Really Good, Actually

by Monica Heisey

But we weren’t unhappy, just unsatisfied . . . until suddenly we were so, so unhappy, and we couldn’t laugh, and we couldn’t have sex, and we couldn’t order Thai food without looking at the other person like, who are you?, staring at the stranger we’d chosen at age nineteen and nineteen and a half, respectively, not hating them, exactly, but wondering if they died without warning—of natural causes or in some kind of horrible accident, not that that would be good, of course, it would be a tragedy . . . but if it did happen—if maybe life would be easier.

I think part of me assumed we would get back together, even after we agreed he’d go, even after everything.

And so our marriage was over, six hundred and eight days after it began. One day we were in love, and the next it had curdled. Suddenly we only had two settings: quiet and exasperated.

An underwhelming breakup. No affair; no big, blowout moment. Just a series of small fires that we let burn out around us, clutching our coffees like the dog from the internet: this is fine.

It is horrible to be sad in the summer.

Almost nothing had happened to me before we’d known each other. Meeting him had felt like the most significant event in my life,

I liked coming home to one person—my person;

so wrapped up in my non-tragedy tragedy, that things felt very large at the moment, even though I knew, somewhere, that they weren’t,