And it Will Feel Like Truth — Day Three

He breaks up with me on Easter Sunday.

I know it’s coming. For the past six months, he’s grown more and more distant as I grow more desperate. I hate being that person — the one who hangs on as tight as possible to someone who obviously wants to let go. The electricity of when we first started dating slowly gives way to glowing ashes struggling to take fire again. The air around him feels stale and suffocating. In October, fresh from me shaking off his uncharacteristic response on the phone, he plans on coming to town for parents weekend.

“I want to see your folks,” he says.

I soak up the charm, happy someone is willing to bend over backwards to please my parents. But instead of coming to see me, he finds himself stuck with a broken down car. On the phone, he sounds distraught.

“Don’t worry about it, babe. You’ll get it fixed. Maybe you can come down tomorrow?”

“No…it’s not enough time. There’s no way that could work. I really wanted to see you.”

I smile.

“I want to see you too but we’ll figure something out. Maybe I can come up in a weekend or two.”

“Yeah maybe.”

I don’t pay attention to the way his voice changes. In my mind, it’s just a broken car — totally fixable. I would find out later that it was so much more. Just like the towers were my metaphor, the car was his. I didn’t know this, but that weekend he planned on asking my dad for permission to marry me. When his car broke down out of the blue, he took it as a sign. A few weeks later, right before Thanksgiving break, he grows silent. It scares me.

“What’s going on…why are you acting like this?” I ask, a hitch in my voice.

“I just need a break, Elora. I’m feeling suffocated.”

He’s feeling suffocated?  I think, incredulous. He has no idea — no clue — how short my breaths were when he was around. All of the air he once gave me is now gone.

“…a break? What does that even mean?”

“It means I don’t think we should talk for a few weeks. I need to get my head on straight and I can’t do it with you calling me all the time.”

“Wait. I call you all the time? Pretty sure it’s not always just me.”

“Well it feels like it.”

“Because you ask me to call you. You tell me — call me when you get in…call me when you wake up…call me.” I echo his words, the tears making my voice crack. I hate that my emotions are showing. He’s silent on the other end of the line.

I hesitate. “Okay. Um. So how does this work?”

“First of all, you should probably stop wearing your ring.”

I catch the coldness in his tone, the same bite I felt when I called him and caught him unaware early that September morning. Something shifts. I feel it in my bones. Everything secure shatters into a thousand pieces of questions and doubts.

That conversation is the beginning of a season where I hold on to hope that one day — some day — our relationship would be back to normal. It never gets off life support…I’m not sure what sounds the death knoll, but it continues, in agony, for six months.

In March, fresh off him deciding that I can wear the ring again, we’re on the phone and I listen as he tells me one of his biggest concerns with our relationship is that he doesn't feel as if he can talk with me.

“What do you mean? We talk every night. Our entire existence is made up of cell phone bills and ways we can communicate with each other.”

“Yeah but Elora…sometimes you’re just a ditz.”

I swallow the sting of his words and keep talking, choosing to ignore the way my breath feels shallow. At that point, we’ve been together almost two years. Every time he looks at me my world spins. I’m in a completely different orbit when it comes to him. The other girls, the snide remarks, the way he overpowers me — I have no idea how to navigate the feeling in my gut that we were now a time bomb, waiting to go off.

And I have no warning that when he finally breaks up with me, my entire world would spin off its axis.

I go to see him that weekend instead of going home. My parents understand. By that time, the promise ring adorns my left hand. The assumption is obvious. Everyone expects him to propose. Even me — even after six months of him hanging me by a thread.

The entire weekend he ignores me.

We go out to eat and he sulks in his booth. We watch movies and he stays in his corner of the couch. We walk his dogs and he doesn’t reach for my hand. We go to church and he shrugs my arm off his shoulders during Sunday School. Before, he would find my eyes and send unspoken messages. Those few days he never looks at me. Never touches me. I am a burden. Invisible. The entire weekend a brick lodges itself in my throat. My worst nightmare is coming true. What was once my air is now stealing my breath right from under me.

He goes to work at the local car dealership and I play sand volleyball with some of our friends from church. I feel awkward without him. This is the first time I’ve been left stranded with others in town and I’m trying to find excuses for why he’s working on Easter.

“Oh he’s trying to save money,” I say. It satisfies the questions.

“I guess that’s why he doesn’t want you with him, huh?” Someone asks with a wink. I know the implication. He’s talking about an engagement ring. I take a deep breath and laugh it off.

That night, in an attempt to rectify the disconnect I felt, I suggest we look at stars. This has been our thing since the beginning of our relationship. The brick in my throat grows by the minute. I feel him falling away and I’m doing anything to try and keep him. We pile into the bed of his truck and within minutes I’m dizzy with his words.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Breathe through the fear.

“What?”

“We’re too serious.”

“But…since when?”

He doesn’t mean this….

I knot my fingers together in the pocket of my hoodie to keep from grabbing at him — he’s lying on his back, arms crossed, face to the sky. He’s right next to me, if I turn on my side I can  see his breath in the cool night air.

He feels a million miles away.

We’re on two different worlds and he put us there. I’m angry. Devastated. I’m desperately trying to figure out a way to make these feelings disappear.

I’m not accepting this. I’m not. I jab my finger into his shoulder.

“Where is this coming from? You’re the one who wanted to do pre-marital counseling.”

