The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

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

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.

In my weaker moments, I think about what a fucked-up testament it is to the way we knew each other before: bone-deep, down to the marrow. And I think about how utterly heartbreaking it is that we’re using the same connection that allowed us to conduct a wordless conversation across the room to know each other in such a clinical way now. Like strangers who’ve seen each other naked in every way that counts, in all the ways that wreck you.

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.

When we were friends, and especially after we became more, I felt like the only person in the world. Like I belonged to someone. He picked up every detail of my life like he was ravenous for it. I wondered a lot, alone in our bed while he pulled another all-nighter, when he stopped being hungry for me.

learned so young that other people’s needs were default, that mine had to be scheduled to be met, or, more easily, taken care of myself.

No matter what other feelings I had, I never judged him for falling victim to the wounds of his adolescence. God knows I did the same thing. But while he was trying to fix what was broken in his past, he was breaking something that was right in front of him.

Maybe I didn’t give him all of me, but I gave him more than I ever gave anyone else, and instead of taking it back I locked it up.

How strange it is to have a first for the second time. How lucky and messy and perfect.

“You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?”

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.