The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

I’m going to think about how you’re in love with me and you’ve been in love with me this whole time—through everything—and yet you let me leave you without a fight. I’m going to think about how you quit your job now and how you’re going to therapy now and how I wasn’t enough for any of that five years ago.”

I chose you, the same way you were choosing yourself. I chose to respect your decision to walk away from the misery we were both stuck in. I couldn’t pull myself out of it, but you did. And I’m not saying I loved the way you did it, or the way I did it. If we’d just talked, if I’d pushed you…”

“You said you needed me too much back then, but all I saw and heard from you was that you didn’t at all.”

“But how would it have been fair to ask you to give me another chance when I couldn’t give you what you deserved? I couldn’t even give that to myself.”

“And with you. You were always enough for me. I wasn’t enough for myself. I had to get there, and I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you along the way.”

I fell in love with you here before, and I let myself do that again, but reality is different. The first two years of our relationship and even the first couple months in New York proved that we’re really good at loving each other when it’s easy, but nothing about our current situation is easy. We have history and you’re going to LA and I’m going to Seattle. It makes it messy in a way that’s terrifying for me.”

ultimately it doesn’t have to be, but you have to figure that out for yourself, Eli. It has to be something you choose because you’re choosing it, not your anxiety or me or anything else.”

“I’m scared, though.” “I know,” he says, and I wonder if he knows I mean about all of this. “But you’re doing it anyway. Sometimes I think it means more when you’re scared. You know the risks, but trusting yourself ranks above all that.”

You promised you wouldn’t make me cry if I let you help me move up here.” “That’s on you for not knowing I was lying,” she says,

Building a space that’s mine, rather than fitting myself into the pockets where people have room for me. I can feel myself stretching, a necessary, beautiful pain.

The one thing that hasn’t changed at all is him loving me. And me loving him. It’s our tether, the thing that’s never let us drift too far.

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.

“The cupcake is a front. I’m here because I love you.”

know? I always felt like saying ‘I love you’ never really touched how much I was feeling. If I gave you a list that showed all of the times I loved you, cumulatively, maybe you’d see, since that’s your language.

I think our problem was that we hid the pieces we didn’t trust about ourselves from one another.” I nod. “Because if you didn’t trust it, or I didn’t, why would the other person?”

“I was ashamed of how much I needed you. I was only happy those first couple months, and it felt like so much pressure to rely on you like that, to not be able to find happiness on my own once you really fell into your job. The further away you were, the bigger that feeling got and the more it scared me. I hid how much I needed you when we were together and after we broke up, even that week we were at Blue Yonder.

I was wrong when I said before that we’re only good at loving each other when it’s easy. I think we’re good at loving each other out loud when it is, but we’ve silently loved each other through all of the hard stuff.”

“You told me you wanted me to choose something for myself, and now I need you to trust that I am. I’m choosing neither of those jobs because it doesn’t feel right. I’m choosing you and me because it does.”