Share Your Love with Me

 The Queen of Soul is belting it out in the apartment tonight. 

I can't decide on a specific album so I cue up the first one I ever bought: Aretha Franklin's 30 Greatest Hits. It's been a rough day at the office, so I really wanted to hear "Respect," and I'll see how I feel as the album winds on. 

I go on cooking and tidying things up until a song comes on that brings back my first marriage so vividly that I have to stop and remind myself to breathe. 

Oh how lonesome (oh how lonesome)

You must be (you must be)

It's a shame (shame, shame)

If you don't share your love with me. 

I listened to this song on an endless loop while the ex and I were breaking up. I was so lonely and I kept thinking that he must be lonely, too. 

* * *

"I think that this is what people meant by "adulting.""

I'm on a videocall with one of my dearest friends. I've been telling her about how everyone I know really seems to be going through it lately. Divorce, unemployment, issues with their health, issues with their parents health, discipline problems with their kids, it's just everything all at once. And it's hard to know when someone has enough space to hear the minor tragedies that are going on in your life. 

Community has been a buzzword for so long now that I think it has lost all of its meaning. We say that we know it is life-affirming and life-changing, but I haven't been able to build an actual community since the first few years after college. We got wrapped up in our jobs and lives and went our separate ways. I understand that life is like that. We love people for a season or a lifetime and whichever it is, it was worth loving them.

But I long for real community. 

* * *

I was laid off in December. 

It was awful. I was called into the office one day and told that the organization was 3.1M dollars in debt and that there was no way out. We were being laid off because they weren't sure they would be able to meet payroll for another week. We were laid off because of incomprehensible financial mismanagement. The people responsible for that mismanagement still had their six figure salaries and probably had a very merry Christmas watching The Christmas Carol. 

I digress. 

Getting laid off is one of those things that you can't really conceptualize until it happens. I killed it at that job. I raised our entire fundraising goal for the year in six months. I loved my boss. I loved my work. I thought that I landed at the organization where I was going to stay until I at least finished school. Having that yanked out from me was so disorienting that I took three weeks just to process it. I could not fathom going from having a good job where things were going really well to having no job, and not because of anything I had done wrong. There were very few people I could talk to about it. David bore most of the burden then and now, because my emotions have become even more volatile than normal. When I do see people I love there so much pressure to be positive about my job search, because no one wants to hear you rant about how middle management creates jobs for themselves by making the job search worse for applicants. 

Or whatever tear I'm on that week. 

* * * 

My longing for community is wrapped up with a concept I fucking despise. 

"Having enough spoons." 

I understand that sometimes we're carrying so much in our private lives that we can't carry any more. But I am also in the process of becoming an interreligious chaplain who wants to do hospice work. I know firsthand that grief and stress shared are grief and stress lightened. My favorite minister once said that "Asking for help is self care and giving help is community care."

I have never forgotten that sermon. 

I don't know if this is a me thing. Do you all feel disconnected and vaguely unhappy? Am I just unlikable and can't form the community I want? Is the community that I long for just non-existent anymore?

That's not to say that we should all be willing to take on everyone's everything all the time. Of course not. Boundaries are important. But if we can't put a card in the mail, show up unannounced with a hotdish, or offer to take someone's kids for two hours so they can go on a date, what's the point? 

* * *

I've been relistening to a lot of music I haven't heard in awhile. 

It's been a lot of what Spotify has dubbed "Millennial Post Rock." I've listened to The Crane Wife album on repeat while writing papers. I play The Postal Service and make baked ziti for David's lunch. I just sit and listen to For Emma, Forever Ago. 

This is completely embarrassing, but the reason I am revisiting all these albums is because I feel like I did in my 20s. Everything is too uncertain, all of these life experiences are new and overwhelming, and IamjusthavingtoomanyfeelingsandIcannotdeal. 

Christ, I turn 40 next year. 

In the midst of this review of the tail end of my emo years, I let David have a turn at the radio. Somewhere in his mix a cover of "Share Your Love with Me" comes up. 

I'm drawn back to those months before my divorce, but only for a moment. I keep thinking about the line "Oh how lonesome you must be." Every time I have told someone "I don't have the spoons" or had someone cry when I drop off tater tot lentil hotdish or allthefuckingfeelings of worthless and despair I have felt during unemployment come over me. 

It's a lot. It's almost too much. 

But I realize again that a lot and almost too much are exactly what I want. I want to listen to you complain about your horrible Boomer boss or the price of houses or your dog chewing up your $3,000 dental guard. I want drawings from your kids and to bring you cookies when didn't get the job you wanted. I want to be in this horrible phase of "adulting" with you. I want to share our love and grief and joy with one another. 

Maybe we can all feel a little bit less lonesome. 

David

David and I have been dating for almost 18 months and making crispy tofu still eludes me. 

It's maddening. 

His current shifts have him working until late--8:00 or 8:30PM and I take a lot of pride in having something delicious on the table when he comes home. Eggplant parmesan, homemade root vegetable pot pie, stuffed squash and mashed potatoes--anything that gives me something to do in the evenings and makes it so he has something to look forward to after a long shift on a snowy evening. 

Tonight I've been trying to make a crispy tofu stir fry and the tofu turns out fine, I guess. But it's not what I wanted for him. 

It upsets me more than it should. 

* * *

When I'm feeling truthful, I'll admit I knew something was wrong in my last relationship. 

Of course I did. There were so many indications that my ex and I didn't belong together, that we weren't really compatible. I briefly thought about calling off our wedding about a month before it happened, but I felt like I was too far into it. 

I wasn't brave enough to admit that we were failing. 

I lived on comfort food during the years with my ex. Hotdish, pasta carbonara, anything that was a simple carb. Anything that was both comforting and that I didn't actually care how it turned out. 

Just thinking about my diet now makes me shudder and realize two things. 

I was deeply in love. 

I was profoundly unhappy. 

* * *

"Jesus, it's hot in here."

"Yeah, the air-conditioner has never been very good. Do you need anything?"

"Water?"

He gets out of bed and heads toward the kitchen. Before he gets there he doubles back and puts on a record.

"I think you'll like this."

He turns on an artist from his hometown--someone I've never heard before. I space out for much of the record in the way you do when you're happy and in love and in the moment. 

Then there's a lyric that catches me. It's funny how that happens, isn't it? 

I got a tenderhearted lover who does me good.

He's a little rough around the edges but don't let that fool you.

This is the most content I've been in years. 

***

I've been hesitant to write too much about David. 

I wrote a lot about the ex and our relationship and I'm superstitious. I haven't wanted to jinx what I have. 

I've also spent a lot of time thinking about my marriage vs. my relationship with David. 

I'm not going to do yet another post-mortem of my marriage. My ex doesn't deserve that kind of thought. What I will say is that I feel like I have a partner in everything. I have someone who has my back and who loves me, even on our worst days. This is the most loved, supported, and . . .  I don't know, seen I've ever felt. 

