No Take Backs

Win­ter 1998

We had been liv­ing together now for more than 6 months.  It was get­ting closer to our one year anniver­sary of offi­cially dat­ing.  And it wasn’t a smooth easy ride.  Instead try­ing to fig­ure out how to live together, go to school full-time and work was stress­ful.  We fought more than either of wanted.  It was never big things, but lit­tle things.  The ten­sion of how to make it all work was wear­ing on us.

It was wear­ing us down.

We tried to ignore it &  con­tinue as if we were doing fine. Instead of talk­ing about it, we did what we had done best dur­ing those early months.  We talked about any­thing and every­thing but how we were feel­ing.  As if to speak it would give it power. Then who knows what would hap­pen.  Fear of being real, kept us talk­ing about the dishes and the bills, it kept us from talk­ing about us.

Then one late evening.  We had been talk­ing about his birth­day.  I had thrown him a small party with his friends and pre­sented him with a book by Henry Rollins, that I waited in line with Miss Coley for a long time in down­town Ann Arbor to get signed.  Given we lived in Detroit at the time it was a drive and involved plan­ning, but we did it.  We got the sig­na­ture & a pic­ture for him.  He told me he loved it.

And then like all con­ver­sa­tions that you don’t want to have some­how they come up when you least except them.

This was going to turn into one of those conversations.

It turned from birth­days to life in gen­eral to the end­ing of our lease in the apart­ment in after the Spring.  We had to decide what to do next.  I asked him what he thought about stay­ing in the city and liv­ing around here until we fin­ished school.  He didn’t really answer instead he got quiet.  I knew that look com­ing across his face, it was the same look he had the night we almost broke up, the night of the infa­mous break-up song.

My stom­ach sank.  I felt sick.  I mean really sick.  I felt tears start to sting my eyes.

“Why are so quiet?”

Then with­out think­ing I asked him “Are you think­ing we shouldn’t look for a new apart­ment together?”

He didn’t say any­thing right away instead he looked down at the ring on his hand.

He moved it around.  Fid­get­ing with the cor­ners of his eyes nar­row­ing.  I could feel every­thing shift from beneath me.  Really it was only maybe 45 sec­onds, it felt like time stood still.  I had been talk­ing about a whole life, a future and he didn’t say any­thing. 45 sec­onds of silence set­tles into an awk­ward space, one that you can’t get away from, because it’s 45 sec­onds of wait­ing for an answer on your life.

Then he said, very quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? What does that mean?”

In a waver­ing voice, he replied “Maybe we should talk.”

Now it was my turn to sit there silent and the silence pulled us both in deeper.

Into the con­ver­sa­tion we had been work­ing so hard to avoid dur­ing the day was com­ing to light in that quiet and peace­ful evening.  As the dark­ness set­tled around us and the space between us seemed to grow as we sat side by side until the words began to flow.  Then we finally moved for­ward as we looked back.  Then the space began to fade and we real­ized there are no take backs in love.

[this is part of my  “how I met your father” series]

Tagged as: backstory, how i met your father, love, love at first sight, Marriage