Don't
When you first hear that I’ve moved on, you’ll feel physically ill.
When you first hear that I’ve moved on, you’ll feel physically ill.
It will take a moment for the information to kick up the dust in the corners of your brain where you have swept my fragments: the boom of my laugh, the fragrance in the nook of my neck, the storm clouds in my eyes. The rush is quicker than you are prepared for, adding color to my shadow. This is when you remember what it means to move on with someone new, and it will turn your stomach sour.
You know they’ll be holding my face in their hand, a thumb across my cheek, tucking my hair behind my ear. You know they’ll be tracing the constellation of my freckles, discovering the tattoo on my back. You know they’ll be cooking in my kitchen, brushing their teeth at my bathroom sink, adding books to my shelves. And you know I’ll be planning, just as I did for you and me—our home, our vacations, our life. You watched me coordinate, research, assemble. You know that you supervised the design of our future while never intending to stick around for it.
You know these things in your bones, which is why they are your first thoughts. And those thoughts make you sick.
Soon, though—encouraged by a few familiar swigs of Bud and some reassuring messages from the high school group chat, confirming that I’m a slut—you’ll arrive at your preferred state of indifference. You’ll tell yourself that it doesn’t matter—that I don’t matter. This is what was supposed to happen. We broke it off for a reason: the relationship wasn’t working.
You’ll remember how deeply I hated that group chat, how I criticized it—something about grown men critiquing women under the guise of staying connected to old friends. You’ll remember that when the group would move from the digital world to the real one, I struggled against the mysteries that were born: I burned with the fury of a five-alarm fire when you disappeared during the trip to Las Vegas, you’ll recall. You’ll remember telling me that I was lucky—you’re tame in comparison to the way the others drink. Your indifference will graduate to indignance, for always being questioned.
That feeling will prop you up for a while, keeping you safe from the unsavory truth. But in the last few sips of the six pack, you’ll find your guard has passed out, and the enemy has slipped through the gate, now holding the blade of the darkest realities against your neck: the lies that dissolved my sanity, decisions that landed you in bed with another woman, the secrets that unclipped us from the parachute.
Your doom is within you and from you and made by you. You’ll remember who laid the stones of your tomb.
You’ll remember your anger when, in those final days, I asked you if something was going on, something I didn’t know about, as the cold front moved in on our home. You’ll remember how deeply bothered you were by the inquiry, and that must have been a distraction, the distraction that caused you to forget—forget to mention that you had already secured the couch at your friend’s place. You’ll remember how you planned to crash there when you worked up the courage to leave me.
You’ll remember how you never did work up the courage, though—you got drunk and forced my hand instead. You’ll remember my realization: you drove like this because you knew I couldn’t stay with you if you did. You’ll remember nodding, with one-thousand miles in your eyes.
And as accountability leans on your airways, you’ll remember that I had been understanding—that I let you back in. You’ll remember how I scraped together what I could to make it feel right again and worried that it never would. How I turned to Esther Perel and Bessel van der Kolk and my therapist for relief because our well was dried to dust. You’ll remember how I loved you so badly that I sacrificed every boundary. You’ll remember promising to do it all differently, but remaining exactly the same.
You’ll remember how I cried into your chest the day you moved out. You’ll remember that the relationship didn’t just fail to work out. You’ll remember that you made sure of it.
And then you’ll remember what it means to grow deeply close to someone—to grow close to me. Nose to nose under the covers at 3 a.m., you’ll hear me playing it back, recalling the infidelity, how it changed me at my core; how I exhausted myself on the martyr’s path to forgiveness. You’ll feel their hand in my hair, their lips to my ear, I could never do that to you. You’ll know it wasn’t hard for me to find something better.
I’m watching his face, laying back, cheeks flushed, and we are warm from the inside out. His grin is mine to keep. It’s the middle of the night but we are wired, the kind of electricity that only runs through new lines. We are unfolding who we are, turning corner after corner, walking back along our roads that managed to converge.
He asks about the last one I had loved; I’ll remember that, by the end, I could not bring myself to confront my motive, my root, my reason for staying. I’ll remember closing my eyes to what was happening in front of me and gripping what I wanted more than anything: to start a family. I’ll recall the fears I entertained about my age and my chances, now climbing north of 35. I’ll remember the percentages—the likelihood, the complications—and while the former goes down, the latter ascends.
I’ll remember those fears bruising my judgment, writing horrifying and specific stories about what I will lose in walking away. And I’ll remember convincing myself, this can work. I have to make this work. If I do it right, if I remain through still and storm, I will make it to shore. I’ll get the payoff, the prize: a family—my own dysfunctional family. I’ll remember that I needed a resolution to all my futile pursuits.
I’ll remember searching the ceiling in the middle of the night, feeling your breath beside me, begging the darkness for a solution that wouldn’t require cutting off a limb. I’ll remember pleading into the black and blue around me, to calm the waters, to let me keep you; I’ll remember knowing, in the deepest chambers of my heart, that I no longer wanted to.
I’ll remember staying anyway, living in the wreckage, because I was afraid.
I’ll remember this, these uncomfortable truths, like a splash of cold water. But I’m safe here, I’ll hope, with him and his tender heart and sincere curiosity—out of reach. I want to believe you can’t touch me here, where I hesitate to invoke your name, to tell the truth of what we had done to each other, while I am laying the bricks of something new. I spent years drowning in uncertainty, but of this, I am sure: what I fear now, more than anything, is that you would strike to dismantle it all.
Because you’re accustomed to destruction, self and otherwise, this is when you’ll think that it’s time to call me. I might be moving on, but I would always be the other half of our demented alliance. I knew how to sift the debris for a reason to hear you out. I never turned you away. I always took the call.
And you’ll want to place that call—to repair the crumbled image, to cry into the phone about your regrets. You’ll want to clear your conscience. You’ll want to say just one more time how sorry you are. You know that it means nothing, but you just need to say it. You’ll have a strong desire to tend to that impulse, and you’re not one to deny yourself.
But then, from the back room of your mind, a voice that you don’t quite recognize; it’s laced with the assertion I once struggled to muster in the face of your indiscretion. But now, a clear declaration. A demand. You’ll hear me, crystal clear:
Don’t.
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