I think a lot about that song he played me when we first started dating.

Never gonna be perfect, but I'm still gonna try. 

Closest thing I'll ever get is you by my side. 

We've been through such a ridiculous, maddening, infuriating year. Between COVID and layoffs and elections, I feel like there's so much that could have--should have gone wrong in a relatively new relationship. And we're still together. I'm still deeply in love and profoundly happy. 

I still give a shit about how the tofu turns out. 

Fat

It's 10:00AM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting every decision I've made that's brought me to this point.

I'm running a 5K on a treadmill as the final leg of a practice indoor triathlon, something I got up at 6:00 to prep for. It's not the actual indoor triathlon I signed up for--that's three weeks away. I got up early on a Sunday to do a practice triathlon.

I'm being a little dramatic. I was regretting the decisions I had made, but only because running a treadmill is the most boring thing in the world. While I'm running I'll cope by texting bad selfies to friends, asking if they know that treadmills were originally designed as a punishment, and generally being a whiny little bitch.

At the end of the run I'll hop off the treadmill and get hit by a rush of euphoria.

While I didn't win the genetic lottery in . . . basically any other way I'm lucky enough to be a person who gets a runner's high almost every time I work out, regardless of the activity.

I'm feeling even better when I check my watch stats and see I've cut an entire minute off my normal swim time. I've been working really hard since November, cross and strength training and it's nice to see that hard work paying off.

I trade my sweaty workout clothes for a towel and decide to hop on the scale before getting in the shower.

That's exactly the place where the bottom falls out.

"I deserve this" I think, tearing up in the shower. "I had that extra drink on Friday night and ohmygod refined pasta? You slob, what were you thinking?"

"I deserve this."

* * *

I am in the best shape of my life. 

I've lost three dress sizes, my mile times are faster than they've ever been, and my last doctor was thrilled with my progress. When people ask me my secret, I laugh and say "Oh, you know, diet and exercise." 

Here's my actual secret. 

Every morning I get up and weight myself, often more than once. Depending on what the scale says, I'll have Breakfast A (70 calories) or Breakfast B (an indulgent 140 calories). I will go to work and try to keep my total calorie consumption throughout the day to around 700 calories, mostly eaten two hours before I go to the gym, which I visit six days a week. I'll spend 90 minutes Spinning, will shower, and will walk the 1.5 miles back to my house. I'll eat a carefully portioned dinner, ensure that I haven't had more than 1,200 calories in a day and will skip eating back most of the calories burned during my workout. More often than not, I'll halve my dinner so I can have a beer to help me sleep. 

If, say, I've done something egregious like go to dinner at a friend's house and eat more than the calories I have allotted, I will get home, put on my running clothes, and run until I'm at my calorie limit for the day. 

I do this every day for nine months.

At the end of it, a new doctor will ask how I made such progress. When I detail my diet and exercise routine for her, she looks me dead in the face and tells me "That's not a lifestyle change. That's an eating disorder."

"No, it's not. Fat girls don't have those."

She almost slaps me.

I would have deserved it. 

* * *

"I mean, for someone who works out so much, I don't understand how you put on so much weight."

I've heard no fewer than 17 variations of this comment throughout my dating life. 

This particular time I lock myself in the bathroom and cry for hours. 

I am three years and thirty pounds from the best shape of my life. I fell in love and stopped working out so much because I was so happy. I fell out of love and drank too much and ate too much comfort food as a method of coping. Everything about my life feels so out of control at the moment that the constant refrain in my head is "You deserve this. You let yourself go. You're an ugly fat monster."

"You deserve this." 

* * *

It's 10:00PM. I'm covered in sweat, hot, and regretting absolutely none of the decisions that brought me to this place. 

I'm sleeping with someone new. It's the first someone new since my ex-husband and while it's nothing serious, it's been incredibly meaningful for me. He's a genuinely funny, kind, and warm person and I couldn't have written a better first-since-my-ex-husband.

I can't get out of my own head. 

The second my clothes come off, all I can think about is the stretch marks on my boobs, the cellulite on my ass, my disgusting belly. I'm convinced that this is a pity fuck or a meh-I-have-nothing-better-to-do fuck or a I-haven't-had-sex-in-awhile-and-I-can-close-my-eyes-and-imagine-Scarlett-Johansson fuck.

It's not. 

I get a little bit better the more I get used to him (see previous comments about funny, kind, and warm), but I still can't settle down. Every time we eat together he comments on how little appetite I seem to have (It's one of those unspoken fat girl rules. Eat less than you want and try not to enjoy it). Based on the number of times I've said "Oh, I got busy and had a late lunch" he must think I'm the most overworked employee in the place. 

I make a lot of jokes to him about how I'm the incarnation of a goddess of sex, here for his adoration and awe, but the truth is that I'm five years and ten pounds from the best shape of my life. And for as much as I'd like to be proud (and am proud, if I'm being honest) of the fact that I can do an indoor tri for practice on a Sunday morning, there's an extremely loud voice in my head talking about how maybe my fat ass should walk the two miles home and I can probably skip that post-workout bagel and oh, by the way, maybe you should cancel your plans with funny-kind-warm tonight.

Afterall, it's not like I deserve it. 

Here

“Oh, I use “May I be patient, may I be I be strong, may I be kind to myself” pretty often. I like the rhythm of it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I saw you have another one written on your mirror. What was it?”

“Fear is the mind-killer. I write it on my arm when I’m doing open water swims, too.”

“Isn’t that from Dune?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a weird girl.”

* * *

Everything feels muffled.

My husband has just told me he wants a divorce. While I’m at work. Over text message.

In the coming months I’ll spend a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve this. Surely I didn’t marry the kind of person who ends a four year relationship and a two year marriage via text. I must have done something wrong. Yes, that’s it. This was my fault. I did something to deserve this.

Nearly a year out, I still don’t understand how it happened, but I know that I didn’t deserve it.

What I do understand is how at that moment I felt myself slam something down over my heart.

“No,” I told it. “We don’t have time to fall apart now.”

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. It was like being deeply sleep deprived. Or drunk. I’m reasonably certain I worked out. I know I finished the project I was working on before I went home. I remember that the muffled feeling took awhile to wear off.

When it comes to brain vs. heart, my brain is almost never in control. It spends the rest of the day asserting itself in time with its own beat.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

* * *

“I know it seems like a silly exercise, but for someone who is perennially hard on themselves, it’s an important one.”

I groan. “Fine. I have grit.”

“What else?”

“I’m bright. I’m articulate when I’m not nervous. I’m adventurous.”

When she asks a chirpy “Anything else?” I remind myself that I am paying to be here.

“I care. A lot. All the time, actually. About everyone.”

“Yes. Warm-hearted. And open-hearted. Neither of those are bad things.”

I think about the jar over my heart and its quiet insistence that it exists.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

* * *

In the months after the ex leaves me, I reach for everything.

