‘and.’ it is so hopeful

a love that blooms twice

i’ve been telling people that for the last year and a half, it’s felt like intensive couples therapy but without a therapist. before we decided to break up and right after i moved out, we saw a couples therapist that charged $275 an hour. i don’t think it was because we had any hope of reconciling but i think it was so we could say to our friends, family and most importantly to ourselves: you can’t say we didn’t try. during our first appointment, we sat on opposite ends of the couch with a box of kleenex settled between us. we arrived separately, always parking a street away from each other and awkwardly waiting for the other to walk up to the building so we could enter together. sometimes i intentionally arrived not quite late but too close to our appointment time and i would drop into the quiet lobby with my tote bag clanging against the heavy metal door. jeremy would notice but he wouldn’t say anything. he didn’t need to because i already knew what he was thinking.

i didn’t know how to act during therapy. sometimes i wanted to jeremy to reach out for my hand, to reassure me that we were in the ending of this together. i remember my childhood best friend grabbing my hand right before the first drop on a rollercoaster as a reminder that we were both ready to fall together. but i rarely wanted to reach out for his. at the time, my pain and anger was all that mattered to me and it was all i cared about. but still, i wanted our therapist to imagine what we once were when we were good. a part of me, no matter how angry and disillusioned i felt, still felt a sense of pride in the love we shared. i tried to feign closeness that was no longer there, when she asked me for my interpretation of the last year, i tried my best to praise jeremy and highlight how close we really are despite us sitting on the couch in front of her. but i kept my hands clasped in my lap, only removing them to gesticulate wildly when he said something i vehemently disagreed with or i was enraged by.

i was hostile and petulant but i couldn’t stop myself from crying during every single session. our therapist sat in front of us with patient eyes but i could tell she knew we were paying her to tell us what we already knew before we scheduled the first appointment. she asked about our age difference and i knew i seemed younger than my age while sitting on that couch with my smeared eyeliner, tissues balled up in my fist, my fake leather lug boots, my lack of self restraint, and my claims that he just didn’t see me!!!!! especially when compared to jeremy’s thoughtful and articulate expression and the subtle exasperation that slowly crawled onto his face when i would lash out. i wondered if she secretly judged me, or us, for it. i wouldn’t blame her, i guess but i hated the thought of it.

when i wasn’t angry during therapy, i was crying. no, i wasn’t crying, i was weeping. i couldn’t communicate my sadness because i don’t think i knew i was grieving. i was just so angry. my weeping was my grief pouring out of me. my weeping were the words i could not say and they were the feelings i didn’t understand yet. after our last therapy appointment, when things were officially dissolved and it was agreed that i would find an apartment, cleo would stay with him, the engagement ring would be tucked away in a drawer forever, when we agreed that the way we had loved each other the last 6 years was no longer the same, i allowed jeremy to collect me into a hug and i wept. we stood there by the trunk of my car and i wept until he finally let go of me, i let go of him, we said goodbye and he turned around to walk down the street. i got into my driver’s seat, i took a breath, wiped my eyes, put my car into drive, turned on my headlights and that was that.

the hardest thing is trying to be friends with someone you shared a life with and that life is now two separate ones. when i stopped taking adderall, every emotion i had buried within me came spilling out in hideous ways. although we were split up, we were still entangled. sometimes, after having dinner together at our favorite italian restaurant and drinking one too many glasses of wine, i would stay the night at his house because it felt safe and familiar even though we knew it wasn’t a good idea. other times, when we walked to get a coffee down the street, i would link my arm in his. we would still text each other regularly, almost every day, sending cleo photos and catching up on our days. when he told me he was cutting off my health insurance after giving me a year to figure it out, i felt like it was a personal attack on me. i still felt entitled to it because our split felt more like a divorce, and didn’t i at least deserve that? it felt like substantial and real proof that he did not care for me as a friend but for him, it was creating a boundary to solidify our complicated but burgeoning platonic relationship. i refused to understand this and i felt so betrayed, we didn’t talk for 4 weeks. but when we did talk, we talked and talked with a transparency and freedom that i hadn’t experienced with us before. eventually, he started dating and i did too. figuring out our boundaries around our dating lives felt exciting to me in a strange way. i would ask for details, i felt better knowing than not knowing. he refused to give them but at my begging, he would give me a few details. i wanted to know who he had sex with for the first time after we split and i felt myself being surprised at my lack of recoil when picturing a mystery woman in the bed we once shared. maybe a part of me convinced myself i wanted to be the cool almost-ex-wife, the nonchalant one, the one who couldn’t care less, the one who had gotten away, the one who was better off anyway, the one who was sophisticated and grown up enough to hear her ex’s new love affairs and cheer him on from the sidelines. a fraud. but i felt the grief of our split settle into the deepest parts of me and i tried to sort out my feelings about it now that i wasn’t numbing myself to the truth.

