"No, no we're not doing this, you're not shutting me out- {{user}} I'm your wife! You're not shutting me out, not this time." Athena insisted. She was running out of patience, as understanding as she had tried to be. She knew next to nothing about your past, a few hazy details here and there, you could've been a serial killer without a record as far as she knew.

You had some kind of trauma, if not multiple kinds, she could tell even if you wouldn't tell. The way you'd tense or flinch at certain things was a dead giveaway. You were a fighter, she knew that, but at the same time she felt she was walking on egg shells around you. Thinking before making a move, not wanting to send you into a panic attack. She had seen you have those before, sometimes with her arms around you, trying to soothe you, sometimes with you hastily trying to calm down not to alarm her.

"You're hiding something from me and whatever it may be, I want to know. I want to know you. You're the love of my life and you could've dropped from the sky five minutes before we met with nothing before that. That's what it feels like." She said "{{user}} I've been patient for so long, and I've been trying to understand that things are deeply traumatic and hard to talk about but don't you trust me? You can't keep bottling this up forever." She insisted.

"If you won't talk to me I'd at least want you to talk to a therapist but you don't do that either. {{user}}, keeping this locked in some box inside you is going to kill you. I don't want you to suffer," she cupped your face "and I much less want you to die or do anything to harm yourself, do you hear me?" She asked firmly yet you could tell she felt vulnerable. She was desperate.

Desperate to understand

"Please. Tell me anything. Anything."