Crinkled Windows to A Soul

On that night when fate brought us together for a second time, he sat down next to me at an empty bar in a restaurant in our hometown. I had gone there hoping to run into him again, but he didn't know that. Remember me?, he said, taking the stool next to me. In that moment, I fell in love with the candle behind his eyes when he smiled -- the wrinkles that gathered in threes and fours from too many other happy times and maybe too long nights and days on the cutter without sunscreen. But I loved those eyes. For days after we had met and weeks when we were separated -- and these weeks that we have been apart -- I lived and still live to see them again.

He was most handsome in the bath. The way his hair wisped and curled... with my hands, I'd pull the skin away from his face, from my favorite crinkles at the corners of his eyes. I'd run my fingertip over the scar above his lip and the ones along his jaw. Then watch his eyes illuminate the most complex shade of hazel green. Oh, there you are, I'd say, there's the man I love.

Because when I peered through, I saw our children looking back at me with curious thought and love unconditional.

It's Not About Moving On, It's About Moving Forward

It's about finding ways to make yourself happy each day, they say. So today, after drinking my morning cup of Plantation Mint tea, I took a hot shower and washed my hair -- even though I washed it just two days ago, and in the winter, I can go a full three or four days. I dried it using my curling brush to curve the ends under. More than that, I put on make up -- a full face with foundation, powder, blush -- eyeshadow, even, to camouflage my Quasimodo eyes, swollen from a bad yesterday with too many tears. But today, today it's a better day. I make myself believe that, and I put on my mask to complete the facade. Today I am happy, and today my hair is shining and I've put on my face. I don't think I have done that in twenty-three days.

It's been twenty three days since this all happened. I am only on day twenty-three.

Working away from home has been helping, too. I have been tapping into the part of myself that has always dreamed of writing or working from a coffee shop all day. I'm auditioning this new life, this new city, maybe a new me... seeing if maybe I could fit, figuring out who I would be here, which part I would play.

There have been distant rumblings from his side of this fence. I've heard things, he's heard things. It's day twenty-three. What hurts most is that he hasn't tried to contact me. Not even text message to test the waters, to see if I am alive. I am his best friend. We were going to get MARRIED. He called me wifey. And on day twenty three, more silence.

This is a person who knew all of my faces and found delight in each one of them. He kept pictures of me when I was little -- one where I was a grumpy flower girl at my aunt's wedding reception; another with my brothers, where I was clearly not in the mood to take a picture, probably because they'd just punched me in the shoulder; one where I was happiest, at my sixth birthday party, in a pretty red dress, my eyes like big fat almonds. I've seen that face before, he'd say. There's something about a love where someone loves you so much, they see the child within you. Because that part of you is the essence of who you are -- the part of you that believes in promises, dares to dream, holds onto hope against all odds, and believes in the goodness of people. It's the innocence that believes in fate, and that fate that wants to keep faith.

It's becoming harder to hold onto faith. To believe it's not over. I try, but it's all just becoming a weird game where it's no longer present tense but past tense. It's not about moving on, it's about moving forward, but still having that little compartment where you store your hope. So I try to move forward. And forward for me is sitting here in this coffee shop, writing and designing. It's getting out of the house, it's a hot shower, it's clean hair, it's a made-up face. It's about me using this time to continue the same dreams I had for myself when we were together... and just hold onto hope that he meets me on the other side.

...It's Just Waiting For You to Find It

Over lunch, at Doc Chey's, this noodle restaurant in a part of Atlanta called the Highlands, my eyes glazed over on the scenery behind the window pane. A road, lined with the naked trees of winter, earthy stoned houses -- a perfect road, dewed with fog, dipping and rising, off into the distance. It reminded me of a town in Maine I had once been to with my girlfriends -- one of those trips we took back in the day to shake off the snow and celebrate the coming of Spring.

My sister-in-law, who still has yet to have a girly heart-to-heart with me about the weird state of my life right now, asks me earnestly, "If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?"

I didn't even have to think about it. Not-a-single-second-passed. Anywhere he is.... Because that's where I decided a long time ago home would be. I knew that we would never have a true hometown, that we would move every two years, that he would be away for more times than not. I knew that he would miss birthdays and anniversaries -- potentially most of my pregnancies, maybe even our children's births, or their first steps and first words. As much as those things would hurt, it wouldn't surmount to the hurt I would feel to not share life with him.

The question stumped me. I didn't have an answer. I had already resigned to live everywhere that I could live anywhere. This all caused me to really start thinking of this whole thing as over. Made me ask myself where I am going to go from here. Could I live in Florida still, if this didn't work out? Florida had nothing left for me right before I met him. Could I live in Atlanta?

For the first two week I was here, I didn't really look at anyone. I didn't even look at myself. But now, instead of sitting in the house with the five dogs, I went to the coffee shop across the street with my new laptop. I've always had this dream that I would just sit in a coffee shop and write all day. As hip as this is, it still doesn't feel whole. But I make myself sit here and write. I make myself converse with people. I study the types of people that walk in and out of here like an ink blot -- do their shapes and colors match mine? I rotate my body, a puzzle piece thrown from the board, seeking a fit.

I lean my head back, look to the ceiling for answers, or for comfort. On the shelf at this coffee shop is a sign that reads, "There's something wonderful for you here... it's just waiting for you to find it."

I'm Prime Real Estate!


