Apotheosis: Part 6b

(Part 2 of split entry.)

Laura began working at a clothing store in the Galleria, one of the more fashionable malls in the St. Louis area. I can’t remember the name of it, which has made me pause and blink at the screen for a good twenty seconds in disbelief. She liked the job, but was still working at Schnucks. My work schedule was very chaotic, because our clients typically didn’t work full shifts, and were dispersed around the city. I might work from 7:30-10:30, then have 2 hours off (after The Gap in the morning I would often take a nap in my car, having developed the dubious talent of being able to wake up sans alarm clock and make it to my next client on time), then a shift from 12:30-3:30, then an hour off, then finishing up from 4:30-6:30. Eight hours of work, yes, but a twelve-hour day involving a lot of driving and/or waiting.

Laura’s jobs kept her hopping back and forth as well; Schnucks at day, Other Place Whose Name I Can’t Believe I Forgot at night.  We stole our time together, but we were often tired, and tired is often not fun. You just collapse into bed with one another, snuggle close, and pass out. You would think that having survived a long distance relationship unscathed, that this would simply be more of the same–but it was different, somehow. It was exhausting, and it took its toll, because when we were with one another, all of our fatigue manifested, our problems collided, and as two people who really were comfortable spending time alone when they were stressed, it was difficult for us to deal with both of our issues simultaneously. Our love had become a grind, our daily life a millstone crushing us both slowly into microscopic granules of affect and thought.

"Love is always a product and victim of circumstances," says Elizabeth Wurtzel, and it is sooth. 

Without intimacy, love is sterile, dry, innocuous. So ours had become.

I had graduated in May. In early August, before Laura left for a two-week vacation with her parents, she took me aside, and we spoke.

We’d become victims of inertia; we’d stopped talking with each other, and started talking at each other. Our intimacy had disappeared, not for lack of love, but for lack of energy. In some ways, we’d believed our own press–we were Super Couple, we were perfect. We never stopped to really examine our relationship; we were both not the best at communication, or comfortable dealing with feelings. Just look at how we got together–we spoke with notes, not words, with shy glances, not bold stares.

You see, we were uncomfortable with disharmony. If we were upset, we buried it; if we had a grievance, we apologized for it. We took too much blame on ourselves and didn’t want to attribute it to the other person. We cared that much, yes–it may not be healthy, but our love was such that we simply sublimated all of our complaints, telling ourselves, "Well, I’m just being stupid, we’re awesomeness in a bucket and there’s no need for me to ruin things by bringing this up."

Thoughts become words and actions; cracks become fissures and chasms. We’d been drifting apart without even realizing it, because our basic bond was so strong. It’s like we were standing across from each other, hands grasping each other’s elbows, and the earth split between our feet and began to pull apart in opposing directions. We held on, and we held on, and we held on, but there’s some point where something has to give. Instead, neither of us gave. We were so afraid of being the problem that we never found any solutions.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Person becomes estranged from their partner. Person realizes there’s someone else in their life who they get along with really well. Person starts to desire the new person.

What takes more energy–rolling a snowball across the lawn, or moving a boulder that’s been sitting there, slowly sinking into the earth for the last two years?  Exhausted, stressed, ground down, Laura found herself holding a palm full of snow.

She’d met someone at work, she said, who made her happy. Who she could talk to, share with, have a good time with. They’d gone out as a group a few times, and she’d been attracted to him, and he’d been inquisitive about her, and the other day, she’d said, he wanted to hold her hand, which wasn’t what made her sad–it was that she wanted him to as well.

It’s to Laura’s credit that she didn’t do anything with her feelings–not even hold his hand–and instead came to me, and said, something isn’t right, and perhaps we should see other people.  I will always admire her for that restraint, and the respect she showed towards us. She didn’t know what to do, she said. She loved me, but just didn’t know what to do.

There isn’t a word that I can think of to describe the shock, horror, fear, and sense of potential loss that I felt.  All of the insight and analysis above? I didn’t have it, then. I just had a girlfriend whom I loved who was stressed and/or crabby and/or upset a lot. In my life, I seem to often be blindsided. I don’t know why this is, as I’m considered perceptive and intelligent. I think it’s because, in one word, I endure.

If you talk to me now, I believe in permanence. I believe in longevity. I believe in the big picture, the long haul, the whole enchilada.  If you plan to spend your life with somebody, what are a few rough months? I take it seriously, but I don’t allow it to herald the end of the world. I don’t think that disagreements are harbingers of doom, I don’t think that stresses should fracture one’s devotion, and I don’t think that you can claim belief in something you’re so willing to surrender at the first sign of difficulty. It takes dedication, and work, to maintain faith. It takes communication, affirmation, and reassurance. You have to speak of your hopes, your dreams, your future together; you have to share that desire to make it there together.  You need to realize that even the smallest cracks, left unchecked, can sunder the world.

Back then, I didn’t appreciate all of this nearly as much–in fact, it was this relationship and its fallout that became the foundation of my beliefs. Everything I listed in the paragraph above after "difficulty" I didn’t know about. I lacked the relationship skills to rely on during rough times. I had yet to be forged or honed into the man I am today. I merely existed. I just assumed that if I waited long enough things would get better with no effort of my own necessary.

We had a score of months under our belt when this conversation occurred, almost twenty to the day. No matter how many times I examined it, I saw no sign of any negativity before my graduation; we were blithely in love with one another, filled with faith. Yet in the end, our inability to maintain our relationship failed us–we’d stopped talking, affirming, reassuring, planning, creating, dreaming, hoping.  This was the fault of both of us, but as with Nancy, it was my partner who eventually had to broach the subject–and here Laura was, three months after my apotheosis, suggesting that perhaps we should go our separate ways.

History was repeating itself. Gradually, and then suddenly.