Until I'm Loved Again

Too Much, Too Soon

Sylvia

Over the past few months, I'd gotten really good at speed-grocery-shopping. So good, in fact, that I could run into the store, get everything I needed, and be out in ten minutes. I pre-planned my route, and even drew a map.

Because I only had thirty minutes. And if I was fast enough, I could go by the little coffee shop on the way home and grab a latte, and sit on the back patio in silence for about five minutes, and pretend my life was perfect.

All things considered, my life was pretty great. I lived with Meredith and her three girls, took care of them during the day, dropped them off at their respective extracurriculars in the afternoon, and then went to my part time job at the local drug store in the evening. My salary was low, but the rent was free. My part time job was only a few hours each evening, but it was something. I was slowly building myself up into something sustainable.

Hopefully.

Tuesday afternoons were a little slice of peace, if I could get the grocery shopping done fast enough. So I rushed through the store, hurried through the self-checkout, and threw it all in the back of Meredith's car. Mmm, latte on the porch, here I come.

I paused as I returned the cart. Bethany's car was parked to the left of the cart return, and when I caught a glimpse of her through her window, I realized she was crying.

She stared straight ahead, not moving, tears running down her cheeks. Her face was expressionless. She didn't even lift a hand to wipe her tears away.

There's no way I can go enjoy a peaceful, quiet coffee by myself when I know my friend is crying in her car in the grocery store parking lot.

I let go of the romantic idea and pulled open Bethany's passenger side door, sliding into the seat.

"Hey," I whispered.

"Hey." Her voice was deadpanned.

"I'm not going to ask if you're okay, because clearly that's not true."

She didn't answer.

I dug through my purse and pulled out a napkin, holding it out to her. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Bethany turned the car on and adjusted the dial on the air conditioning. She still didn't say anything.

"I hate to see my friends upset, Bethany. Can I do anything? Can I pray for you? Do you need a hug?"

"Why are you so nice," she mumbled.

"You're nice too," I shrugged.

"I used to be nice like you. I didn't used to be like this." She lifted a hand, as if to gesture to some vague this-ness, and then dropped it. "I guess pain either makes you hard, or soft. And somehow I got hard."

My heart thumped painfully in my chest. Boy did I know that feeling.

"The softness that comes from pain isn't always good," I said, confusing myself with our metaphors that didn't seem to mean anything.

Bethany took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Jonah started dating again."

"Your ex-husband?"

She nodded. "I guess I never really thought about him... moving on. I always thought maybe..." she shrugged, bit her lip, and began to cry again, hiccuping and covering her face with her soggy napkin.

I pulled another one out of my purse, and she accepted it. "How long were you guys together?"

She made a strange choking noise, something between a laugh and a cough. Her voice was thick with emotion as she spoke. "We met in the first grade. We were best friends until we were sixteen. We dated until we were nineteen... married until we were twenty-eight. We've been divorced for four years."

"That's a long time," I whispered, and immediately thought of Elenor and David. They were almost the same story, although it hadn't ended in divorce. "What happened?"

Her voice betrayed a sense of failure. "We couldn't stop hurting each other."

Before I could say anything, she turned to me. "You know what the worst part is?" Her voice was suddenly clear. "It wasn't losing my husband. Or my lover. It was losing my best friend. That's what I miss." Her eyes were bright and full of something I couldn't identify. Like she was begging me to understand. "I don't miss being married to him. I don't miss living together, or having two incomes, or the sex, or any of it... But I miss my best friend. And I miss who I was before."

I miss who I was before.

Those words rang in my head like a chant, like a mantra.

I understood them, even though I couldn't relate. I loved who I was now, and I was happy not to be the person I was before. I would never let myself be who I was before. I'd thrown her off, refusing to let her tie me down.

But I did miss the innocence I had... before.

She threw me off when she asked, "You were married, weren't you?"

Bethany's words made my blood go cold. I felt myself physically freeze, and for a moment, I wasn't sure if I could breathe. I was paralyzed.

"I... came across Elenor's Facebook page. Found it by accident. Some people posted on her wall... asking about you."

I closed my eyes, feeling myself shrink. I wanted to curl up and hide.

"You may want to ask Elenor to delete those posts, Sylvia."

I couldn't ask Elenor to log on and see all the things people had said. She couldn't face that yet. But maybe I could get online and report the posts as bullying or something, and have them taken down.

"You won't say anything, will you?"

"No."

"Thanks."

"What happened?"

I struggled against my own tears, swallowing the familiar lump in my throat. Refusing to go quiet. Refusing to surrender to the crushing pressure.

I remembered all the mornings filled with anxiety of what the day would bring; the afternoons of impossible requests; the evenings filled with silent punishment for my failure; the nights filled with the crippling weight of his disappointment, worse than any physical pain he could inflict.

"We couldn't stop hurting each other," I lied.

Because that wasn't what happened. He couldn't stop hurting me. And selfishly, I'd decided I'd had enough.

I still felt the weight of my sin every day. Not only had I failed at being a wife, I'd broken my covenant and abandoned my husband, disappearing into thin air. My reasons may have been sound... but part of me still wondered if I'd done the right thing. If I should call him up, ask for forgiveness, maybe get counseling and try again.

But the thought of even hearing his voice, let alone seeing him, looking into his eyes, or the feeling of his hands on my body made me want to hurl.

So I swallowed the guilt and shoved that nagging itch in my heart into a box, and chucked it into the closet of my mind.

There's no way he'd track me down all the way from central Texas to a rural Appalachian town with a population of two thousand, that didn't even have 5G.

I was safe here.