I meditate. I reread my favorite books. I stop drinking and start exercising and eat more vegetables. I belt out my favorite musicals alone in my apartment. I write down things that feel like they’re helping. I consider getting them tattooed on my body and immediately put a one-year moratorium on any permanent body alteration.

Impossibly, I start dating again.

Somewhere in the midst of it, my protected heart finally breaks. And I keep it covered.

“No,” I tell it. “It doesn't matter how handsome or funny they are.We’re going to keep you here forever.”

* * *

I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

It’s late and I should be asleep, but I’m up texting and a dumb play on words has set me off.

Life has been like this for a little while. It came on so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve stopped needing to meditate for an hour before bed to fall asleep. I’ve started reading again. While I’m still working out, but not frenetically, twice a day.

I find myself up late, texting and laughing.

One of my goals for myself during my divorce was to come through it with my warm heart still intact. I made that goal even after I secreted it away and told myself no one would ever get to see it again. It sounds contradictory, but I think even as I was falling apart I knew (believed, maybe) that it would happen.

I’m still surprised by how swiftly it did. Handsome and funny with a smart mouth certainly helped, but it's been more than that. Time, likely. Good friends, too. I won't lie, a few liberal applications of gin and jazz standards probably helped me along as well.

What shocks me more than the swiftness is how ready my heart is to try again, even when I know that things probably aren't going to work. It keeps asserting itself over and over again.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

Delicate

"Can we pop in here?"

"Why?"

I feel like screaming. I feel like screaming a lot lately. 

"It's a bookstore I love. We're walking past it. We don't have anywhere to be." 

He's annoyed. He's been annoyed a lot lately. 

Bookstores are one of the few places I can go when my anxiety is really doing a number on me. There's something about tidy stacks of alphabetized books that I find calming. I abandon him to his simmering irritation near the door and browse the stacks. 

I don't actually want anything. I've got a houseful of books I don't have the attention span to read right now. I want a few moments of peace and calm before we head home to ignore one another for the rest of the weekend. When I return to the counter where he's scowling at his phone, I pause for a moment to read a framed print for sale. 

Months later, I'll wonder if this moment in time was a portent. 

For the time being, I start to cry. 

* * *

He has a smart mouth. 

At least, that's what my mother would call it. 

I mainly call it fun. 

It's the kind of sense of humor where a wildly inappropriate joke is out of your mouth before your brain has a chance to realize how inappropriate it is, something that's just happened. He takes a look at my shocked face, realizes what he said, and immediately starts to backtrack. 

I start laughing so hard I start crying. I get out of bed and he immediately reaches for my hand. 

"No," he says. "No, come back." 

I was only getting up to switch on the fan, but there's something in his voice that makes me crawl right back into his warm arms. Our best case scenario is three, maybe three and a half months at the outside, and who knows if it'll even be that much. 

These things are so delicate. 

For the time being, these snatches of three or four hours at a stretch feel impossibly precious. So much so that I treasure even his awfully timed jokes. 

"Next time," I say, "I'll just bring you a warm apple pie."

* * *

"What is it?"

I'm wiping tears off of my face.

"This print. It's beautiful." I grab his hand and pull him over to read it, keeping hold of his hand the whole time. I feel so hopeful in this moment, like he'll read it and whatever this stupid impasse is between us will break up and we'll cry and kiss and everything will go back to normal. 

"Huh." He says when he finishes and turns to me. My heart leaps. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

* * *

I'm midway into a long videochat when one of my best friends says something that stuns me. 

We've been talking about a lot of stuff: tri training and public health and science fiction podcasts. At some point I end up deep in a post-mortem about my love life and she interrupts, something unusual for her. 

"You need to stop confusing what's normal with what's rational." 

"What?"

"You seem to believe that everyone except for you acts perfectly rationally 100% of the time when they're making decisions about romance and love. Most people aren't, ever. Stop believing that you can or should."  

We talk for awhile longer, but I'm distracted. When we finally hang up, I walk off to read something hanging on my wall. 

It's the print from over a year ago. As far as art goes, it was never much. Just a printing of a quote from a book I have come to love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

After reading and re-reading it for awhile, my phone beeps. It's the guy with the smart mouth and warm arms. Just seeing his name on my phone makes me break out laughing again. 

Three months or three days, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. Badly timed jokes and all, this is something worth having. 

Grim, Effective

I depart for Family Court fortified for battle.

I’m on track to be forty minutes early, enough time to watch previous proceedings and feel comfortable with the judge. I’m neatly dressed and having a great hair day. I put on the boots that make me feel like a futuristic crime fighter and give me a Beyonce level confidence. I got out of bed an hour early to apply a full face of waterproof makeup. I have tissues and panic attack medicine in my purse.

As I’m stepping onto the bus I double-check the letter I received, curse, and get back off.

Our divorce hearing is the following week.

* * *

I never expected email would provide such an emotional gut-punch.

I was searching for an confirmation that I cancelled our honeymoon bookings (we would have departed yesterday, a point I remembered today when I’m reminded that I didn’t cancel our Tokyo hotel) when I stumble across something my ex-husband wrote and sent to me.

Thanks, Google.

It’s a post from a blog he wrote for a little while as a way (I think) of helping him process his autism diagnosis. He wrote privately, but would send me things from time to time that he thought I would like.

The post is everything I loved about him . . . It’s thoughtful and smart, nerdy and a little self-deprecating.

It’s also completely shattering.

* * *

Divorce is the most interminable process imaginable.

I was so optimistic at the beginning of our process. Devastated, yes, but I believed that we could get it done quickly. We didn’t have joint assets aside from a savings account and didn’t have any actual kids. Since we didn’t have anything to fight over we could get it wrapped by my birthday! I could start 34 with a new name and a clean slate.

That optimism was a little misplaced.

* * *

The ex-husband left me five months ago.

It feels like 500 years. Things have slowly gotten better, the way everyone said they would. I’ve lost 10+ pounds and kept it off. I sleep better and am more active. I drink less and eat healthier. My tri time was two minutes faster. I’m not longer sushed or told that my feelings are too much or too intense. My life is better in measurable ways.

In the back of my daily journal, I keep a list of things I hated about my ex. Not “oh, that was annoying” but the big, talk-these-out-in-couples-therapy kind of things. It’s part of how I’ve coped over the past five months.

It’s been grim, but effective.

Which is why the piece of writing he sent me affects me so badly.

Right above that list of things I hated was a list I made early in our marriage, when I was still trying to figure out what living together as a married couple meant. I could pull it out and read it and think about how lucky I was to have him in my life.


The piece of writing I unearth in my email is like that list of positives about the ex. It’s a relic of the person my ex could be and the person (I think) he wanted to be. It was him when he was ready for adventure and love and commitment, before those ideas became . . . whatever they became to him right before he left.


