They say the people who genuinely love you will stay beside you when life gets hard hb. What I discovered was that sometimes the person who sees your pain most clearly isn’t the one who once vowed to love you forever we.
A year earlier, I had brought three babies home at the same time—Mandy, Randy, and Tobby. Three tiny car seats rested across our living-room floor, looking like the most beautiful and overwhelming miracle I had ever witnessed hb.
No one had prepared me for what carrying triplets would do to my body. The doctors used medical terms like “pelvic floor complications” and “extended postpartum recovery.” I had a much simpler way of explaining it: sometimes, especially when I sneezed, laughed too hard, or lifted something heavy, my body no longer cooperated the way it once had.
It was humiliating, but it wasn’t something I had chosen. I was still recovering from carrying and delivering three babies.
On the harder days, I wore discreet protective underwear. I kept the package tucked beneath folded towels in our upstairs bathroom. Only my husband, Richard, knew where it was.
At first, Richard would occasionally tease me about it. I laughed with him because I convinced myself that was simply the way we communicated. If I laughed too, maybe it meant we were still on the same side.
But as time passed, his jokes grew sharper.
Especially when other people were present.
One morning, after he made another remark during brunch, I finally asked him to stop.
“You worry too much, Bel,” he said.
“I’m not worried. I just don’t enjoy being the joke.”
Richard grinned.
“It’s my love language. If I couldn’t tease you, I’d have to hate you.”
I dropped it.
That year, I dropped a lot of things.
I was exhausted. Three babies needed me constantly, and on most days I barely had enough energy to shower, let alone defend myself every time my husband said something insensitive.
There was one person who never laughed, though.
David.
He had been Richard’s closest friend since college. He was quiet, considerate, and somehow always remembered which baby was which.
Whenever he came over, he asked how I was sleeping.
Once, while I was trying to eat dinner with Tobby crying against my shoulder, David reached toward me.
“You look exhausted, Bel. Give him to me and eat while the food’s still hot.”
“You don’t have to.”
