He has lived with the condition his whole life, and I have lived with it since we met. He did not want children-always said that he couldn’t bear the thought of not recognizing their faces. Face blindness isn’t the only way my husband makes me feel invisible. Adam can be surrounded by friends at a party and still feel like he doesn’t know a single person in the room.

The social anxiety it inevitably causes affects us both. He has walked past me on the street on more than one occasion, as though I were a stranger. It’s not my husband’s fault that he forgets who I am.Īdam has a neurological glitch called prosopagnosia, which means he cannot see distinguishing features on faces, including his own. We both know this weekend away is a last chance to fix things. He said we should postpone this trip when we saw the weather warnings, but I couldn’t. Time can change relationships like the sea reshapes the sand. It isn’t what I want, but I do wonder whether it might be best for both of us.

Some days I still picture him in it, but there are moments when I imagine what it would be like to be on my own again. We weren’t always the people we are now, but our memories of the past can make liars of us all.

To have wasted so much of our lives by not really living them, makes me feel so sad. Every time his words replay in my mind, a new list of regrets writes itself inside my head. Even though it’s starting to get dark, and it seems we might be lost in more ways than one.Ĭan a weekend away save a marriage? That’s what my husband said when the counselor suggested it. The journey from London up to Scotland should have taken no more than eight hours, but I daren’t drive any faster in this storm. Adam has checked his seat belt a hundred times since we left home, and his hands are balled into conjoined fists on his lap. If you look after things, they will last a lifetime, but I suspect my husband might like to trade us both in for a younger model. The snow is falling faster now, it’s like driving in a whiteout, and the windscreen wipers on my Morris Minor Traveller are struggling to cope. It’s the sulky, petulant, “I told you so” version, so I concentrate on the road instead. I know the expression his face is wearing without having to look. Nobody else looks familiar to him either, but it is still strange to think that the man I married wouldn’t be able to pick me out in a police lineup. I feel him staring at me as I drive, and wonder what he sees.

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney