This Is How

This Is How by Augusten Burroughs Page A

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Authors: Augusten Burroughs
even know this man she was married to. She assumed she did but she had been completely wrong.
    The instant she realized this she realized what the sexual problems had been: she’d never been interested in sex with strangers.
    Which is exactly what her husband had been: a stranger.
    Only she couldn’t admit it to herself because to do so would mean her world would fall apart.
    It did fall apart.
    But she rebuilt it.
    Many years later she would read a diary she’d kept from the time when she first met the man. In it she had written that he seemed secretive and there was something she didn’t trust.
    But she had wanted it to work so she ignored these things.
    This is what happens when you go against the grain of truth: you get splinters later on.
    Possibly, the real, rock-bottom truth that you need to see in your own life resides behind a similar scrim, which has passed itself off as “the truth” for so long that you wouldn’t even think to question it.
    In your life, you have a very small, tight bundle of certainties. These are the things that are truly there for you. They may be people, the place you live, your partner, your abilities, maybe even your sobriety. These core certainties are sheltered from your scrutiny. Because you know you can depend on them, you never question them.
    That needs to change. You must at least examine them to make sure they’re still intact.
    One day you may find yourself in an unhappy place where you feel trapped and without options. You may feel you have looked at your situation and realized it’s hopeless.
    I can promise you that it’s not. I can promise you that there is an option and possibly several.
    You just might have to move something out of the way first to get a clearer view.
    It can be a bit of a puzzle, locating the single aspect of your life that isn’t what it appears to be, the belief you assume you hold dear but that, in fact, you’ve never even questioned.
    It’s hard to find what you don’t know you’re searching for.
    You have to examine everything up close and look for signs of forgery or those deep scratches that come from forcing something into place that shouldn’t be there.
    Like a marriage that doesn’t contain any sex.
    Before you can even begin to heal a sexless marriage, you must know why it’s sexless.
    I don’t need to tell you how dangerous that can be.
    Childbirth is dangerous as well.
    Heating something to a temperature of eleven thousand degrees is, of course, so dangerous that it perhaps crosses the border into madness.
    Which is why we wear sunglasses when we go outside in the summer. Because that’s the temperature of the sun.
    Dangerous things have to happen sometimes.
    Just be careful.
    Then make direct eye contact and face them.

H OW TO E ND Y OUR L IFE
     

I
     
    T HERE’S ALWAYS SUICIDE .
    Suicide can deliver you to a place of peace and release.
    At least, that’s what I believed when I was fourteen years old and running scalding-hot tap water over my wrists at the bathroom sink to numb them for the razor blade.
    This water-numbing trick had not been my idea; somebody had told me about it, revealed it to me in nearly a whisper, and at the time I had the feeling of sacred, secret information being passed along from conspirator to conspirator. Like having a really beautiful and successful bulimic sit you down and explain, “The reason it’s not working for you is because you have to eat your food in colors, right? So have the cake, but follow it with some carrots. So when you puke up the orange carrots, you know where you are and when you should stop or when it’s okay to keep going.”
    It was explained to me that cutting my wrists in the bathtub was by far the best method of suicide and that it wouldn’t hurt “hardly at all” if I numbed my wrists first with hot water.
    I of course did not think to ask, “How do you know it doesn’t hurt? Has anybody ever done this successfully and then come back to offer a

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