Coming across that person unexpectedly, especially days before our divorce will be finalized, provokes such a deep sense of loss that it nearly knocks the breath out of me. It’s a startling, and half-unwelcome reminder that despite all the fortifications and grim, effective lists and desire to dear god, just get this over with already there’s a part of me that is still mourning our relationship and the man he used to be.

It's Complicated

It’s a request for new music that brings people out of the woodwork.

My husband was never interested in music. No, it was more than that. I don’t think he actually liked music. He would buy tracks here and there that he had heard in movies or television or video games, but he rarely bought whole albums and I wasn't supposed to listen to music in the house without headphones because it was too stimulating.

I am somewhat on the opposite side of the spectrum.

I take opportunities to see shows live whenever I can. Big, expensive shows at arenas, tiny jazz shows in clubs that you could barely move around in, someone’s aunt’s second-cousin’s cover band at a bar in the suburbs. I have playlists curated by mood, by activity, by person. I took hours to make the husband a playlist that introduced him to all of my favorite bands and tried to tell him how I felt about him. Very high school, I know, but it meant something to me.

He never listened to it.

For weeks after he moved out I couldn’t listen to anything. I was raw enough that any music just hurt. After I moved out of our apartment and took a deep breath and realized this is actually happening I plugged in my headphones and turned on some old favorites.

I couldn’t listen to them. Any of them.

I wasn't stupid. I avoided all the Motown we used for dance parties. I didn’t touch any of the pop songs we played at our wedding. I skipped tracks that were happy or about falling for someone.

It didn’t help.

When I turned on For Emma, Forever Ago all I could think about was how much he hated Bon Iver and would ask me to turn it off. Robyn’s Body Talk was playing the last time we had an argument about one of the big things going wrong in our marriage. Even the Miles Davis and John Coltrane I used to listen to when I was falling asleep reminded me of meeting him and falling in love. There was no catharsis in any of it.

I did what any reasonable person would do. I asked my social media channels for recommendations, saying that a lot of music I loved was now associated with my ex and I needed something new.

That word. Ex. It blew up my entire life. Again.

I haven’t been HEY WORLD I’M GETTING A DIVORCE, but I haven’t exactly been silent about it either. I changed my last name. I posted about getting a new apartment, about moving, about living alone, for Christ’s sake. I’ve wrote and posted about sadness and heartbreak as it was happening.

But as soon as I posted the word ex the entire world messages me.

* * *

I was unprepared for a lot of things about getting divorced: the sudden, intense return of my sex drive, the discovery that I don’t know how to make friends aside from awkwardly blurting out “You’re cool and I want to be friends with you,” the return of surprise, awful panic attacks all catch me unaware.

What I am most unprepared for is the people who want me to perform my grief for them.

People I haven’t spoken to in decades are suddenly calling, texting, messaging with versions of the same thing. “OhhhhhhhhmyyyyyGawwwwwwwwwwwwd. I’m so sorry! What happened?”

There are people I am genuinely glad to hear from. I get a card from an old roommate saying she’s thinking about me and hopes the next year will be better for me. A friend I haven’t seen in months comes over and watches Peaky Blinders with me so I don’t have to be alone. Another person who generally isn’t into being physically affectionate holds my hand and lets me sit with my head on her shoulder for awhile because she knows how alone I feel.

The people I’m glad to hear from are the ones who don’t ask anything of me. They don’t offer lame “I’m here to help if you need it.” They bring food when they notice I’ve lost 10 pounds in two weeks. They drag me out of the house to go walk and pet their dogs. They hand over their babies for me snuggle while they unpack my boxes. They don’t ask for details about what happened.

I am amazed by the number of people who do ask for details, or who offer their own opinions about what happened. Oh, was your anxiety too much for him? Did you catch him with someone else? Did a demon secretly take over his soul during a failed exorcism and now you have to return to the faith of your youth to escape?

What I want to say is that I was trained by Ra’s al Ghul to secretly infiltrate a gang of 40-something male Trekkies. My goal was to seduce and destroy them one by one, but I realized that the poison given to me by the League of Assassins turned out to be a sugar pill, a ploy for a larger conspiracy which I wanted no part of. Now I sharpen my blade and wait for death to come.

Instead I tell them what I tell everyone.

“It’s complicated.”

* * *

Grief is so personal and complicated and I want, so much, to talk about it. I want to tell someone about how waiting for my divorce papers induced a panic attack, how getting coffee with my ex-in-laws felt like a birthday party and a funeral all at once, how I met a man recently who made a bell in my chest ring. I need to talk about how I still don’t understand why my husband doesn’t love me anymore and how I’m getting to a point where I don’t need to understand.

This is not the grief people want.

They want me to go through motions, to perform grief that will give them some sort of catharsis. They want to hear something horrible about one or both of us so they can say “That could never happen in my marriage.” They want me to set his things on fire or tell them that I can’t live another day if we don’t reconcile. That kind of a narrative is reassuring.

And that narrative isn't true. At least, it’s not always true.

I have days where I feel great.

I wake up and get dressed and feel beautiful. I go to work and feel happy and fulfilled and like I’m making a real difference in the world. I spend time with friends talking about comics or music or the role of coded eroticism in 19th century novels and I feel funny and smart and interesting. I feel like I might be romantically valuable to someone else. Of course I am! People I love have shown me many times.

I have days where I feel like a piece of garbage someone has thrown away.

I wake up and get dressed and feel dumpy. I go to work and write shitty first drafts all day. I spend time watching trash television just so I don’t have to think about what a disgusting pile of crap I am. I feel like I’ll never be romantically valuable to someone else. How could I be? Someone I loved already showed me I’m not.

There’s no catharsis in any of it.

Blushy

A few weeks ago I went back and reread our wedding vows.

It was a dumb idea, but I was looking for . . . something. Some indication of what was about to come, some hint that I loved my husband more than he loved me, some inkling that he was lying when he promised to hang on with me through the hard stuff.

It was counterproductive. I knew that even as I was searching through my documents for the final copy. There was no way I could learn anything new about the person I had been with for years by staring at something we built in our best, most optimistic place.

I thought divorce and therapy and ruminating on the people we were would help me discover something new about what happened to us. It didn’t. It just confirmed what I already knew.

He wasn’t the person I needed him to be.

* * *

I had two goals for myself when my husband moved out.

Of course I did. I had a new five-year plan the week after he left. I’m a grant-writer. My religion is measurable outcomes and SMART goals.

The first was relatively simple. Be an adult. Treat the husband with kindness where I could and respect where I couldn’t. Avoiding airing dirty laundry to mutual friends or family. Provide prompt replies to requests for information. As much as you may want to, don’t smash or steal any of his stuff (leaving the special edition blu-ray of the original Alien trilogy behind was my greatest test).

That part has been easy enough. (He may have other feelings about this, who knows). I’m still on good terms with his family. When people ask “What happened?!” I say that it was complicated and I’d rather not talk about it. I apply the “is it true, is it kind, is it necessary” test to everything I say outside of my shrink’s office. He still owns the Alien trilogy.

