The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

For past me, who didn’t give up, and for future me, who will look back on all of this and be so proud.

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

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.

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

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.

you can be messy. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it.

“All the best things are scary,”

Time is cruel and a miracle all in one swoop. It shows you what you had, and sometimes brings it back to you, but it’s always different.

“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.”

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.

Sometimes happiness is loud and messy.

your first chance isn’t always your last one.