Most people I've known don't consider me to be an insensitive or disrespectful woman. God knows that I try to be kind and civil to others, even when I disagree with them, and attempt to tread softly.

But to hear Mr. Hyde tell it, I'm not only insensitive and disrespectful, I'm also inconsiderate, selfish, thoughtless, overly-critical, and uncaring.

When I feel that some light has been let into my life, when I feel most jubilant to express my freedom without casting open the shutters to reveal what prison has hidden me for so long, I've somehow shamed him. I, a mother who has left her son, have shamed my husband by saying, truthfully, only that I'm living alone. There was no judgement, no revelation of the kind of life I've been leading for so long, only a simple expression that I'm now on my own and that my family is deciding how to move forward.

And somehow, now, I've become a villain because he is now uncomfortable with the fact that people will know. Truly, this is the only place I may speak of any of this, and even this relative liberty isn't without risk or moderation.

Oh, how I long, with all of my heavy soul, to be free of Hyde.