It could have gone way worse. No theatrics. A few tears—nothing overblown. I was grateful for that. It was OK—until it wasn’t.

In short conversation and one-off sentences, everything’s fine. You know the polite choreography—“How are you?” “Good, you?”—the kind of call-and-response that lets you skim the surface and keep moving. But when conversation carries on and time goes on, the plot gets lost. The truth starts leaking through the seams.

What’s happening with her is getting worse. That’s the truth. People close to her pull me aside for hallway whispers and car-ride confessions. They want to say things they don’t feel safe saying in front of her because the truth might shatter the spell. It’s tender. It’s complicated. Some days it’s entirely too much.

But the important thing is—the DOING has begun. No more long runway. No more “one day soon I’ll…” It’s not something I’m going to do; it’s something I’m doing. I said yes with an open heart, and I’m asking for and receiving help—real help. I’m not doing this alone, and that matters so much.

I have never felt so radically supported and completely loved. There are professionals offering expertise, friends offering time and spare bedrooms and straight talk, chosen family offering the kind of honesty that steadies me when my knees go soft. I see clearly how many people loved me when she couldn’t. I have what I need—and who I need—to do this with integrity. Not just do it, but do it well. That will require finesse. It will require patience. And it will require the one thing denial can’t survive: telling myself the truth, over and over, especially when it’s inconvenient.

Denial ruins lives because it masquerades as relief while it quietly drains you. It numbs. It buys you time today by mortgaging your tomorrow. The first cut through it is admitting there’s a problem, and a lot of us were never taught how. But the step is always the same: tell the truth. You can’t get what you want by denying you want it. You can’t move toward a thing you refuse to name.

I was walking through the house when I stopped at a small Christmas tree—the tabletop kind—cocooned under an upside-down trash bag to keep the dust off. Underneath it sat a neat stack of presents. One for each year I’d been gone. She had bought one for me every year, just in case I decided to come home. In case I woke up one day and realized the “error” of my ways. In case I walked through the door like a movie moment that fixes everything in two hours. She would be ready. Waiting. Wrapped.

I lifted the plastic and it crackled. Dust hung in a shaft of afternoon sun. The paper had lost its shine. Gifts for a future that asked nothing of today. Denial, wrapped with ribbon.

Here’s the heartbreak of it all: it would be easier if I hated her but I don’t. I never did. It’s always easier to pretend you don’t want something—easier to act like it isn’t breaking your heart—than to admit how badly you want it when you’re sure you can’t have it. We spent fifteen years lonely. I wouldn’t move my boundary; too much hurt and betrayal for that to feel safe. She wouldn’t move hers; opening that can of worms was more than she could manage. That’s the sadness—it’s not that we didn’t want things to be different. Wanting wasn’t missing. Action was. Nothing shifts without it.

I’m taking action now.

It’s still early in this process. Every day is the next most intense day—and I’m getting steadier inside it. I’m not straining for a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re here. This is the work. I’m choosing presence over postmortems. I’m setting the past down and squaring with the present.

I can catalog the ways denial complicated our relationship, but I have to own my part. I set conditions for reconciliation—therapy, honesty, consistency—knowing they would likely be too heavy for her. They were the basics, I said. The necessary basics—and still I knew. I said I wanted repair, but I wouldn’t admit I also wanted closeness and dare I say, love. That would have meant grief. Which was a hard pass fo me. So I wrote terms I knew she couldn’t meet, called them reasonable, and stayed on my side of the line. Then I used her failure to meet those terms as proof of the story I was already telling. I did that and I need to own it.

This is the part people skip when they talk about boundaries. Boundaries are beautiful. I held mine—but I planted them where nothing could grow. That was denial keeping me safe: make the terms impossible so I didn’t have to admit I still wanted closeness and love.

Here’s what I know for sure: overcoming denial is the doorway to anything real—personal, professional, relational, spiritual. Creation starts with truth. You cannot build what you won’t name. You cannot leave what you won’t admit hurts you. If you’re in denial about the relationship, you stay in it. If you’re in denial about the job, you keep spending your life on a paycheck that drains you (read that part again). If you’re in denial about your health, your finances, your drinking, your rage—whatever your thing is—you keep sipping familiar poison and calling it dinner. It wears you down. Slowly. Predictably.

Denial doesn’t always say “I’m fine.” It shows up in respectable costumes. I’ve seen it as rehearsing the hard talk instead of having it. As beautiful plans that never see daylight. As buying books and courses instead of doing one rep. As calling a barricade a boundary. As talking to everyone but the one person I needed to talk to. As anger standing in for grief. I recognize the disguises because I wore them.

I spent years in rooms I didn’t want to be in, holding my breath and waiting for other people to change so I wouldn’t have to. I stayed in jobs hoping they’d treat me the way I treated them. I kept vigil for apologies that were never coming. I decorated denial and called it loyalty. I performed strong when I was scared. I waited on magic—if I just stayed, if they just changed, if time just healed it, then everything would be okay.

It never worked. Things only began to change when I told the truth and let the fallout happen. When I let what was already falling apart, fall apart. When I chose peace over performance. When I admitted I wanted a life that looked different than the one I had.

She saved a version of me she hoped would walk back in. I saved a version of her I hoped would finally show up. Neither arrived.

I know where I am, and what’s mine to carry now.

I forgive both of us for learning late.

I’m not scanning for a rescue light. We’re here now. This is what we’re doing. Today’s step, today. Tomorrow’s, tomorrow.
I want movement, even when it’s small, even when it stings.

-Sunny

A quick practice to name what you’ve been dodging and start moving toward it. Keep it simple. Tell the truth, then take a step.

Write five honest lines. No justifying. No paragraphs. Just the want.

Now circle one. That’s today’s focus.

Make them tiny and concrete. Think: one call, one email, one ask, one boundary, one form, one room, one dollar, one walk.

That’s it. One true sentence. One matching step. Repeat tomorrow