I’m not perfect. I have days where I fantasize about smashing all of his shit with a baseball bat or breaking back into the apartment and erasing all of his saved Breath of the Wild data. I left Alien but I took Silence of the Lambs.

I’m trying.

* * *

I have a crush on someone.

Of all of the things I expected to happen after the husband and I separated, this was absolutely not one of them. Having to hide my cell phone from myself so I don’t text an “I miss you?” Yup, sounds about right. Not being able to sleep because I’m up armchair psychologizing about what went wrong. Duh. Crying uncontrollably while organizing my spice rack? Unexpected, but not out of the realm of possibility.

But an actual, stomach-swoopy, blushy, can’t-make-eye-contact, feel like a sixteen year old crush?

Jesus. What kind of a person am I? I don’t even have my divorce papers yet and I’m already feeling like a dumb kid, mooning over someone else. Am I incapable of being alone for two months without immediately looking for someone new?

This isn’t the person I wanted to be.

* * *

The second goal was to come through the divorce with an open, warm, and trusting heart.

I’ve lived my life as a pretty warm and open-hearted person. Not necessarily as a result of trying, but because that’s just the kind of personality I was lucky enough to get. It’s something I really like about myself and wanted to be the retain in the midst of a shitstorm of anger, despair, and bitterness.

It’s hard because it’s not really the kind of thing I can gauge in the moment. It’s easy to look at my actions and say: “I didn’t smash my husband’s signed-by-George-Takei-Enterprise-Model on the way out the door. Well done.” In the midst of the previously mentioned shitstorm of emotions it’s harder to say “I’m as accepting, warm, and loving as I was four years ago.”

The best measurement I’ve come up with so far is looking at how I’m treating myself. I’m pretty fucking hard on myself, so can I just calm the fuck down and see a stupid, stomach-swoopy, blushy crush as just that, and not some kind of a reflection on my character?

Because all that stuff, the ruminating and therapy and inappropriately-timed-crushes can show me what I was hoping to find in my wedding vows; what I’m hoping for from the goals I set for myself during this whole miserable process.

I can be the person I need myself to be.

Tidy

A year ago I was the happiest I had ever been. I was looking forward to our third anniversary as a couple and our first wedding anniversary. I was as in love as I was the first weeks we were together.

Half a year ago, the husband and I were working on some stuff. Maybe our first year together hadn’t been perfect, but I had never expected it to be. We were two people who were used to being independent, and it takes awhile to get used to a major life change. And none of that mattered, because we had the rest of our lives together to get it right.

(I now see where this is going, too)

Two months ago my husband asked me for a divorce.

My break-ups always followed more or less the same format: bourbon, sad music, crying, bitching, and about two weeks later moving on. It’s worked for every break-up from my high school boyfriend (minus the bourbon) to finding out my ex asked another woman to marry him while we were still together. I sympathized with friends going through wrenching splits, but always assumed that I was impervious. I was resilient. I had the perfect formula.

Yeah, no.

I thought I knew how to handle a break-up.

* * *

I’m standing in the kitchen of my apartment, washing the dishes and sobbing so loudly I’m certain my neighbors can hear me. It’s not the first time it’s happened in recent weeks, but it’s a new set of neighbors and I feel like I should give a damn.

I feel like I should. I don’t

I just keep washing the dishes and crying. When the dishes are done, I move onto dusting and crying. And on to sweeping and crying. And on to alphabetizing the spice rack and crying. I keep up with the doing-chores-and-crying thing until it’s time for-going-to-bed-and-crying. I don’t pour myself a drink. I don’t put on The Cure. I don’t call anyone to bitch.

I cry.

I do things that feel like forward motion.

I thought I knew how to handle moving on.

* * *

The truth is that any real grieving I’ve done has been decades ago, when childhood or the simple self-absorption of my 20s was enough to take the edge off. Sure, I’ve split with people since then, but I haven’t lost someone.

So I go into heavy-research mode. I read everything I can get my hands on about psychology and divorce and grief. I talk to my friends who have gone through the same thing about what to expect. I strategize with my therapist about empowerment. I mark days on the calendar and congratulate myself when I get to the point where grief turns a magical corner and you stop crying in public.

I cry on the bus the same day.

I start to track my moods on a daily basis. I see my friends. I throw myself into triathlon training and meditation. I go for long hikes. I switch to a primarily plant-based diet. I start practicing lock-picking and knot-tying. I get serious about paying off consumer debt and saving for a house.

I cry while having dinner with my best friend.

I make one-year, five-year, and ten-year plans—I’ve never had a problem that couldn’t be addressed by a good five-year plan! I wait for that moment of insight that’s part of every public radio piece—the moment when I realize this is when I’ll become a mountain-climber, write the Great American Novel, take a trip to Tibet and become the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

I cry in my one-to-one meeting with my boss.

I thought I knew how to handle grief.

* * *

A year ago I was the happiest I’d ever been.

I’d never met a problem I couldn’t fix. I’d throw hours of intense study, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and a good diet at my life. It wasn’t always perfect, but I had a lot of confidence life could at least be tidily organized.

My life has suddenly been dumped out of its neat boxes and I don’t even know how to start organizing. I want, so badly, to be able to fix this, to find a way to clean up this mess. Beyond the messiness of my marriage ending (and ohboy, is that a mess), everything I’ve relied on for years—exercise and a support system and research-backed therapy—isn’t helping me put anything back where it’s supposed to be. There’s no faster tri time, no Great American Novel, no spiritual insight.

I thought I knew how to handle a break-up, how to handle moving on, how to handle grief.

Turns out I don’t know a goddamn thing.

That One Summer

I’m crossing the street when Spotify betrays me.

I’ve been listening to a playlist they’ve made for me of songs I’ve listened to in summers past. Music has always served as an extra-sense kind of diary for me. I can picture the bar where I first heard the song Wagon Wheel, or feel the heat of summer night when I played Blackbird for my husband. This particular playlist has a lot of songs I was listening to prior to our wedding and it’s causing a lot of pleasant memories. 

The song that catches me off guard is one that I listened to a lot the summer before I met my husband. A few months before meeting him a friendship became something stickier than a friendship, and I played that song a lot while it was going on. When I met the husband I took the song off my playlists and eventually ghosted on the man. I miss the man involved from time to time but I never really looked back. Hearing this particular song on this particular summer day everything I felt that summer hits, and hits hard. 

The feelings are partially wistfulness for the friendship, but also desire for the person I was that summer. In the stickiness between friendship and sex and not-dating, I was constantly trying to be my most interesting, beautiful, desirable self.

It was amazing.

I was constantly reading and looking for odd bits of interesting news, so I was an excellent conversationalist. Sexual tension is a great incentive to buy new clothes and work out, so I always looked great. Dopamine is a terrific short-term replacement for serotonin, so I felt incredible.

It was terrible.

