The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

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.

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.

It feels like the fuller your lives get, the less space there is for me. If I leave, maybe that space will go away completely.”

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.