February 13, 2012

Coda

“Are you okay?” his silhouette came hazily from the lighted kitchen. 

I was sitting in the dark again, transfixed by my phone, trying to cuddle up against myself. I didn’t want to tell him it wasn’t going to work--how his ideas of me as a happy housewife would never come true, how I couldn’t agree to financial ruin by prenup. 

“No,” I said. “Not really.” 

He knelt in front of me, picked up my chin with his hand. “Did I do something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

I was afraid of saying ‘yes,’ afraid of having to say what I was thinking.  Because it’s easier to silently resent than speak truth--at least in the short run. But I’ve never been very good at hiding my feelings and my passive aggressiveness always ends up being worse than the plain act of opening up. Bursting open is much messier, I’ve found. 

So against my greater compulsion to meld into the leather sofa and disappear, I stood and let him lead me to the kitchen. 

“We have different ideas about finances and roles,” I blurted out. “I don’t think it’s fair to have a prenup that says I get nothing if we divorce--it’s not what I did for my ex.” 

I was of course, staring at the cabinets, intentionally avoiding eye contact, as if that could keep us from breaking up. 

“I never said that,” came his voice during a pause in my litany of reasons why--the hypothetical pregnancy thing and how we agreed I wouldn’t work the first few years, the fact that what’s made in the marriage should be split at its end.

“But you did, I heard it.” I didn’t want to be right, but I didn’t want to be senile either. “You said, if I took half of everything, you’d have to start over again.”

“I was speaking hypothetically, and I said repeatedly that I didn’t know what I thought about prenups. I was just talking about the concept, and after hearing your concerns, I think you’re right. We don’t need one.”

The heat of blood blushing subsided, my skin relaxed, and my shoulders softened. I looked into his moss-colored eyes and remembered who he was.

Because I often become disoriented in the labyrinth my mind creates. I make movies in my head based on other lives, hear things that were never said, assume things that should not be. No, I’m not psychotic or schizophrenic. I am hormonal. I am a woman. And I have been burned before, which means I am violently protective of me while concurrently maintaining a deep desire to connect and be vulnerable. Okay, maybe I'm a little schizophrenic. 

And I fear so much because I have never recognized myself in anyone the way I see myself in him. He is my mirror. He is my north. 

***

A few weeks later he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. And the finger that bears the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned reminds me constantly that with this love comes great responsibility. I am to be a partner and a step-mother. And I must do whatever I can to vanquish those characters my mind creates, to allow enough room for myself to grow and change while embracing the stability we're attempting to create. 

Again, my mantra must be balance, must be listening, must be releasing. Without these, I struggle to be present. And this is where true happiness lies: right here, right now.