In fact, maybe I even work too hard to make sure that privacy and a sense of safety is not on the very long list of things my partner has sacrificed by sharing his life with a writer. Sure, I may have signed up for invasive commentary and criticism as part of this profession (whether or not that’s fair is another conversation entirely) but just because someone shares a home with me doesn’t mean they deserve the same. Hell, maybe I’m even a little scared that I can’t do him justice. Maybe it’s only natural to want to keep that haven to myself, strictly separate from my public life. Maybe he was missing because the relationship feels like a rare escape in a world that can be toxic and abusive. He’s pretty nice.) While I’m not exactly the most guarded writer in the world- in the form of personal essays, I’ve shared everything from the minutia of my mental health, to my struggles with infertility-for whatever reason I have this knee-jerk protection of my most private, domestic dynamic.Īfter my editor’s observation, I thought a great deal about this reluctance. That’s not because he isn’t important to me, or a compelling part of the story, but because I’ve always had this impulse to hide him from readers. My husband was definitely there for me during the gruelling, long haul of recovery, but without even really thinking about it, I’d almost completely left him out of the retelling. Where was my partner of ten years in all of this? Why had I almost entirely omitted him from the narrative? Despite divulging various details of violation, illness, and the path to getting better, despite taking readers inside a series of difficult therapy appointments, a PTSD diagnosis, and my own dark thoughts, there was one component of the manuscript that was glaringly missing.

Last year, when I turned in the first draft of a memoir on rape trauma, my editor had a pretty reasonable observation.

In-Between Days by Teva Harrison