becoming {h.s} | {b2}

CHAPTER NINETEEN

n. again; continue to donate and educate yourself—the fight is long from over.

— CHAPTER NINETEEN —

january, year two.

By the time that I join Will in bed, he is already asleep. It's hard to say whether or not I intended for it to be this way; whether I purposely spent so long doing the evening chores that by the time that I got in the room, he would be asleep. I've never considered myself a coward; my life and its events to this point have brought me to the point of strength and resilience. More often than not, I know what I need to do and how I need to do it. For so many of my prior convictions, Will always felt the exception. He felt like the man that I would settle down with and the type of man that I would start a family with—even at a time in which I didn't know if such things were in the cards for me. For the first time in my life, I find myself hoping that Will isn't the exception. I don't know when I started tip-toeing around him, but all I know is that now I can't stop.

These days there are a lot of things that I don't know. More often than not, I find that I don't have the answers. Once upon a time, I would have shuddered at the thought. When you're a kid, people in their late-twenties seem so grown up, they always seem that they have their lives figured out—that they have all the answers in the world. By the time that I got here, I realized that couldn't be more of a lie perpetuated from my youth.

I don't know if I ever pictured myself getting married. My relationship with my mother has always been rocky at best, but I'll never forget her words. Relationships only serve to hold you back. Don't get married. Working women can't afford to get married. At the very least, I think I internalized that. I just believed that marriage was another institution of control; another way for men to control women. My mother instilled that belief in me.

All of this going to say: I don't have vivid memories of being a little girl and imagining what I would wear on my wedding day. I don't remember ever sitting down and just imagining who would be the person waiting for me at the altar. As a kid, those things just weren't important to me. Pretty quickly after meeting Will, I had this moment of realization; that he is my great love. There was something so understated about him from the moment that I met him as a romantic interest. I just knew that he had the power to make me feel things that I had never felt before. At the time, I had presumed they would all be good. Relatively, I was a novice in matters of love. I was naïve, and I'm no longer afraid to admit it.

Time is so strange; so much can change in the matter of a day, week, month, or year. Two years ago at this time, I was fresh out of a relationship with Adrian. Two years ago, at this time, I was about to start my relationship with Will. A year ago, at this time, I was mourning the fresh loss of my daughter. A year ago, at this time, I was transitioning into life in the general surgery unit because I was not prepared to go back to OB/GYN. Six months ago, Will and I were holding on; my biggest problem was Harry not telling me about his engagement. Three months ago, things fell apart at our anniversary dinner, but we mended them. For the past three months, we've been breaking and mending so consistently, I almost forget what it feels like to be un-interrupted and whole.

Now, I hide out in the kitchen. I clean dishes three times over so that by the time I walk into the bedroom that I share with my husband, he'll hopefully be asleep.

Our problems have existed for quite some time, but I only realized this following the Christmas party from hell. The morning after, I woke up to Will hunched over the toilet and vomiting. His eyes were sunken in and he looked close to tears. I knew that would happen; I knew that was why I needed to go home instead of retreating like I wanted to. I rubbed his back and I made him some tea and I fed him whatever food he could stomach. The whole time he was apologetic. He apologized to me, to Harry, to Kiera. He knew that he made a mistake that night. Try as I might, I never got it out of him what exactly served as his breaking point. There came a certain time in which I realized that it doesn't really matter anymore. What's done is done.