I Divorce With My Husbands Pretends To Be dead

Fifth year of being married to Brian Locke, and I finally get it-some people aren't born mute; they just can't be bothered to speak to me.

His Messenger chat history holds tens of thousands of messages I've sent over five years: from sweet check-ins to frantic outbursts, ending in nothing but the dead silence of "read but unanswered." Don't even get me started on calls-I'd press the dial button until my finger burned, only to be met with that robotic busy tone, mocking my stubborn hope.

First year of marriage, I spiked a 104°F fever in the middle of the night. Delirious, I sent him ten voice messages begging for help. I could hear my own voice shaking, like a tattered rag in the wind, but not so much as a punctuation mark came back. It was the housekeeper who found me collapsed on the floor the next day and rushed me to the hospital.

He came home that night, didn't even glance at me, just dropped a cold line: "You made a mess of the master bedroom. I'm sleeping in the guest room."

I tried to speak, but my throat felt like it was on fire. In the end, I said nothing. Back then, I still made excuses-He's just busy. He's bad at showing feelings.

Second year, I got mugged on a street overseas. When the blade brushed my neck, I thought I was gonna die. I fumbled for my phone, hands shaking so bad I could barely dial his number, and called him twenty times straight. The foreign wind was freezing, cutting through me, until a stranger-another Chinese expat-helped me to the hospital.

Five hours later, he finally called. No concern in his voice, just blame: "Why didn't you make it to the dinner party on time?"

I held the phone, staring at the bandage on my arm, and suddenly felt bone-tired.

Tired of explaining, tired of fighting-tired enough to want to hurl my phone into the Seine.

But I didn't. I kept waiting. Waiting for a response that would never come.

Then came the fifth year. On the highway, the dashboard suddenly shorted out. The world spun, and my first instinct was to grab my phone and dial him. That endless "beep-beep" felt like a death knell. I could feel a sharp, heavy pain in my lower belly-our baby, slipping away from me, little by little.

Blood soaked the seat, and blurred my vision entirely.

The operating room lights were blinding. The pain after the anesthesia wore off was nothing compared to the ache in my chest. Still bleeding, I stumbled into his office, picked up a hammer, and smashed his damn phone- the one that'd always stayed silent to me-into pieces.

"If you never check messages or answer calls, what's the point of keeping it?!" I screamed, a caged animal at the end of its rope.

He stood there in his crisp suit, expressionless-as if I'd just smashed a random rock on the street, not his