Things that changed her life…{part 5}

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

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We met at work.  I was barely 22, freshly divorced, living on my own for the first time, going out way too often, confused and sad and scared of the choices I’d made.  One Friday afternoon, as we put the adults from the day program we worked for on their buses, I mentioned that I was going out that night.  He said he didn’t have friends in the area yet, that he’d just moved here.  I invited him without thinking.  He accepted and I was excited, though I wasn’t sure why.

Late that night, after too many drinks, he kissed me.  It was magical, even in a bar, with loud, terrible music and my friends swirling about, and the taste of whiskey on his mouth.  It blew me away.

—

It all happened so fast: the kiss, the first date, the first “I love you.”  He was the first man to make me feel truly beautiful, to feel desired, to feel alive in my own body.  I was so broken, but he held me.  He wiped my tears and listened; he brought me ice cream and roses the day I lost the job where we’d met.  When I started massage school, he quizzed me on muscles and tendons, listened to me prattle on, drank with me to celebrate my graduation.  He called and yelled at my landlord when they refused to fix my air conditioner, after too many nights spent sweating and laughing in my tiny shoebox of an apartment.  I fell in love with his family.  We listened to Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” over and over again, “We’ll do it all…everything…on our own.”

I believed.

I loved him.  He loved me.  I felt so lucky, like I’d been given a second chance at love and life.  When we sat in my parents’ family room, he said the words I wanted to hear, said that he wanted a future with me.

—

I went out with friends that night, to see a friend in a show.  We fought before I left, nothing big, at least that I can recall.  Probably the dishes, the cat, some minutiae of sharing space and a life.  I checked my voicemail, walking out of the theatre, when I heard his voice.

“We need to talk.  Now.  I’m moving back to Oregon.”

—

He got all of the stuff that had been living in my apartment for six months out on a random Thursday afternoon, while I went home and cried into my mom’s lap.  I didn’t believe it until I found his key under my doormat.  I sat in my hallway, holding it in my hands, silent and stunned and sadder than I’ve ever been.

—

Begging isn’t my thing, but when we said goodbye two weeks later, I begged, like a child who has just been caught doing something and knows they’re going to be in trouble.  Pleaded.  Said I’d move, said I’d be better, just please, please, please, don’t leave me alone. Please let me love you.  I have never felt more raw, more alone, more bare than that night, with him at my door and me on my knees, crying for all that I’d lost — not just him, but me in the process.

He said all the things I knew were right: that yes, we had love, but that surely wasn’t enough.  He wasn’t ever going to read a book or go to school, and I didn’t want to live in Oregon or drink beer every night.  We loved each other, more than anything, but we didn’t belong together.  It wouldn’t work, and it would hurt worse later on.

—

We don’t speak.  Not for a year and a half.  One afternoon, I run into his mom, a woman I loved.  We hug, I introduce her to my new boyfriend.  She asks all the right questions and tells me how much they all miss me.  I miss them, too.

—

My phone rings two weeks later.  Unfortunately, my phone was left at Target that afternoon, and I miss the call.  When I call him back that night, it is awkward.  We laugh, we talk about old times, I have tears silently streaming down my cheeks the whole time, because I can’t believe we’re actually talking.  At the same time, I know in my heart that he was right; that sure we have the past, but no, we wouldn’t have a future.

—

A year and a half later, as it’s about to be 2010, my phone rings again.  I am sitting on that same new boyfriend’s lap, when I see his name.  I take the call, and he wishes me a happy New Year, says he still thinks about me, that he wanted to be the first to wish me a good year.  I hang up too quickly, and go back to where I’m sitting, snuggled into my life.

—

I’ve never been so grateful for a broken heart.