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, and I inch away from him. I know this look. This look he reserves for conversations about his father. This look he reserves for the annoying girl who wouldn’t leave him alone. This look he reserves for his disappointment when his sister punches another hole in their wall.

He gazed focuses again on the sky above us. His words are quiet. His jaw sets.

“I don’t love you.”

My heart shattering like glass beneath me. The noise pierces the silence. I can’t breathe.

“You don’t…love me?”

“Well…I mean, shit. We’re young, Elora! How the hell am I supposed to know what love is?!”

I sit up on my elbow so I can see him.

“You seem pretty damn sure when you said it to me this past year and a half.”

“Elora….”

“Just take me home.”

He watches me for a moment before muttering under his breath and wiping his face with his hands. I balk. He’s angry. He’s angry with me for speaking up and questioning his motives.

“Gladly,” he whispers under his breath. Another wound. I swat at my cheeks, angry at the tears betraying my emotion. I look at him and jump off the bed of the truck, leaning against the side. I need to get away from him. This is not the man I fell in love with all those months ago. This is not the person who ran electric currents through my veins. I shiver in the cold and realize it’s April — the cold I feel is the ice radiating from his gaze.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore.” I whisper.

We ride to my best friend’s house in silence. Some horrible rock band plays on the radio and for a second I decide to blame the music. He never used to listen to rock. We used to listen to country, making eyes at each other because of the lyrics.

If he still listened to country, I reason. It makes absolutely no sense, but I’m grasping for straws at this point. We pull up to the curb and he unlocks my door. I pause for a moment before leaving. I know heartbreak. I’ve felt the crack in my gut before with other relationships. But this was entirely new. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I feel like a zombie. I built my life around this man who means everything to me and now he’s choosing to mean nothing?

“I don’t know how you expect me to bounce back from this…” I say, fingering the hem of my hoodie. I am full blown pathetic now, hoping against hope it’s all some kind of horrible prank. At least then I would get his laughter again.

“You know that scene in 8 Seconds where he doesn’t want to ride the bull?”

I blink for a moment, confused at the sound coming from his mouth. His voice is rich with a hint of drawl, the type that cause women everywhere to pause and listen. For years, I’d been woven into the same spell but now, it feels forced. Contrived.

“What?” I whisper, my voice cracking from the strain of holding back tears. I turn to look at the front door and wish there was some way I could send my best friend a message.

Please come out, it would say. I’m in pieces.

“8 Seconds. There’s that scene where he doesn’t want to ride the bull and his friend says ‘cowboy up.’” He looks at me, I can feel his eyes burning a hole in my cheek. He runs his finger against the grain of the leather on his steering wheel. “You just gotta cowgirl up, Elora.” He offers a half smile.

“You’re gonna make it. Just not with me.”

Another punch to the gut. I swallow my words and turn to walk up the steps. It doesn’t take long for my best friend to know what happened. She sees my face and drops her phone.

“You’re kidding.”

I shake my head, dissolving into sobs that careen into every pore. It takes a week to catch my breath and not collapse into tears at a moment’s notice. I’m not Elora anymore. I’m Grief. I’m not sure how long I cry that night — how long I let the pain completely envelop me. The questions suffocate. Am I not good enough? Not pretty enough? How can someone just…stop loving someone else? Was everything he told me a lie?

Will I ever find someone else?

That’s the hardest question. Mostly because I didn’t want to find anyone else.

My best friend tries to talk me back from the edge. So does her mom. Both are shocked and stumble through their words.

“Why settle for something good when God has something great for you, Elora?” Her mom asks in a soft voice, a small smile playing on her lips. I want to wipe away that smile. I want to burn things. Tear down their happy little life.

I end up just swallowing my words all over again and decide instead to dissect every little moment of our relationship. I’m going to figure out where the breakdown happened. I’ll figure it out and then fix it, draw him back to me.

I can do it. I knew I can.

I stay in my dorm with the lights off, begging God to do something — anything. When I finally come back to class, my professor pulls me aside and asks what’s wrong. I start crying again.

“Oh, honey. Elora. Listen….it’s going to be okay.”

Something in her voice causes me to calm down. I blink and look at her, taking a deep breath.

“You are a strong woman, you hear me? You will get through this. This is not the end. Not in the least.”

Her words help. Mostly it’s the look in her eyes. Fierce — independent. I wipe the tears from my face and go back to my seat.

She smiles at me before turning to the class.

“You are all a lost generation.” She says, spreading her arms wide. The people around me start to shift from their conversations. “Gertrude Stein said this about her company of artists who found their way — and their voice — in the streets of Paris. Today, we’re going to talk about why she felt this way, and how it showed in the work they created.”

I take a deep breath and write down what she said — scribbling it in the margins of Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. Something in those words feel true, something about finding voice and feeling lost. I turn my attention back to Dr. Gerard, walking in circles with a smile on her face and talking about the writers who found a home in a land that wasn’t their own.

And just like that, a fire long turned to ash came back to life.

Words.

Story.

Home.

It feels like roots and air.

I sink deeper into my chair and let the rise and fall of my chest carve out an entirely new rhythm. I’m not naïve; the dull ache still pulses in the space between my ribcage. I know it will take months for me to completely heal from the grafting of what I thought was true, but healing would come. Sitting here, remembering my love of words and literature, I find a piece of my core I let go in hopes of falling in line with someone else’s dream. Slowly, something else locks in place. Something that feels a lot like resolve.

My professor is right. This isn’t the end. Not even close