Breaking Things to Fix Them

We began talking. I apologized for snapping at you during brunch. You accepted my apology. Things seemed okay, but I had a lot on my mind. We were sitting on the white couch, and you reached out for me. I needed to talk, not to be held. Even now, when you aren't here to hold me, I don't regret that decision.

An hour later, I took your keys off my keychain and set them quietly on your book shelf. You walked out of the apartment as I started to gather the things of mine that had gradually accumulated in your space. I wanted to slip as gently and quietly as I could out your front door, and I wanted the hurt to stop hurting. I didn't want to leave any traces of myself behind to haunt you.

I thought that maybe you were leaving - that you would take a walk and I'd be gone when you came back. A moment later the door creaked open, and you appeared with two sturdy shopping bags. It wasn't until a few hours later that I realized you'd taken them from the stack someone in your building had left in your entryway. I packed my things.

I said to you what I wanted to say. You were standing next to the radiator. You looked like someone had crushed you when I said what I did. I guess that it really wasn't until that moment that you realized how I felt about you. You had already made your decision though, and I needed to go.

You put my bags in the backseat of the cab, and then you wrapped your arms around me. I can still smell the leather of your coat. I could not hug you back. The heaving sobs rose from deep inside me - from caverns of emotions that I thought would be foverever closed. You had opened them up, and now they echoed my heartbreak.

I sat in the cab and watched you walk down the sidewalk defeated, shoulders slumped and arms hanging low. I thought to myself, "I love you," and I asked the driver through choked sobs, "why do men do this?" even though I knew that man didn't do this.

I had prayed for two weeks that our future would be made clear to me. Saturday night we laughed and teased and watched movies, and we fell asleep happy. The next day, I watched those words come out of your mouth, and I heard the tone in  your voice. I think that you were as surprised to hear yourself say those words as I was.

I feel as if someone has punched me in the heart. Looking back at my life, though, I have never had a bruise that didn't heal. And the healing that you offered my heart, Jeff, far exceeds the hurt that you've left in it. Thank you for that.