Surprisingly, I am not beating myself up emotionally for this break up. I am not blaming it on the size of my ass or thighs. There's no need for that. I recognize that it's not me. Whatever it is, it's not me. I am everything someone would wish for in a life partner. I am funny, charming, sexy, smart, creative and talented, loyal and devoted. I make hot dinners and I know how to bake a great dessert. I keep a clean house, I know how to fold clothes properly. Football is my favorite sport and I actually know more about it than most men. Who wouldn't want me? I am prime real estate!

Knowing all of those things still doesn't take away the sting in my heart, though. As strong as I am, as much logic as I have put in this, as much as I have let this all go and let him go, my heart doesn't understand. My heart still loves him, still believes in him, still respects him, still wants to take care of him. I had already committed to this life of taking care of him, of loving him, of sharing everything with him and it's hard to just turn off.

When I am surrounded by these relationships that seem to exist even dysfunctionally, and something that we had was so much stronger, then how did we fail? I know the answer is because my half was full of love and his filled with fear.

I wonder in these weeks apart if he has been able to step back from everything and breathe. If he believes this is really what is right for us, or if he can finally talk to me. I will give him a few more weeks to figure it out before I need to really close the door to my heart. Right now, I continue to fill it with self-love.

The Good, The Bad, and the Just Plain Weird

It's not all so bad. I mean, who wants to marry a person who isn't 100% sure they want to marry you? I learned that lesson in love a long time ago. If there is even a 2% doubt that you aren't sure about me, don't let the door hit you on your way out. I have no qualms about that at all. Because the 2% can become 20% in no time at all in some people.

Most of the time, when people are unsure, they are unsure about themselves. There is a line in East of Eden where John Steinbeck writes one of love's most evident truths: "Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure -- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?"

Love can save you. It can save you from drowning in the darkest part of yourself. But the masquerade is that love only leads you there and from there you must help yourself. You must love yourself enough to want to believe that you are destined for something more, that you deserve the light that it brings... or else the darkness will slowly creep back in. And the 2% will become 20% in no time at all.

There was something in his eyes that night that told me he had no answers. That he would say and do whatever he could just to achieve the desired result -- space, separation, relief -- a life, without me. Up until that point, there were no signs. We were blissfully happy. Sure we had our arguments, our spats about our wedding, our future -- but we were happy. Really, really happy. The kind that only comes with comfort, security, a knowing that you have found a best friend to share in life's adventures. I knew that when he just gave that all up, he was thinking of no one but himself. He was running on auto-pilot. And rather than beg for a chance, to wait around our small town for some sign, I moved all of my stuff out two days later. There was no chance for him to waffle here. No in between time where he could help me put stuff in storage, move me into a new place -- make himself rationalize this decision or to know where I was to keep himself with some link to me. I moved out, and I left town some 800 miles away.

It is hard to imagine a life without him. Not that it's impossible, not that I don't think that I could move on, but it's hard to believe this was really meant for us. But I can't do anything. It's up to him to fix this mess, it's up to him to say he made the biggest mistake of his life. That he wants to try again and he wants to go to counseling.

I am thankful this happened before we were legally bound together. Long before I picked up my life, married the military, and moved to Alaska or Guam. Then it would really be a nightmare. But how does one heal something that is as big as this? This hopeful future, broken before it even bent.

Leo Buscaglia said, "The heart... is frail and easily broken, but wonderfully resilient." But that doesn't take the weirdness of this period away. People don't know what to say or are scared they will say the wrong thing, so they don't talk. It's lonely out here. But I am the only person who knows what I feel when I do something as simple as put my hand in my pocket -- and my ring doesn't catch. Even something as simple as making a fried egg white turns twilight zone-ish when I realize I registered for the pan I am using and that I will never get. Or even more somber than our favorite Sunday morning ritual was making a big breakfast together. We shared one plate, always one plate and two forks.

It's those rituals that were love, that were the togetherness, the foundation and hope of all things to come. And now I am here, caught in the inbetween. On auto-pilot.

The irony of all of this, is I haven't written anything in a journal in almost two years. That's the longest break I have ever taken from writing. My mind has always been saturated with ramblings, fixated with the way that words are put together to make sounds that not only express but evoke feeling. I have always had my words.

But what I never realized was that I always had my words primarily when I was sad. For most of my life, I never felt I fit anywhere. And that's probably more normal than I think it is, but it's my story nonetheless. And I was sad. I felt like I watched life happen to everyone else while I yearned for just a taste of true real love.

While I had my par amours, while I had my basement apartment flings -- the bad boys that I knew wouldn't call me back -- the ones I wanted to just to hold under a microscope to figure out just what made them tick, I never had love. Or maybe I had some version of it. But it wasn't it. I didnt love myself then, it was impossible for me to love anyone else.

I was thinking about the word love the other day. I think its a word where the definition always changes -- its never the same for any two people. Its a different kind of love, a different kind of feeling.

In any case, I never knew love. But when I met love finally, when I spent time with it -- I had no reservations, no questions. This love was the real deal.

And now, here I am, one thousand days with such a love and now counting twenty-one days without it.

There are always two sides to every story. But I know that I loved and appreciated and respected that man more than anything else I have ever held in my hands. I felt in my soul a security that I have never known. Thinking for so long that love was not meant for me, and then he is there, constant, consistent, true. He asked me to be his wife and I said yes because my husband should also be my best friend. And then swirled in the whirlwind that engagement brings -- the anxiety, the excitement, the love, the fear. But mostly the love.

That day, we went to get our passports for our honeymoon. We were going to Italy. Leaving the courthouse, we picked up the marriage license sheet, high-fived on the way to the car. I can't forget the smile on his face, the love in his eyes, the excitement in his voice. And then, just hours later, he was gone.