No Happy Endings

by Nora McInerny Purmort

I was mostly trying to protect myself. From the judgment of others, which was primarily just a projection of my own self-judgment.

How are you? Well, you’re fine, of course! You’ve never been better. I mean, sure, those medical bills are adding up to more than your house is worth, and yeah, you’re not on “speaking terms” with your siblings, and no, you don’t exactly have a job, but overall? When you think of it? Ya can’t complain. Turn the conversation back onto the asker as soon as humanly possible. You’ll immediately find out that they’re just as fine as you are.

Where the heck have all your friends and family gone? It’s almost like when you told them you were fine and didn’t need any help, they believed you? Are they nuts? Have they totally lost it? Aren’t they listening to you? How could they not see your suffering, just because you carefully concealed it under Instagram filters and quality lipsticks? It’s very important that you don’t verbalize any of this to them, of course. This pain is a secret you must bury deep inside,

their lives are also pretty lifey, and you and your tragedy has slid off the bottom of their To Care About list.

The people offering me these shoulds were trying to provide comfort. Not just for me, but for themselves.

Helmet scolds after my accident

I hadn’t laughed in so long that I couldn’t remember how it worked, but it seemed like the best way to do it was loudly and while pointing at him as he scrambled back to his feet.

this man and I sat next to each other on a love seat (foreshadowing!!!).

By 10:30 (which is the latest any social gathering should ever go),

“let’s get you pre-approved for a mortgage.” Pre-approval sounds fun. Maybe because it has my favorite word in it? I love approval. I seek it from basically any and everyone. Being pre-approved sounded like there was even more approval on the horizon, and this was just a formality: a way for the bank to look me up and down and say, “Yep, we like what we see, come on back in a few weeks for some more affirmations and validations.”

I already saw Ralph and me building a snowman in the front yard and shoveling the walkway together. Not just the two of us, but more of us . . . a bigger version of our team,

(marriage, children, a vacation home to snowbird to), but that we couldn’t let timing be an excuse for not getting the things that we did want. Waiting for the perfect conditions is a waste of what limited time you have on this earth.

“Smile” is not a way to actually cheer a person up. It’s a way to tell them “please adjust your face to my preferences.”

lightning can absolutely strike twice in the same place. Maybe just as a fluke, but perhaps, also, because there is some quality about the location that makes it more likely to be struck.

My father used to tell me that the only people who knew anything about a relationship were the two people who were in it.

There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says I did something bad and shame says I am bad.

Being Catholic wasn’t a choice for them, it was a cultural expectation. In second grade, all the children had their first communion, dressing up like tiny brides and grooms for their first taste of the body and blood of Christ. Shortly after, they’d have their first confessions, sliding into a dark booth to recite their childish sins to a man who could offer them a chore list of prayers meant to earn the forgiveness of God. And in high school, they’d been confirmed into the faith, which is basically signing a contract that says, “Yeah, I’ve looked over the purchase agreement, and this all looks great to me. Sign me up for a lifetime of Catholicism.”

I couldn’t be sure about this man without knowing him as a dad. Being a dad is a huge part of Matthew’s identity. Not just because he has kids, but because he acts like he has them. We all know a guy who is “technically” a parent. Sure, he loves his kids, but it also seems like he kinda got tricked into the whole situation. A guy who refers to spending time with his kids as “babysitting” or who idealizes his glory days of being young and single. Matthew is the opposite of that guy. Knowing nothing about him, you could spot Matthew on the street and know he’s a dad. He doesn’t wear cargo pants or Teva sandals (thank God), but he exudes a paternal air, like he is constantly ready to cut someone’s meat into non-chokable pieces or secure a car seat correctly.

After his divorce, Matthew spent any evening without his children sitting at work until it was time to go to bed. That way, he explained to me, he didn’t have time to miss them.

He looked at me and said, “It’s time to flip the nuggets.” Flip. The. Nuggets? That is not on the instructions! “This way,” he said, concentrating on keeping the perfect spacing between each artificially formed hunk of chicken by-product, “they’re crispy on both sides.” Did these kids realize what kind of a father they had? A nugget-flipping angel who wanted them to enjoy perfectly crispy pieces of breaded chicken

I was, at times, happy. And that happiness triggered a deep, dark sadness to well up inside of me. I wanted it to stop, please. I believed that these were two opposing forces at work, but they were just one: love. Grief is a by-product of love. We don’t grieve what we don’t love. We may feel slightly bummed about losing something we liked, but we don’t grieve for it.

Of course people are shocked that Matthew can handle the fact that I love another man while I also love him. We’re used to people having loved before, we aren’t used to the idea that those loves could coexist, that they could happen at the same time. We assume that love is easily controlled and redirected, a series of switches you turn off and on, like the fuse box in your basement.

Marriage is just a legally binding agreement that says you’ll do life together. It also means, in the United States, that you have a right to help your beloved make life-and-death decisions. It means you have a right to be in the hospital room, to advocate for them. As a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a close friend that his family is really fond of . . . you just don’t get the same considerations.

You can be a wonderful person and still get hit by a car.

Just gonna assume Nora is specifically talking about me here

wanting is risking. To love something, or want something, is to risk disappointment. To risk our own pain.

I just didn’t want a wedding. I wanted a marriage. We could have both, but one version would cost us thousands of dollars and require people to spend their time and money witnessing something that would be nothing but pageantry. Matthew and I are raising four kids together in a house we bought. It seemed kinda silly for me to wear white and take a symbolic walk down the aisle to a life we’d already started.

I invite you to consider the feedback of people who challenge you and respect you, and not confuse criticism of your work as criticism of who you are.

You can always do more. But your goal shouldn’t be to have the longest to-do list, or the longest been-done list, but to have a list of things you feel good about doing. The goal should be to do things you would do whether or not anyone was going to comment on them.