I was always trying to be witty and I stopped being fun. I was in shape, but worked out and monitored my food to the point of obsession. I was constantly high on the rushes I would get from the guy, but they were always followed by deep sadness when I realized he would never be able to give me what I needed. He left me breathless, in so many ways.

Hearing the song that stops me in the crosswalk leaves me breathless again.

***

Marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Before the husband, all of my relationships were disposable things. They were opportunities to to try on parts of myself: The Has it All Together Career Woman, The Homemaker, The Wanna-Be Urban Farmer. My marriage is where I can have it mostly together, but I can also have a Saturday where I rewatch Archer and laugh like an idiot. I can whip up coq-au-vin after I set my cookbook on fire.

I can also be the complicated person that my mental health and extreme empathy make me. Usually that’s not a bad person, but we’re playing our marriage on an higher difficulty setting. My mental health issues combined with my husband’s autism mean that our capacity for misunderstanding and hurt feelings is nearly limitless.

But even with that limitless capacity, he’s the one sitting next to me laughing at television, putting out my small fires, and helping me learn to be the beautiful, desirable person that can still be herself.  

***

When I get home, it’s one of the few nights the husband has beat me back to the apartment. He’s cooking something that smells delicious, has fed the cats, and has a bottle of of cold champagne. His day hasn’t left him so overstimulated that he needs quiet in the house, so I turn on the speakers and start writing him a love letter in a language he won’t understand.

I play the song I’ve been listening to since our vacation in North Carolina, a week that felt like a honeymoon we never got to take. I play songs from our wedding and we dance a little in the living room. I play the song that I listen to when I’m mad at him.

I also play him the song from the summer before I met him, so he can know that part of me, too.

I’m sweaty from public transit and stopped wearing makeup after our first date. I’m still getting used to my different body and I don’t have a single interesting thing to tell him about the news or my work.

I accept a cold glass of champagne from him, happy in the knowledge that in this moment I am beautiful, desirable, and, finally, me.

Love and Logic

“Do you want my jacket?”

I’m dazed, sitting in too-big hospital scrubs on a gurney. I have been in the ER for about twenty minutes, after a scary few weeks and a frustrating, unhelpful conversation with our local “Mental Health Urgent Care” that ended in them telling me there was nothing they could do for me.

There are a lot of dehumanizing parts of being in the ER for a mental health intervention. My room has a CCTV camera mounted behind glass in the corner. My door is always open, even when the doctor seeing me is talking to me about extremely personal questions. But the worst part, by far, is that they’ve taken my clothes and other personal items away from me. I’m in a pair of hospital scrubs, a clear signal to anyone walking past my open door that I’m here for a mental health intervention.

I don’t know if the room is cold or I’m having a stress response, but I can’t stop shaking.

The husband gives me his jacket and wraps his arms around me.

***

The husband has recently been diagnosed with autism.

 It’s not the kind of thing you’d really notice about him unless you’ve played a board game and suggested house rules or had an argument with him about time management. I’ve done both (the worst fights we’ve ever had have been over board game rules), and wasn’t terribly surprised by his diagnosis.

He doesn’t know it, but I often see his autism as a kind of super-power.

Before that will make a ton of sense, you have to understand some things about my husband beyond the fact that he has autism. He has a warm and generous heart, often reacting to hard times in someone else’s life by asking “What can we do to help them?” He adores his family and loves telling stories about their oddities or speaking with tremendous pride in his younger sister. And, of course, he is thoughtful and kind to me.

Here’s why he’s my super-hero.

The husband is extremely logical. I nicknamed him my Vulcan years ago. Living with anxiety means that I’m always looking for what people mean beyond their words and actions. I read texts with the highest possible amount of brusqueness intended, even when it's not. I analyze all of my interactions to death and attribute emotions or motives that are usually not there. He’s also honest, sometimes brutally so. But I am learning that he never means harm, and that I can always trust him to help me assess a situation. He can focus intently on things for hours when I am frequently restless and jumping between eighteen projects at a time.

This isn’t to say that he’s perfect, or that his autism doesn’t have negative effects on our lives. He isn’t and it does, but I am grateful he is the person he is.

***

I pull on the husband’s jacket. It’s a warm, and a bright color in the dinginess of the building. I’ve told him a few times that I don’t want to be admitted here as an inpatient, but I also recognize that I’m not making great decisions right now and will listen to what he and the doctors recommend.

But when the mental health staff comes in to separate us and talk to us individually about what should happen to me, I start shaking all over again. Sitting in a hospital room with strange clothes and unknown outcomes and having him taken away from me is the worst moment of my life.

His jacket smells like him, though, and it helps.

When the mental health staff leaves to interview him, I wonder what he’ll say. I’ve been a mess for weeks, and I imagine that it might be nice to be rid of me for a week, if only to get his own sense of equilibrium back. Just a few hours earlier I had told him, in detail, what my suicide plan was. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he told me he wanted me to be admitted to the inpatient program.

The mental health staff drops him back off about half an hour later on their way to talk to the admitting doctor.

“What did you tell them?”

He reaches for my hand and my heart drops.

“That I thought inpatient would make you . . .” he stops, laughs. “Go crazy.”

And despite the hospital scrubs and the open door and the people watching us through the camera I start to laugh. And then to cry. And then to do both at once.

He turns me to look at him.

“Hey, you’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together.”

I hear all of the logic and love behind his words. Right now, I don't believe in myself. But I believe in him.

Die Young

"Babe?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

I've wandered out into the living room, still mostly asleep. 

"Is your skin peeling off?"

Even mostly asleep, I can hear the slight laugh in his voice. 

"No, I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"I just don't want you to die."

"I think I'm okay for tonight."

"Okay, I love you."

"Love you, too."

***

"Do you feel like you were unprepared for marriage?"

The husband has joined me in therapy. Again, I am discomfited by my therapist's questions about our lives together. 

"I don't know." 

She doesn't push. I don't share. The husband only listens. 

Of course I was unprepared for marriage, I think.

"Did it ever occur to you that you wouldn't get married?"

"Of course."

"What was that like?"

I shrug. "It wasn't bad. I would be in my apartment until I decided I wanted to adopt a dog. I'd keep bees. I'd have friends and help them raise their children. I'd have hobbies and work."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Would it be a lonely life?"

"I never thought it was."

***

I miss being single.

Whenever I bring this up in front of my friends, they are quick to point out "You hated dating" and "Remember that time you didn't sleep because you were afraid your overnight guest was going to kill you?"

Yes, of course I remember. 

The desire to sometimes be single is one of the most surprising things about being married. There are days when I miss my old Saint Paul apartment with its high ceilings and wood floors. I miss having brussels sprouts or kale salad for dinner. I miss having music on every hour I was awake. I miss being forty pounds lighter. I miss being able to pee with the door open. 

I miss being single. 

***

"Hey."

"Hey."

"This is going to sound really high school, but can I play a song and have you listen to it?"

"Sure, what song is it?"

"Die Young, by Sylvan Esso."

He stops puttering on his laptop at the chorus. 

