“I met Jacob at a house party. I was nineteen. I’d just moved to...

“I met Jacob at a house party. I was nineteen. I’d just moved to New York from Brazil. Right away we became inseparable. It was the first time that either of us had been in love. Even though he was a little younger, Jacob taught me so much. I remember he used to read me Dr. Seuss books to help with my English. After dating for a few months, we decided to move to Rio De Janeiro together. We got married at the courthouse so he’d have Brazilian residency, but we did the rebel socialist thing. I was in a T-shirt. Both of us wore jeans. We stayed in Rio for seven months. We had our own house. No parents around. We went to the beach all the time. But we were too young to make a relationship work. Disagreements became bigger than they needed to be. It seems to be all or nothing when you’re young. Either everything is perfect, and you’re reading Dr. Seuss, or everything is horrible. At one point Jacob decided he wasn’t ready to be married, and we ended up going our separate ways. Over the years we lost touch.  I did call him once in 1990, and we had a wonderful conversation.  But by that time he was engaged, and he politely asked me not to contact him again.  I admired his integrity and respected his wishes.  Both of us got married. Then both of us got divorced. And I didn’t think about him for a long time. But on June 17th of 2018, I was watching an early-morning World Cup game, and I got a message on LinkedIn. It was from Jacob. He said he’d been drinking a cup of coffee, and was reminded of an inside joke we had. That led to a three hour phone conversation. Which led to a ten day trip to visit him in Michigan. I remember how strange it was when we embraced at the airport. We were the same people, but we were almost sixty. We’d lived through so much.  He had a little bit of a belly.  And so did I. We poured our hearts out over the next ten days. We didn’t spend all our time in the bedroom.  We spent our time talking. We talked about our difficult childhoods. Our mental health struggles. We talked about who we were back then, and how much we’d grown. At the end of the trip we decided to start a life together. We’re in a different season now. We’re kinder to each other. We know how to name things. And how to have difficult conversations. It’s not like back then. When we were young– we thought we knew everything. And we suffered so much for it. Because we barely knew anything at all.”  #quarantinestories