You Lost Me at Frozen Pizza

I am an expert at tripping. Honestly, after a certain age, we all are.  How many times has the floor beneath my feet crumbled as I frantically tried to step over the damage, the dysfunction, all in hopes of fixing it?  Codependence is a language written in tripping and for heavens sake, I speak it fluently. 

A house that needs cleaning despite a sixty-hour work week? Get out of the way. Grocery store, meal prep, walk the dogs? I’m on it. Extra work meetings, exercise every morning, trying to stay awake for date night? You bet. Women are experts at superficial perfection while we stumble over the cracks beneath our feet that only widen. Cracks that we cover with noise and exhaustion.

I was trained in the universal social truth that if the script isn’t working then I just need to run faster, care harder, and do more, rather than stopping to ask if the road itself is broken. 

The meeting had been exhausting-especially having to sit for two hours after working eight-all the while the kung-fu grip of brain fog had me questioning if anyone would notice if I laid my head on the conference table. Time offers a clarity to those moments when you know something’s gotta give. Where instead of the world-record long jump over the crack, I fall, enveloped by the void that I feared. 

I open the door from the garage and it’s the smell that hits me: frozen pizza in the oven. We all know that smell and as easy as it would seem to ignore after an exhausting day, immediately I understand I’m falling. 

First, I’m a vegan. 

Second, that was the backup pizza I bought for my husband to use if there was nothing for dinner.  I know what you’re thinking: what’s the big deal? After all, I was not home to cook. Sounds reasonable. It’s quite possible my husband made something for his vegan wife but, I know, as sure as I feel the ground beneath me crumbling, he did not. 

The second thing I notice, my three dogs are frantic, running in circles. Yep, there she blows. I’m now in a total free-fall.  It’s 8:00 PM. I take one look at my husband’s face then back down to my pups running in circles, and we both know they haven’t been fed. 

So, let’s review: a pizza is in the oven that I won’t be eating, the dogs have yet to be fed, I have been at work for ten hours, and my husband shrugs both shoulders. 

“What?” 

Are you kidding me?

So, of course, I whip up the late-night PB&J, feed the hounds, do the dishes, before I strip off my work clothes. And there it is. THERE IT IS! 

The candle in the bedroom is lit. 

Oh. Hell. No. 

That is the “I want to have sex” candle. You know, to set the mood. I can only shake my head. Honey, the mood has nothing to do with a candle. You lost me at frozen pizza in the oven. Today, I still remember the look on his face when I blew that candle out. 

But I kept trying to step over the cracks.

I’m in the kitchen doing, you know, kitchen stuff, when the front door flew open.  My husband walked in, soaking wet from head to toe. Behind him on the porch, he left the plastic gardening wagon-the kind on wheels-to dry in the sun. 

“I could have died!” His first words were paired with a wave of deep, theatrical hurt that gripped every line in his face. 

Apparently, he had fallen into the ditch behind our house along with the wagon. He claimed he was nearly swept away by the four-foot current, almost drowning in the epic battle to save…the yard cart. All the while, he had been screaming for help while I was inside, hummed softly over the sink.  

For the love of all that’s holy, DON’T LAUGH! I tried. Oh the heavens, I tried. I frowned as hard as I could, stepped forward to pull him into the safety of the living room, far away from the raging backyard torrent that had threatened his life. 

“How scary,” I said, guiding him to a dining room chair where he sat with a huff and wiped his face with big angry motions. 

As I watched him doing his absolute best to find a path to the guilt I usually wore upon my head like a crown, two distinct thoughts hit me. First, I thought about his wet pants ruining the fabric of my dining room chair. Second, the ground beneath me completely gave away. 

I realized this life was no longer enough.

We work ourselves to death trying to be more-more patient, more productive, more giving-instead of stopping to listen to the chaos around us. My life wasn’t just cracking; it was screaming. It was telling me that no amount of late-night peanut butter sandwiches or forced sympathy for a wet husband in a ditch was going to fix the floor that was fundamentally broken.

This is the exact threshold where I place ARC-MUTAR: THE HEART OF THE QUEEN. Ray is a queen who spent decades doing the exhausting work of holding her family together, keeping her temper in check, and ignoring the structural cracks in her marriage. She flew faster and cared harder, trying to ignore the dysfunction until the universe forced a free-fall she couldn’t jump over. When her inner demon finally erupts and she grows literal horns, she stops trying to fix a script that was never meant for her. She stops managing the peace, blows out the candle, and lets the old floor shatter completely so she can build something real. 

Sometimes, the transition doesn’t look like a graceful leap into freedom. Sometimes, it looks like standing in a quiet kitchen, refusing to carry guilt anymore, and realizing you’re finally ready to walk into your own damn kingdom.