She once told me she regretted that her being Baha'i had made it so we'd learned from an early age to lead a double life based on denial and self-censoring and duality, especially for me, living as long as I had to in post revolution Iran. She was never sorry about being Baha'i herself, of course, but sorry that, despite her best efforts including her disassociation publicly, we never really did have a choice to be completely free of it.

The irony of it is that all the lessons and tricks and controls I learned because of that are probably why I can make it--fake it?--through each day without her and not completely lose my mind. Even her regret was to my benefit again, in the end.