**TRIGGER WARNING**
Mentions of self-harm.
Only Women Bleed
Eli: I'm not the one who tried to kill myself.
Diane: I had good reason, if you hadn't figured that out yet.
She sits at the kitchen table, alone, in the pre-dawn hours. The coffee she poured has long since gone cold, yet she keeps her hands wrapped around the white ceramic mug; a buoy in the self-inflicted turbulence that is her life.
Self-inflicted. How appropriate, her mind taunted. The white gauze bandages on her wrists were testament enough that this was all self-inflicted, and she seemed to collapse in on herself knowing she was the cause of, well, almost everything.
It wasn't so much the pain she knew she'd caused, or the anger or bitterness. It was the disappointment she seen in Eli's eyes when he looked at her. Diane knew he wasn't disappointed in her for what she'd done, but because she thought she could take the easy way out. There was never an easy way out.
So she sits at the kitchen table, alone, in the pre-dawn hours because her husband can't look at her like he used to; her marriage is taking its last dying breath. A marriage that had essentially died several weeks or even months before, it just hadn't hit the obits yet.
Eli wanders into the kitchen and sees her sitting there, her pale face caused by weeks of emotional guilt she'd put upon herself, but that he had also lain heavily on her shoulders. He feels sorry for her, though he's not sure why.
She jumps in her seat when he takes the coffee cup from her hands, his fingers brushing the white gauze the sleeves of her robe couldn't quite cover. For a moment, it's as if everything's normal again.
Diane glances at the bandages, and then at Eli as he stands at the counter with his back to her.
Things will get better, she thinks.