Tag: love

Intention
Autobiography · Mental Health · Personal Development

Intention

Ruby Pipes9 Comments

“Is he taking good care of my Ruby?” she asks over lunch. I smile big, blush. Tell her about my support network. How I’ve started to reach out. How people have been asking me how I’m doing lately and I’ve been telling them.

“I’m great.”

Spent the week selling myself at job interviews and to potential roommates. Threw my hands in the air when I landed the apartment in Green Lake. Sent a text to notify my partner and best friends when my first job offer came in.

My feet finally under me. I’m coming home again.

We decide what we want to sculpt. Take a step back and examine it all. What is it that we want from each other? From ourselves. Start building a life with all the pieces we selected carefully. Leave nothing to just fall into place. This is all intentional.

While we walk down the street he reaches over and grabs my hand. Laces fingers. Pulls me closer to him and kisses my cheek. Partners. Support. We stare off in the same direction. We lean hard on each other and we take turns being the weaker one. Know when it’s our time to be strong. Give and take. We’re a team.

Mark tells me I don’t need to come to therapy anymore. That we don’t have much to talk about. We’re just hanging out. And I start to sink into the idea that this isn’t just an upswing. This is sustainable. I’ve learned how to be okay.

Back at lunch we reminisce about last year. When I had to leave my job. The city. When everything started to crumble, fall down. And we smile big and shake our heads. It feels so long ago now. So far away. It’s the quiet shadow of a memory. Alive only because we talk about it every now and then. And I’m never going back there. Wouldn’t even remember my way. This is normal. This is me. I am safe.

Photo courtesy of Joel Herzog.

Twins
Autobiography · Relationships

Twins

Ruby Pipes7 Comments

One pressed against the wall. One hanging off the edge. We curl up together in a twin-size bed. His arm falls asleep lying under me and I lose my pillow to the floor. In the morning I tell him we’ll call this time “the beginning years”. When I lived in a warehouse apartment with no kitchen and he lived out of a suitcase. The days before we went shopping for sheets together. Before we stayed up late sitting on the floor in our kitchen.

On the couch he rests his head on my chest. Listens intently to my heartbeat and taps his fingers in rhythm. I ask him what we’re going to do. What’s next? And he explains to me he’ll do the two-hour drive for however long he needs to. That the discomfort of distance is worth the joy of being in relationship.

In the afternoon we go for coffee, so when night comes again I find myself awake and writing. The low glow of my screen illuminating my finger tips as he sleeps gently next to me. And there is safety in his breathing. In the way his chest lifts and lowers the blanket on top of me. And I find myself not wanting anything else from existence. Just let me be.

Photo courtesy of Josh Felise.

Closing
Autobiography · Relationships

Closing

Ruby Pipes6 Comments

In the envelope went a selection of Christmas cards addressed to the two of us. Several pictures. A couple love notes. The boarding pass from the plane I took from Oakland to Seattle. Random keepsakes collected over the years. My passport. A necklace, my sobriety ring, and my wedding set. And, of course, the certified copies of our marriage and divorce certificates. I closed the clasp and brought it to my parents’ house. Asked my mom to put it in the safe deposit box and that was it. An entire life with someone distilled down to a manila envelope to be tucked into a vault and possibly never brought out again.

I asked Mason if we had any other business after the final check was mailed. After the phone plan was broken up. After the car keys were exchanged. Part of me wanted him to say yes, even though I knew we didn’t have anything left to sort out, nothing to discuss. I just wanted him to tell me he wasn’t ready for me to leave his life yet. But he didn’t. Another time I wanted him to show up, but couldn’t bring myself to ask. A beautifully distilled example of our entire relationship. Neither of us ever being able to ask for what we need. Separated by more than space and time. There was always a wall between us. Something to keep ourselves out and the other person in. Or maybe it was the other way around. It doesn’t matter now, does it?

So this is what it feels like to close off a section of your life. To remember a time with someone, but to know it will never be repeated. There are no second chances here. We do not recycle and come back. It’s over. And that’s just the kind of thing we have to let ourselves believe. We have to hold on to. We have to learn to need. This is moving on.

Andrew pulls his car up next to mine, Astronautalis’ “Guard the Flame” blaring out the windows. I climb inside and we both sing as loud as we can, “Fuck it, if I was that smart, I’d never learned your name…” The music dies and we breathe in deep in unison. Wait, wait, wait. Scream. The sun beats down hard on my face. “One hand strikes the match. One hand guards the flame.” He reaches across the center console of the car and puts his hand in mine. We’re alive.

It’s waking up from something. Breaking out of the sludge I’d been encased in for years. The one that always made me feel broken and afraid. The one that, for whatever reason, my marriage learned to perpetuate. The constant nervous aching of not being enough for someone. Of letting them down. Of losing. Of quitting. Of giving up. I don’t know how we fell into that pattern and I wish we never did. But we did. And that was it.

And here we are. Cut loose. I’m standing in a crowd screaming. My hands are in the air. And for the first time in a long time I am not afraid of being undeserving. I am powerful and lovable and strong. I am unafraid of love because I know how it feels to lose it and how it feels to find it again. How it feels to have it find you. How it feels to be in it with someone who sees you and isn’t afraid of what they’re seeing.