A total solar eclipse passed over North America on April 8, 2024—just four days before my husband was to move out. We had spent weeks dancing around each other, confined to the liminal space between breaking up and starting new lives.

The eclipse, which had been in the news for months, was to happen in the middle of the day. We both worked from home and, haltingly, awkwardly, agreed to watch it together. Lying there on the same blue blanket in the grass, glued to opposite edges, the distance between us buzzed with a spectral identity all its own.

As we waited, the sky darkened and the wind picked up. Neighborhood dogs barked into the eerie quiet. The clouds moved rapidly, threatening to block our view of the sun and the moon in their slow, precise dance. For a few blessed moments, we were just two humans looking up in awe. I wondered whether this moment held the potential to transform us. Were we as bound to our individual orbits as the celestial bodies above us?

*

As a species, we love to think we can do anything with the force of our will. We flock to those stories—lifting a car to save a child, defying the odds, the four-minute mile. They promise that if we want it badly enough, it will be ours. And god, did we try. There were countless marriage books and therapy sessions. We decorated our refrigerator with printed scripts for easy reference: “When you do this, I feel ___.” Like gamblers sure the next hand will win, we said “Let’s try one more thing.” and “We always come back together.” Eventually, our therapist, trying to diffuse the desperation, asked, “When’s the last time you two had fun together?” We couldn’t remember. When we tried, we bickered.

I tried to see us clearly: two people doing our best to save a struggling marriage. Every effort an attempt to alter the chemical reactions between us. If we were a system, what inputs might finally shift the outcome? But the math eluded us.

*

Like many couples, we loved to tell the story of how we met. It was a grounding little dance, a reminder of the glue between us. He always prompted me to begin—“She tells it better”—already knowing which details I’d skip and when to jump in.

I was dating on apps at the time, trading horror stories with a friend at work, when she said, "You should meet my boyfriend's friend." A week later, when he offered to cook my favorite dinner, I texted marry me. Within seconds, he replied with the hours of the courthouse.

Later in the story—after our first date spent walking and talking late into the night—came the part that always made our audience swoon. Leaning away from a perfect first kiss, eyes still closed, mouth smiling, I said, “This is terrible timing.”

I’d just ended a long relationship and wasn’t looking for anything serious. He said he would give me space, but asked if he could send flowers. No pressure—just flowers. I nodded. And every week, a hand-delivered bouquet landed on my doorstep: bluebonnets in a kombucha jar, daisy stems in a vintage vase. Once a handful of dandelions and a pink peony the size of a baseball. Six weeks later, I texted him. Nine months after that, we were engaged.

Look past that gorgeously art-directed courtship and you’ll see a young woman on unsteady footing. I was fresh from a break-up, alone in a new city, and unsure of my path as an artist. There he was with his dark, wavy hair rustling in the wind. Blue eyes staring unwaveringly at me. I was powerless against that certainty, but in the swirl of the romance, I see now the early signs of our undoing.

For someone who was fluent in hiding to avoid rejection, the sheer audacity of a clear opinion was intoxicating to me. This is a good blue. Bob Dylan changed music. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

His sureness brought clarity to my life, but in time, his preferences blossomed into anxieties: Tidy this. Use this word, not that one. No loud noises. Objects should be stacked in ascending order toward the wall. What will people think? It became increasingly painful to bump into the invisible boundaries that surrounded us.

Eventually, any form of messiness was flagged. “I can’t hear you between all the ‘likes’,” he’d say, whenever I was talking excitedly. What first attracted him to me—a wild compulsion to follow my creative urges—became a liability. My ungovernability, a source of embarrassment. It would depress me to count how many times I have been told to lower my voice. It will depress me further to tell you that I always did it.

It is such a common flaw in human relating that we expect others to behave in ways that make sense to us. I was often aghast at his attempts to control everything. When I brought up visiting my family out of state, he was visibly annoyed. When I offered to take our son to visit them alone so he wouldn’t have to go, he got angry at the suggestion. When we eventually took a trip, it was shortened and I had to navigate his gruff moods the whole time. Fatigued, I slipped into the habit of avoiding the topic. I didn’t see my family for four Christmases in a row. The deep truth of it was, I acted as if his thoughts and feelings held more weight than mine, and then resented him for it. Gave away my power and blamed him for taking it.

What began as keeping my thoughts to myself, turned into keeping all of me to myself. I withdrew into my work. I began to keep secrets.

We fell into a steady rhythm of dysfunction laced with happy memories. Virtual pandemic dance parties and evenings cuddling on the couch. Long, country drives. The birth of our baby boy. Everyone says marriage is hard and takes work, and we would sheepishly ask ‘but how hard?’ wondering if we were normal.

Towards the end of our marriage, a period we were thinking of as a rough patch at the time, we sat next to each other on the sofa in our couples therapist's office. Winding through a forest of conflict and emotion, she brought us to a small clearing to identify our core wounds and fears. She prompted us to present them to each other so that we might respond with love and reassurance. He went first.

“I’m afraid you won’t love me if I never make enough money.” He had been unemployed off and on for over a year and had long struggled to find his professional footing.

“Oh, honey,” I said, turning towards him, “That’s not why I married you and is the least of the things I need from you. I love you because you’re a poet and an artist. I cherish your handwriting, your dance moves, and the way you love our son. The photographs you take, the sound of your voice. I love watching you get dressed and sometimes even your firm opinions about how things should be.” We both chuckled through tears, knowing I bumped so often into his How Things Should Be. He leaned towards me and put his hand on mine.

And then it was my turn. “I need to know that you love me even when I am messy and make mistakes.” The smallest of mistakes flared his anger, but I had borrowed money without telling him to save my flailing small business. We’d been working through it for months.

He pulled his hand away, turned to our therapist and said, “That’s really hard for me.” The gathered warmth quickly left the room. That was the crux of it, really. Being my husband was really hard for him.

For months, I had been pinned beneath a growing dissonance. My mind scrambled to cling to our life together despite the expanding constellation of hurts. Some weeks later, animated by a wordless inner force, I watched myself nod in answer to, "Are you saying you're leaving me?"

*

When you are married and you separate, you do not immediately teleport to the next phase of your life. You wake up tomorrow, in a daze, living in the same house, surrounded by your shared life. Bills must be paid, groceries bought, a conversation about tree trimming. And, because nature is indifferent to heartache: a wool moth infestation.

We vacuumed every crevice, turned it into a game. Our son rolled up rugs while we hunted larvae in closet corners. I felt a flicker of camaraderie—few things bond like a shared enemy. In a flash, I saw the essay title: How Wool Moths Saved My Marriage. Was it still possible or just our death rally?

Despite our efforts, the moths persisted. Three weeks later, he moved out.

*

My son, at three and a half, is a wiggling ball of questions: Why is the sunset pink? What is a soul? Why do we live in two houses? Why is the grass wet? When I cannot muster a thoughtful answer, we turn to YouTube. Recently, we’ve learned:

Erosion is the slow wearing away of rock or soil by waves, wind, or rain. The thing is broken down, but never gone—its parts just move elsewhere.

Evaporation is when heat causes water to turn into vapor, its molecules moving too fast to stay in liquid form.

Decomposition is an essential part of the life cycle. New life is fed by the breaking down of dead things.