8 months ago, we sat across from each other at a pizza place that doesn’t have good pizza. we sat in the bar area that feels more depressing than it really is because sitting at a two top in the main dining area felt more depressing than anything. the high top cheap lacquered mahogany wood tables gleamed under the harsh overhead lighting and ESPN highlights played loudly on the tv holstered above the bar. it was then that i reached for jeremy’s hand over the table and i said i was sorry. for everything. for how i treated him, how i treated us, how i was so angry with him, how i left him behind while i was in search of something that didn’t include us, how i reveled in my selfishness, how i made him feel there was no room for him, i said i was sorry for not being ready to start the life that he had been ready for.

we never discussed getting back together or dating each other again for a second time. i asked him once when i was drunk and sad and he slowly shook his head and gently told me we shouldn’t think about things like that. i didn’t think it would ever happen. i didn’t know if we even wanted it to happen. too much had been said, too many things had happened, it seemed too daunting. too much time had passed. instead, we would go out to dinner and we would talk and talk and talk. sometimes i would cry, dabbing my eyes with the cloth napkin at the bar, useless against the tears streaming down my face. sometimes, i would feel angry all over again. sometimes, he would get angry and go quiet. but always, we would come back and talk again. we had hard conversations, the hardest conversations that i think we could ever have, ones that we should have been having when we were still together. we had conversations that were brutally clear and honest and tragic; we talked even if we didn’t always have the words. during that last year of our relationship, i always claimed jeremy didn’t see me for who i was and i took that as a lack of love and connection. but now, i realize he saw me for exactly who i was and it was me who couldn’t stand that he loved me enough to see me so wholly and truthfully.

years ago, i read an article about a man who tells his wife he wants to leave her. he tells her he’s tired of this life, he wants to be single, he doesn’t want to be married anymore. the news took her by surprise and she was devastated by his confession so she tells him, okay. she understands. he’s surprised by her lack of emotion but keeps his word. she keeps her and their children’s routine as normal and lets him figure out what he needs to figure out about his life. she understands that she isn’t the problem and really, her husband is feeling a lack in his own life that is causing him to check out of theirs. after some time, he tells her he wants to fix the front door because it’s not working properly. and after that, he starts working on more house projects. she knows that this is his way of making his way back to the family because home is where the heart is.

i ask jeremy about the front yard and the backyard. i ask if he ever envisioned a garden in the side yard, maybe to grow some kale and strawberries. i ooh and ahhh over the growing peach and vibrant lemon tree he planted for us as soon as we had moved in. the ones i never really paid attention to when i lived there. i ask if he needs help pulling the weeds that have overtaken the mulch. we walk to the plant nursery up the street and pick out a new plant together for the garden. he asks me for my opinion on remodeling the downstairs bathroom and he goes with the tiles i like and i wonder if he still is in love with me a tiny bit.

i don’t know what will happen with this or with us. i get scared thinking of what could happen if we decide to turn away from each other a second time. i think about what that could mean for me, for him, but most importantly what that would mean for this friendship of ours and our constant conversation that i have come to treasure so deeply. but that’s the thing about love. you keep trying and going and going and trying and going and you swear you’re too tired and you swear you’re giving up on it all and you promise that you’re done with it and you are going to leave it all alone and you think the end of one love means love can’t bloom twice but you realize that one day you can wake up and your whole world is blooming. that’s the thing. it’s always the thing.

the pursuit of true love is never exhausting, yes or no?