History

One early spring day in the late 1990's, a series of bizarre coincidences led me to a lunch date with a nice boy I'd deemed "too safe" in high school and hadn't seen in over a decade.

I had just started a promising career. I went to an office every day, decked out in suits, heels, makeup. I earned a respectable income, ate lunch in restaurants, attended happy hours and networked. I paid my own bills and kept a packed color-coded calendar and spent 20 minutes each morning just doing my hair.

We clicked. Not in a fireworks, karmic, passionate way. But in a comfortable, easy, relaxed way. After years in the dating trenches, comfortable was a welcome change. Easy was a relief. We wanted the same things in life. It didn't matter to me that there were no fireworks going off. Babies and animals loved him and he made me laugh. We got married and had babies.

We grew into the family we both wanted. Gorgeous, healthy children. Suburban house with a beautiful wooded backyard. And on paper it was perfect. But then it wasn't, and of course it never was. The inevitable stressors of parenthood and employment and life in general drove us to very different places and we couldn't fathom each others reactions.

More and more it seems like we settled. Like we met each other's minimum criteria for a spouse and just went with it. Resentments have grown alongside our children. Anxiety has distorted our personalities. Sometimes I look in the mirror and am surprised that I am still flesh and blood. In my eyes, I can see it. I'm still in there.

Fool

I went through a phase during my late high-school and early college years where I became frustrated with stories of lovers kept apart. Separated by duty, by circumstance, by social standing.  Even worse, if these tragic characters freed themselves of their constraints, they would alter their core beings in such a way that their love would no longer be pure. I remember Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence in particular drove me to fits.  I take reading seriously and I tend to become attached to certain characters and vested in their fates.  I got completely fed up with characters I liked not being able to come together.  Painful, unrealized, unlivable love.  Misery, because of love.  I was still young and believed that two people loving each other was all that was enough.  Any stories saying otherwise were just overwrought melodramatic foolishness.

And then I got an email that turned me into an overwrought melodramatic fool.

There was never any way that I wasn't going to respond to J's email.  A dozen years of wondering what happened to that sweet, sexy, intelligent graduate student who had brightened up a long-ago dark winter was finally going to be resolved.  The thing is, there was never a breakup with us, no bad feelings tainting the pleasant memories.  It was a long distance relationship attempted by two ridiculously busy graduate students and it just wasn't going to work.  We liked each other too much to drag it out and were too overwhelmed with school to mourn it for long.  We drifted out of contact and that was that.

Until that fucking email.  The email that excited and flattered and frightened me all at once.  I read and re-read J's words throughout the evening until I found myself reciting passages in my head from memory.  And late that night, after the kids were in bed and the husband was dozing on the couch, I wrote back.  As I typed, I felt myself slipping back in time, to the me J remembered.  Easygoing, sharp, funny. Happy.  Hopeful.  I closed my eyes, typed before I could over-think things and hit send.  

The Email

The anniversary passed with nothing more than an epic fight to sear the occasion into my memory. The completely practical and necessary item he bought weeks ago was my "gift" and this year I didn't even get a card. I didn't have time to mope about it because this time his mood stayed pretty foul for three days and the steady stream of abusive text messages wore me down. My head throbbed, my eyes blurred with tears and I dragged the kids through the grocery store. I paused in front of the breakfast cereals and heard my cell phone email alert.

I pull out my phone and open the email. The sender's name jumps off the screen and wrenches my eyes wide open. I blink several times and try to close my mouth. It's him. The one whose name I type into Facebook and Google every six months or so, just out of sheer curiosity. The easy smile and kind eyes I picture some nights when I play my alternate existence in my head, that evil little "what if?" game I use to torture myself after midnight. The one I haven't talked to in twelve years.

I become acutely aware of fire in my cheeks and jack hammering in my chest. I stuff the phone back into my skirt pocket and flash a quick smile at the kids as I plot the quickest way to finish the shopping. The phone burns against my thigh as I drive home, put away groceries, fix a snack for the little ones and run upstairs, where I open the laptop. My fingers shake as I sign in to my email account and open the message with a strange mixture of excitement, dread, satisfaction and nausea. It takes me three full passes to absorb the words.

Don't know if you remember... Never forgot you... Only the very best memories... God this is pathetic, I think.  I'm not sure if I'm referring to the email itself or my giddy reaction to receiving it. It ends, I hope that wherever you are, someone is making you feel special.  I hope that someone is telling you every single day how amazing you are.


I catch my breath.  The tears spill before I realize they've collected.  The full impact of the words forces me back into my chair. Panic threatens to take over.  Too many memories, too many thoughts, too many things to do before my husband comes home.

I inhale deeply, resolve not to cry again today.  I walk downstairs to start dinner.

Genesis

I was a Women's Studies minor in college. The only reason I was Women's Studies minor is because my university didn't offer a Women's Studies major. I spent my post- college years working with abused women and children, taking up their causes and fighting their battles.

I had, virtually from birth, an outgoing, outspoken, talkative personality. I was always the first person to befriend the new kid in class, and if I ever got in trouble in school the transgression was usually connected to my unending need to socialize.

Why then, I asked myself today - I ask myself every day - am I living the way I am? Why do I spend my evenings analyzing his tone of voice, avoiding eye contact, tiptoeing across particularly delicate eggshells? I bite my tongue until I taste blood and try to arrange my days in a manner most likely to avoid confrontation. I fail, a lot.

How did I get here? Who am I? Where is the connection between my past and my present? What the hell is my future? These are my questions.