No Hot Water

This week is always so hard for me. 

And by always I mean that the last six years have been an annual reminder of the courage I finally found in leaving you. 

It started as a seedling I refused to water. As a recent plant mom, I can’t believe I pulled that trick in retrospect. 

She sat deep in the soil, punching tiny nodes and bumps that would grow into roots, eventually. Like propagation, it took time. But unlike propagation, you couldn’t see a damn thing. The growth was small, insignificant, unnoticeable.

Until true watering was allowed, these seedlings sought out nourishment they could find. 

But this process was slow. Those seedlings sat for a while. Years, actually. 

While I withheld the water my Truth deserved, I gave it all to you. 

I gave it all to the faith I had that forgiveness wins, and that I’m sorrys eventually change behaviors, and that giving more than you’re receiving is a noble, spiritual, and admirable gift. 

I watered all of these ideas that distracted me from the need I felt to be consumed day in, and day out -- instead of counting on special occasions and passing the time in between. 

I told myself that the tears I cried at night would eventually taper off. Turns out, the less water I gave those seedlings, the more tears I had to shed over 

those jokes you would make about annulments

the confessions about addiction and fascination

the rejection I felt you had of my body, our intimacy, and the freedom we now owned.

I’ve heard people say that our bodies hold onto trauma long after the date and timestamp has passed.

I’ve yet to do research on this, but suffice it to say that I’ve experienced it myself.

Why else does the empty pocket inside my heart journey and relocated into my lungs, only to collapse? It takes my breath away, but not in the way I was hoping our love would. It’s had quite the opposite effect.  

It bothers me to know that I can verbalize the abuse now -- I can cry about it, and finally share some of the truths of those episodes but none of that releases me from the whiplash I feel every February when I think about how I left. 

In choosing me I realized I had to stop choosing you.

That meant going against what I believed about love -- love persisting, love never leaving, love enduring all things.

I recognize that my growth required your abandonment.

To be honest, I do think about that and if there were anything I would consider apologizing for were we ever to speak again that might be it. 

I can’t say I know how it feels to be abandoned but I know what it is to feel alone. 

I remember the day I knew our hours were numbered. It was actually Valentine’s Day, in 2015. We attended a wedding, a sweet one. The kind where you’re actually rooting for both parties equally and without reservation. 

As a sweeping generality, I’ve been to more of the other kind of weddings where you’re placing bets on who might come out ahead, and how long the two might realistically be committed to the shared delusion.

If we’re being honest -- and I am -- even my wedding was one of those. 

But we danced. We believed in love that night. 

A love for them, a love that they might be granted. A love that resides outside of you and makes it possible to overcome anything.

That, at least, was what I used to believe about love.

But I didn’t feel it applied to me. In fact, at that point I knew it didn’t apply to me. 

What I came face to face with that night was the reality that my love for my abuser could not overpower the strength of his Secret, and our fate -- that together we were more broken than we were apart.  

We like to think we can leave people better than we find them but I’ve stopped calculating whether or not that argument can be made for us when I watched our friends pack half of our things -- my things -- into boxes for a date and timestamp in which, perhaps, I had more clarity on the permanence of our future. 

It’s been six years since then and I’m still thinking about that young couple’s wedding night, the night of Valentine’s. The night we spent in a hotel because we didn’t have hot water. By some miracle it wasn’t because we couldn’t pay the water bill -- though that was a terrifying possibility that ran through my mind when we first felt the icy water persist for minutes into hours without a sign of warmth.

I can’t remember how long we went without it, but staying in that hotel was a metaphor for finding temporary solutions to problems that will persist if you don’t do something drastic. 

Some people insist on preventative medicine, or damage control -- it was too late, and not enough, respectively, in our case. 

While the hot water was eventually restored in our townhome, the belief I had that my water was enough for the both of us was not. In fact, it was in those moments that I realized it was never an equal share of mine, and yours for ours. It was always for you. Always about you. 

The water I’d been dousing you with was eventually redirected to the Seedlings I realized were so starved to the point of shriveling. I wondered if the water I had left would be enough, or too much for them. I feared it might have an inverse impact on their ability to take root in the future. 

In what I can only describe as a wild coincidence, I lost hot water last week. 

I’m not kidding, I actually went without hot water for six days. 

I smelled.

I was grumpy.

I grew from agitation to rage in mere seconds somewhere between Day 3 and Day 4 when the timeline of resolution was unclear.

This reminded me of the latter six years that I’ve been the recipient of my own waterings, the water I stopped showering over you.

I imagine that if I could characterize my water, it would be warm. Much like the water I was missing last week. The kind that cleanses, and removes the grime. It clarifies the skin, making things supple, and clear.

It reminded me of the six years I’ve had since you last said that you hated me -- and that you regretted every moment, every experience, every thing we ever shared.

Whether that was actually your Truth or not, the reality is that there’s no water, no temperature scalding enough to remove the stain, the dirt, and the blood you left with your words.

The trauma of them lives on. 

Happy Valentines.