The Tactile Dome

This is a difficult story for me to write.

It begins, in a way, with darkness.

Not the kind that comes from nightfall, but the kind that arrives when something ends and you are left trying to understand where the ground is beneath you again.

A relationship can feel like that sometimes. One moment you believe you know the shape of the path you’re walking together, and the next moment the lights are gone and you’re left feeling your way forward, trying to understand what just happened.

It is about someone I loved—and in many ways still care for. Our relationship ended not because of a single moment, but because somewhere along the way we stopped finding our way through things together.

He believed leaving was what he needed to do. I have tried to accept that. But even now, what stays with me is not anger so much as confusion.

How two people can share the same experiences and still walk away understanding them so differently.

There is one memory I return to often when I think about this.

One day we were headed to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It was me, the man who once shared my plans for the future, my friend, her husband, and their children. He and I took the train and walked to the museum, where we met the rest of them.

Inside the Exploratorium there is an exhibit called the Tactile Dome.

If you are sighted, I actually recommend going through it at least once. It teaches you something quickly about how much people depend on their eyes.

The dome is completely dark.

Not dim.

Not shadowy.

Completely dark.

The moment you step inside, the light disappears and the only way forward is by touch.

That day four of us entered together: me, the man who was part of my life then, my friend, and one of her daughters.

My friend and I are totally blind. Her daughter is fully sighted. The man beside me that day had partial sight.

Inside the dome the path twists through tight spaces and low tunnels. Sometimes you crawl. Sometimes you crouch. Sometimes the ground changes beneath your feet and you have to pause to understand where you are standing.

You keep one hand on the wall and move slowly, building a sense of the place through touch instead of sight.

For my friend, her daughter, and me, it was fun. We laughed as we tried to figure out which direction the path continued.

But the experience was very different for him.

I could hear it in the way he moved—in the hesitation before each step.

So I stayed just ahead of him and guided him as we went.

“Step up here,” I would say.

“Duck your head.”

“There’s a rope in front of you.”

Sometimes we crawled. Sometimes we climbed. Sometimes we felt along the walls to figure out where the path turned.

At one point, in the middle of that darkness, I heard him ask,

“Where are you?”

I answered right away.

“I’m right here.”

And I kept talking to him as we moved.

Whenever the others moved ahead, I told them we’d catch up in a moment.

I had promised him that I wouldn’t go on without him.

At one point he reached forward and grabbed my foot just to make sure I was still there.

Eventually we made it through and stepped back out into the light. He seemed relieved. The world made sense to him again.

My friend and her daughter decided to go through the dome a couple more times. I didn’t.

I remember thinking about it very clearly even then.

We had made it through together.

Something about that moment felt important to me. If we could move through darkness like that—slowly, patiently, guiding each other—then I believed we could probably move through anything life placed in front of us.

That was the way I understood love.

Another memory sits beside that one.

We were trying to catch a rideshare at a very busy intersection in Oakland on our way to a pizza place. Cars were everywhere and there was barely any space for a driver to pull over.

When the car finally approached, he told me we would have to move quickly to get in.

I told him I was scared.

He responded, “You should be.”

We made it into the car safely. Later we laughed about what he had said, and I teased him about some gentler things he might have said instead. He laughed and admitted I had a point.

At the time it felt like a small moment.

But when I look back now, I notice something I didn’t see then.

Inside the dome, when darkness surrounded him, he asked, “Where are you?”

And I answered.

Outside in the light, when I was the one who felt unsure, the moment moved differently.

Near the end of our relationship he told me something that has stayed with me ever since.

He said I was never really there for him.

I still don’t know what to do with that sentence.

Part of me could answer it easily.

Part of me could say that I was there—at least in the ways I knew how to be.

I slowed down.

I stayed close.

I guided him through the dark when he needed someone beside him.

And maybe that is where some of the anger comes from.

Because when I think back to that dome, I know something about myself very clearly.

If life had gone dark for him the way that dome did, I would have stayed.

I would have stood there in the dark and helped him feel his way through whatever came next.

But what sits underneath that memory now is something harder to explain.

It feels like betrayal, but not in the loud way people usually mean that word.

More like the quiet shock of realizing that the meaning you carried for something was not the meaning someone else carried for it.

Sometimes that realization makes me angry.

Not screaming angry.

Just the kind of anger that sits with a question that refuses to settle.

How could we stand in the same darkness and understand it so differently?

Some people tell me the answer is simple.

Let it go.

And they may be right.

But when a memory like that walks back into the room, what exactly are you supposed to do with it?

Pretend it doesn’t matter?

Pretend the meaning you felt in that moment was never there?

I don’t know how to do that.

And I want to be clear about something.

This isn’t about the fact that he left.

People leave relationships all the time, and sometimes that is the right thing to do. I can accept that.

What has been harder to understand is the way it happened.

It felt a little like someone walking out of a room and switching off the light on their way out.

Not just turning it off, but breaking the switch on the wall and saying, now find your way back to yourself.

I don’t think I would ever do that to another human being.

And if I ever have without realizing it, then I am sorry.

So I sit with the memory instead.

Sometimes with confusion.

Sometimes with sadness.

Sometimes with that quiet anger that still wants to ask the question.

And sometimes I try to understand.

Maybe one day I will.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe not.

But there is one thing I do know.

When things became uncertain, when the path wasn’t clear, when the lights went out—

I stayed.

Inside that dome he reached forward and grabbed my foot just to make sure I was still there.

And whatever else life has done with the rest of that story, one thing I know is true.

Once, in the middle of complete darkness, we found our way through.