The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

It’s an addicting feeling, knowing I’m in the middle of meeting a person I’ll get to hang on to.

He’ll hold on to it for years, but eventually that spark will become a wildfire. And then we’ll burn it all down.

Here’s the thing: I’m a list girl. I learned the magic of them long ago—the way they can streamline tasks and expectations. Needs and emotions. How they can take a messy, chaotic thing and make it manageable. They’ve been my coping strategy since I was a kid. They quiet my mind and untangle my emotions so that I stay cool, calm, and compartmentalized. So I’m not a messy, chaotic thing.

Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do. Luckily, I’m used to dealing with the messes in my life alone.

the transient friendships of my youth,

The praise sings through me so strongly it feels like relief. God, I need to be needed. To be held on to any way I can get it.

My emotions are never simple, but tonight they’re especially knotted: happiness and fear and guilt for being afraid of what might change. A sense that this is a goodbye to an era that shaped me. The fear, again, that maybe it’s a bigger goodbye, too.

homesick again, standing in the middle of the place I miss.

It’s weird seeing your friends have other friends, and it made me feel far away again, you know?” “I’ve lived three thousand miles away from everyone I love for years,” he says, his eyes steady on me. “So yes, I know.”

“Upheaval is kind of a shitty rite of passage in your twenties,”

“But it hurts all the same to feel far away,”

I should be okay on my own, but I can’t help searching for that feeling of belonging. It’s so hard for me to find my place—when I do, maybe I hold on too hard, but it’s only because I know what it’s like to lose it.

but knowing I’ve grown roots deep enough to stick for that long.

He huffs out a laugh. I love the way his happiness tastes; my favorite emotion, the easiest one.

“The things you care about most are what you talk about least.”

“It’s not about not being messy, it’s about being honest with your mess.”

“Stop beating yourself up over it. I love you, you’re here. That’s all I need.” And I think, this is what love is. What I’m looking at, what I’m feeling, what’s happening here this weekend. What I crave in every corner of my bones, and what I’m so scared of getting, because so often I lose it.

I think about hellos and goodbyes, beginnings and endings. I imagine an endless circle that brings me back to one feeling again and again and again: loving him.

“When I say I’m still in love with you, I mean the first time I saw you and right now. I mean every second in between.”

My dad is tall and barrel-chested and looks a handful of years older than he is. But we’ve got the same dark brown hair and blue eyes, the same arch to our brows and our laughter has the same melody. I’d never paid much attention to our resemblance, but in that moment I was grateful for it. It reminded me that he’s a person I belong to, too.

I can feel myself stretching, a necessary, beautiful pain.

Sitting back on my heels, I look down at the winding path the list makes. I’m a list girl, so I recognize the purposeful organization of thoughts. But I’ve never seen one like this before—it’s not meant to keep thoughts or emotions compartmentalized. It’s meant to set them free.

It’s a privilege to have someone trust you enough to show you those pieces of themselves, the most vulnerable and tender, the least polished. It’s a show of trust to let you see them first thing in the morning, in the middle of a panic attack, right after they’ve cried. To give you a shaky smile after a messy fight. To come back to you again and again with their heart in their hands.

Time is a miracle. It shows you what you had, and sometimes it brings it back to you. Different. Better.

For a girl who struggled so mightily to know the shape and feeling of home, it’s a revelation to have so many places—and people—to call it.