For me, it’s hard not to acknowledge today – this date. This time last year, it was a Thursday, my fiancee, B, had gone in to the city to run some errands and go to a counseling session. It was sunny, the trees were starting to bloom. When she came home, things felt different and quickly spiraled to a place neither of us expected. Eventually she said she didn’t have the patience to put up with me and left. I don’t know where she went – I assume back to her place where she still had an air mattress. The movers came a week later and moved all of her stuff out, much of it still in boxes from having just moved in. All that morning – prior to the blow up, we texted loving notes to each other. The last thing she told me before her session was that she wouldn’t want to be doing this with anyone else, and she just needed to figure out her own shit. I’ve written about this a few different times – it never brings any more clarity, and there isn’t much point in revisiting something that I’ve played over and over in my head dozens of times. The weeks that followed were long empty days filled with even longer texts (from me) trying to logically argue why she should reconsider, that we could figure it out. I was in a state of shock. I was certain that we were better than that. In my heart of hearts, I believed we could overcome anything.
I thought about being overly dramatic and just posting a black page for today, but it felt a bit over the top. Instead, I decided a simple, and thoughtful, acknowledgment. This day last year was one day. The outcome, for both of us, was pretty devastating – we both lost. We lost a best friend, a lover, our person, our family, our sense of home, memories, and a future. It changed the course of our lives in ways we couldn’t have imagined. It sent us flying in different directions the way two pool balls smack together and fly apart. Despite those rough hours in that late afternoon, despite that collision that lead to so many different things, there were also good hours. We woke up in love with each other. We joked about getting furnishings for the house. We talked with hope about new job possibilities for B. I worked from home with the company of Zelle – who, shortly before B came home, put her chin on my arm and gave me her sad look – she wanted attention.We began our day as family.
Of course, none of it had to happen (and maybe all of it had to happen). None of what has happened since had to play out the way it has (or maybe it did), and the future, as it always is, is still very much undetermined.
There are those days in our personal history, that we carry with us. Some dates we carry longer than others – anniversaries, good and bad. I can remember one night listing out some of those dates. B and I were looking at potential wedding dates, we had ruled out April and May (anniversaries of the passing of both her husband and her mother). We ruled out our previous wedding anniversaries (June for me, October for her). For me, June is odd, I met B on the 16th, I was married on the 17th (two dates I carry with me). We didn’t want to erase those dates, we didn’t want to crowd them or write over them. We were happy to forge ahead planning our own calendar of happiness.
I don’t know how long I’ll carry this date with me or how the associations will evolve. It marked the end of something and also the start of something else. For much of the past year, I’ve tried to think (somewhat objectively) about endings and beginnings and the time in between. I’m a different person because of it – not necessarily better or worse, just different. At times I’ve felt broken, at times I’ve felt peacefully resigned. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring (mostly internally). While there has certainly been pining and remembering, anger and disappointment, there has also been a lot of acceptance and even some hope – much more than I ever write about. In an odd way, a level of acceptance, has allowed me to remain open to any number of possible futures. Starting over is a never-ending process. I suppose I always allowed for the possibility of things working out because starting over was going to be starting over regardless of the person. Things were never going to be the same, and that was neither good nor bad – though I suppose often enough, I believed in the “we could emerge stronger” mantra.
I expect to have plenty of days when I’ll wish things had worked out, or that we would have been able to handle the events of that night differently. Psychology shows us that sometimes those types of events lead to incredible growth for individuals and for couples. There’s a reason we believe in things like redemption.
Quite honestly, it’s hard to believe it’s been a year. I was expecting the date to hit me harder than it has. More often than not, it’s just a feeling of “it’s a shame that didn’t work – it was pretty amazing and could have been (would have been) a lifetime of amazing. Forever changing.” Sometimes I wish we could have seen that day as just one type of change, just part of the evolution. Some days it feels like I could pick things up as though no time had passed. Some days I can’t really imagine the future at all (with her, with someone else, here, there). I don’t say that in a bad / depressed sort of way – I say it in a matter of fact way, a way that just allows for all possibilities.
For a few days now, I’ve been thinking about how this post would take shape. There’s a lot more I could say – though I’m not sure I haven’t already said it a few different ways. Instead I’m going to close with a few snippets from the book I’m reading – they seem to fit in or resonate (however slightly)
Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you’re lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who’ve been around awhile know it’s just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it’s never even there in the first place.
All I wanted was to be surrounded by another. To be a part of somebody else’s room.
She did everything small as if it was extraordinary and necessary.
I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.