I was gonna die young.

Now I gotta wait for you, hon.

I had it all planned out before you met me. 

I had a plan, you ruined it completely. 

After listening he asks "Kel, what was your plan for your life if you hadn't met me? Nothing quite so morose as this?"

I shake my head."No, not quite."

***

I was unprepared for a lot of things about marriage. 

I don't know how to share space with another person, or how to disagree on how the cats are being raised. I had no idea how to say, kindly, "Don't be such an ass." I don't know how to not play music whenever I'm at home, or how not to judge someone because they hate vegetables. 

But those are small things, rough edges that I expect to be polished off after a few more years together. The thing that eluded me the most during our courtship, and the thing that continues to elude me now, is that I don't know how to tell another person how much I love them. 

At least, I don't know how to tell this other person. 

My husband and I are at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. He's the black hole to my supernova, the Spock to my Bones. Many of our biggest fights have been over our inability to speak the same emotional language. As someone who revels in emotions and conversations about them, this has been jarring. 

But more than "Ohh, we're on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum" what's flummoxed me has been my own inability to communicate how much he means to me. He folds me origami rabbits on Valentine's Day, but I can't find a way to tell him everything I want him to know.  

My plan, you see, was never exactly to die young, but it wasn't exactly to make it to the bitter end either. I would have been fine living a full, happy life into my 50s and then slipping away, if not into the ether than out of the lives of my friends and their families. 

And then the husband came into my life.

I was unprepared for how much better life could be with him. How loving him would open my heart and help me to love other people more fully. How I would have the courage to do new things that would fill up the empty parts of my life. How I would get out of bed after nightmares to make sure he was okay sitting up alone. 

So when my therapist asks "Do you think you were unprepared for marriage" the only answer I can think is "Of course I was unprepared for marriage. How do you prepare for this?"

I never knew. 

Newlyweds

My therapist has started to cry.

I'm taken aback. It's something she's never done in front of me before. Not when I was describing being sexually assaulted, not when I talked about suicide and the plan I had a few years ago, not when I spent most of a session crying because I was so lonely and sad I didn't know how to get out of bed in the morning.

The husband has been coming in for a few sessions to understand some of what goes on in therapy, why I feel so shitty afterward, and ways he can help. It's been an odd experience, I think for both of us. The husband has been asked to weigh in on everything from how I handle anger (not well) to how I communicate.

Out of the blue one evening, my therapist asks us why we got married.

Hearing that question from your therapist, in a session, is unsettling at best. It feels like she has some super-secret therapy knowledge and is about to tell you that she doesn't think you should be married, or that one partner is holding something back from the other, or that she thinks you might be related.

At least, it feels that way to me.

We tell her. He tells her about how he suddenly discovered that daily life can be fun and weird with another person. I tell her that he is the most kind and generous person I've ever met. Eventually we're talking to one another and honestly forget that she is there. He tells me how much he loves my friends and I tell him that he pushes me to be a kinder, less judgmental person. I finally tell him:

"You feel like home."

That's when my therapist blows her nose, loudly, and we realize we're still in a session.

"I'm sorry," she tells us. "I do a lot of work in couples' therapy, and I tend to see people at the end of their marriages. It's nice to see a couple who's still so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been, well, a lot like the last two and a half years of being together. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Our arguments to be, if not magically solved, at least put on the shelf for a couple months? A musical to break out every morning when we wake up? A refusal to leave the house unless we were together? Sunshine and rainbows to magically shoot out of our asses all the time?  

The truth is our lives are very much what they've always been. 

We hold hands in the back of cabs. We fight, infrequently, but it's hard when we do. I still go to bed early while he stays up late watching B-horror movies. We text one another "Do you need anything from Target while I'm here?" instead of "I love you and am thinking about you." We Skype with out-of-state friends, plan and host day-long board game days, dance in the living room to Motown, snuggle the cats, crack one another up. The rhythm of our lives hasn't changed much. 

I find it comforting.

***

We're in a cab on the way home from a double date with some of our friends. 

We're saving for a house and recovering from a wedding, so we haven't been out much in the past few months. An occasional game night, a dinner at a friend's house, but few nights like this one. The ride home itself isn't anything special. Me, enthusing over the drinks we had, the couple we saw, my hopes about our future house. Him, holding my hand, talking about the dinner we're hosting next week, the couple he hopes to see soon, and his hopes for our future house. 

It's just an ordinary cab ride.

Or, at least, it is until we arrive home and the cab driver turns off the the meter and turns around to talk to us. 

"You two seem very happy together," he says. "You disagree about something and can just let it go. My wife and I argue a lot. How do you do it?"

We're stunned for a moment and don't know what to say. Before I can make a crack about us being newlyweds, he stops me to tell us that he has been astounded by our kindness and agreeableness, particularly the husband's. He remarks that we are obviously extremely happy together, and thanks us for being wonderful passengers to eavesdrop on. Eventually, as we thank him and get out of the cab. He stops the husband and says: "I am going to take some of what I learned from you tonight home to my wife. It's nice to see a couple so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been nothing like the last two and a half years together. 

We do many of the same things, but something fundamental in our relationship has shifted. Our arguments no longer leave me wondering "Is this going to be the one that splits us up?" We smile when "our" song from the Thrilling Adventure Hour Musical Episode comes on at home. I begin to work out again, and come home to a smiling husband, happy for his alone time, too.

There is an unanticipated weight to saying "This is my husband" and hearing him say "This is my wife." When I am angry or lonely, I look down at my wedding band and remember that there is someone who will carry some of that anger or loneliness if I ask for help. The rhythm of our life hasn't changed, but I'm surprised to find a harmony introduced. 

And while therapists sobbing and cab drivers telling us how wonderful we are are rare occurrences, I find them reassuring. Perhaps all the sunshine and rainbows I've been seeing lately aren't only coming out of our asses.  

Flat

For most of my adult life, there was something about being sad that felt homey.

You know, the kind of sadness that involves old time country music, a desire for rainy days, and a bottle of bourbon. The kind of sadness you can curl up with.

I always secretly loved that kind of sadness, and it often found me after a breakup when I wasn’t particularly interested in the other person. There was something pleasant about having license to keep to myself and not need to expend any emotional energy beyond, “Wow, I’m pretty bummed right now” and then drinking like my life was a Patsy Cline song.

To be clear, I wasn't seeking the kind of emotional emptiness that finds you during a depressive episode. It was the kind of sadness that could eventually be lifted by a sunny day or a long run or an A on a paper I had written.

The self-indulgent sadness was an emotional state that I pursued and reveled in when I could get it just right. And “just right” usually meant “going through a breakup with a person I don't actually call back” or “regretting that one-night-stand with the ex who just broke my heart.”

It was the kind of sadness that was addictive.

***

The fiancé and I were in a fight that felt like the Second Labor of Hercules.

