What I did not understand in those eighteen months, or what I understood intellectually without letting it fully land, is that not-shouting in a context where you should be visible is itself a form of absence. The accurate version of your life does not exist in someone’s mind by default. It has to be created, communicated, maintained. If you leave the communication to someone who is motivated to maintain an inaccurate version, you will be inaccurately represented.
This seems obvious. I am a person who builds communication and workflow systems for companies. I know that information does not flow correctly by default; it flows correctly when someone designs the system for it to flow correctly. And yet I expected the accurate picture of my professional life to exist in Daniel’s family’s understanding without designing any system for it to get there.
What I would design now: one direct conversation with Marian, within the first year of Daniel’s and my marriage, where I explained what I was doing and why I had chosen it. Not because she was owed an explanation but because the explanation would have been simple and the absence of it created a vacuum that Daniel filled with something easier.
I can’t go back and have that conversation. I can have the version of it that is available now, which is the accumulated correct information arriving late but arriving. And I can be the person who does not let vacuums form, going forward.
Going forward is where the work is. That is always where the work is.