He and I fight infrequently. So infrequently, in fact, that when we were dating I wondered if our relationship wasn’t passionate enough (hey, we all have our own shit). And usually when we do fight it ends in us going to bed and waking up to have a rational conversation the next day.

This was not one of those fights.

It was the sort of fight that went on for days, and when we finally cut off one of its heads and thought we were all right, the next day would find me sobbing on the couch over something different.

There were a lot of tedious reasons it was so hard (ineffective communication, a desire to be the Right and Reasonable One in the relationship, new medications that were causing mood swings, blah blah blah). But it was hard. Harder than anything we’ve done together in the past two years.

The hardest part was I was unprepared for the intensity of my anger. There were days when I would be talking to my best friend and shaking with rage. Whether it was a function of new meds or wedding stress, or finally having feelings again after a year of depression I can’t say. And, truthfully, I didn’t examine what was going on too closely. All I knew was I was angry and one night found me angry enough  that I started packing a bag to sleep on my best friend’s couch. As I stuffed pajamas into my bag and looked for my earrings for the next day, I heard the front door open and the fiancé talking to the cats. I deflated and asked myself:

“What the hell am I doing?”

He found me sitting on our bed, crying.

***

Prior to the fiancé, all of my relationships imploded between three and five months.

Some were my fault, others weren’t. Ultimately they didn’t work out because we would fight and I would give them the finger and go sit in my home wishing for rain and listening to Hank Williams. They ended because I didn’t care enough for them to continue.

And there was something comforting about those endings. The emotions were one-dimensional and soothing in their flatness.

Now, with the fiancé, it’s never just one emotion. It’s joy with aggravation, love with happiness, anger with sadness and frustration and fourteen other feelings I can’t identify. They are confusing and crazy-making and what had me packing my bag to sleep on the best friend’s couch. I’d lived so many years with flat, straightforward emotions that I was utterly unprepared for emotional complexity, especially the kind that combines love and anger and frustration.

Unprepared actually doesn’t even scratch the surface.

The night I was packing my bag, I was angry beyond any anger I’d ever experienced. Of course I was.  I’d spent five days distilling sadness, distress, and frustration into something flat and easier to deal with. Rage is so much more comfortable than sadness. When I heard the fiancé’s voice at the door, I realized that I didn’t want to be flat anymore. When he came in and sat down next to me, I told him everything. He listened—he listened for a long time while I told him every emotion I was having and all of the ones I couldn't identify and how complicated everything was for me at the moment. We talked, and all of those stupid, complex emotions found a voice.

The funny thing is that even when I was sad and leaning waaaaaaay into it, it wasn't as satisfying as it used to be. No amount of Johnny Cash or Sam Houston whiskey brought back that feeling of pleasant self-indulgence or even the comfort that it used to bring. Rather than being a flat, understandable emotion, sadness was huge and complicated and made me feel so awful that it was hard to make it through the day without crying at my desk.

Instead, the rush of relief I was seeking came after talking and listening and apologies from both of us, when I went to bed with a glass of water, some music, and, well, him. He put his arms around me and kissed my hair and told me he loved me. One of the cats jumped into bed and headbutted me. Still a little sniffly, I closed my eyes and said out loud "Yes, this is home."

White Rabbits

We're in a hotel somewhere outside Madison, Wisconsin. I'm talking to the fiance from the bathroom, the kind of winding-down-from-the-day conversation that doesn't require a participant, only a listener. He's reading on the couch, drinking whiskey and unwinding in his own way. When I fall into bed and ask "Are you coming?" he repiles "I have to finish something. I'll be there in a little bit." Knowing his nocturnal habits, love of whiskey, solitude, and books I turn out the light and sleep. When I wake in the morning, a small, white, origami rabbit greets me from the bedside table.

I cry so hard I wake him up.

***

The past months have been, well, shitty. 

I discovered that there's no easy way to tell your friends, your fiance, your doctors, that you've been thinking you'd be better off dead. 

No, maybe not so much dead, but wishing that you could magically stop existing. Just, *poof!* be gone from the world and its revolving door of bullshit. 

Anyway, it's a hard thing to say. 

I didn't tell my friends and fiance because I thought it was a passing thing. I didn't say anything to my therapist because I didn't want to be committed. And it wasn't like I was planning to harm myself. I just wanted to stop. 

Being not-quite-suicidal is a weird place to be It was weird when I was isolated, living alone in the North Country,  and it's even weirder now that I share my daily life with another person I love deeply. Try to imagine spending 3/4 of every day thinking "I would rather not be than be what I am right now." and then spending the remaining 1/4 of the day thinking "I can't wait to meet my new niece" or "Gosh, our first dance at our wedding is going to be great." Mix in having obsessive-compulsive disorder and a total  inability to deal with conflict in any capacity and you're off to the races. 

Eventually I say it out loud to to the fiance and the best friend. They send me off to the shrink with directions to be honest. I didn't end up institutionalized. Instead I got a lot of cheery "You're doing great! Everything will be okay! Everyone loves you and you're well supported!" I know it's her job, but Jesus Christ, lady. I'm drowning here, I don't need compliments on how well I'm doing the dead man's float. I need a fucking life preserver. The doctor is more helpful, she changes my medication, promises me that this time we've probably zeroed in on a better combination of of benzos, SSRIs, and sleeping pills. And God bless her, she does it without puking rainbows.

More helpful than therapists puking rainbows or doctors with prescription pads, the fiance is there at the end of every day. He's the one who sits and holds my hand during panic attacks and helps me slow down my breathing. He makes me dinner and takes me to my therapy appointments and snuggles me to sleep. 

I love him so much, but right now it's hard to tell him. Trying to muster the the energy to get into the shower is more than I can handle most days , being an empathetic, loving partner sometimes feels impossible. So I do what I can. I schedule massages for him. I meet him at the door with a glass of whiskey when he gets home from work. I do my best to get up off the couch and have an actual conversation. 

And I hope that it's enough. 

***

Sometime during the winter I sit with he the fiance while he plays my favorite videogame. It's a narrative RPG about a relationship. The main character's wife has a mental illness and has a hard time talking to her husband. She loves him deeply, but because of her mental illness she doesn't know how to tell him. Because she can't figure out how to tell him that she loves him, she folds him hundreds of origami rabbits over the course of their complicated relationship to say "I love you."

He doesn't understand.

The fiance and I play the ending together (me couch co-oping) and when I burst into tears at the end, he wraps his arms around me and lets me cry. I want to say that I wanted him to play the game not only because it's beautiful but because I feel like the woman in the story, and I need him to know that I love him, even when I don't know how to say it. 

But even over the winter, things are bumpy. There are panic attacks and depression. I'm still making it to the shower, but sleep most of the time I'm not at work. And I discover that I can't tell him what I'm feeling even when the moment is exactly what I've been waiting for. 

When I wake to find the white origami rabbit next to our bed somewhere outside of Madison. Wisconsin, I realize that I don't have to say it. He learned to understand my own white rabbits a long time ago