I regrouped for a few days and then told my best friend that we had split up. He was concerned and apparently had thought this was going to be the guy I married someday. Oddly, I sensed a bit of relief in his voice even though he tried to hide it in the shadows of his empathy. I knew I could talk to this man about anything – except the one thing I really wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him I ended it because it was unfair to this other gentle human being to be my knight in shining armor while I only wished for my best friend to ride in and save me. We continued to converse over the 45-mile distance between us, and something changed in the tones. There was forgiveness and rawness in the top notes of the call – on both sides. It was like a thin layer of vulnerability had been tested, and we were both willing to let go just a bit. I stopped talking, and he did as well. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing my own heart beating, his, or just interference on the call, but I couldn’t deny the very physical feeling aching inside me. I awkwardly tip-toed out of my casual conversation and asked him, “Do you ever feel your heart thumping so hard it hurts?” He replied, “Like someone just hit you with a baseball bat right in the center of your chest?” I instantly felt like he ripped the Velcro right off the broken piece of my heart and begged me to say more… but I couldn’t. He waited a few seconds and with a second reply in the sincerest voice I’d ever heard he said, “I feel it, too.”
My soul was crushed, life-flighted, and repaired all in the 5 seconds it took me to swallow the lump in my throat. A new feeling overwhelmed me that day, and to this day I can’t find the words for it. It was sadness for the heart I had just recently broken. It was guilt for giving a physical relationship my time when I knew I wanted more. It was slight selfish regret that I had a man offering me the world and I let him go. It was confidence like I’d never experienced knowing I did the right thing. It was hesitation and wanting to say more but dying inside with every second that I didn’t. It was confusion that I thought we were talking about my feelings… and then suddenly realizing the conversation was also about his deepest desires. It was intensely questioning my own heart and wondering if I was really willing to let this relationship eclipse into something more. It was second-guessing myself that maybe he was talking about something else, and I had analyzed it completely wrong. It was complete ecstasy imagining that the dream I had for the past year had just manifested out of nowhere when I least expected it. It was silence… it was chaos… it was butterflies… it was trepidation… and I simply said the only thing that was on my mind – “You were just too stupid to see that I was in love with YOU.” I sat there shocked at the trainwreck from my mouth that just collided with reality. The only audible noise was a slight buzz from the LAN line, and I told him I had to go. I hung up the phone and sat there wishing there would have been a better writer for the terrible script that I just read. I wanted to bury myself so far into that plush suede recliner that no one would ever find my body. My heart was still pounding out some kind of tribal celebration while my mind was grieving the words that had betrayed me. My phone rang again. I knew there was no going back, no matter his response. He didn’t even say hello this time. He just nervously asked, “Can you please say that again? I’m not sure I understood you correctly.” With nothing but frustration and defeat in my voice, I blandly repeated what I assumed would be my newest PTSD core memory. “I said, you were too stupid to see that I was in love with you.” His voice had a mixture of humorous shock and relief to it as he said, “You’re in love with me? Why didn’t you just tell me?” At that point, the conversation took overtones of “are we really doing this” and “wow, that was a funny thought”. I wasn’t even sure which way this was going to end, but our voices returned to our usual casual resonance while we discussed these new romantic thoughts. We talked about this new possibility just like we talked about what we liked on the salad bar – light, surface-level, but with an always present deeper connection. It was easy, comical, satirical, and somehow strangely meaningful as we roasted each other with insults about what might be happening. I couldn’t make sense of what we were doing, but it was everything I wanted. It was like talking to my brother, my best friend, and my husband of 10 years… all at once. I don’t even remember how we ended that conversation that night. I just remember slowly morphing into this floundering relationship that teetered between friendship and soulmates.
It was only a few days until he stood outside his truck and kissed me for the first time. Something boiled over somewhere between the pit of my stomach and the depths of my heart that I hadn’t felt since my high school boyfriend – but this time it was more. It was then that I realized what really being in love with someone meant. For me, it was a combination of chemistry, intellectual connection, trust, and touch. Something about his hands burned through my skin and traced every vein inside me. Being kissed by someone who really understands you is like crawling into bed after your mom just washed the sheets. It was a feeling that surpassed physical attraction, good hair, beefy muscles… any of the features I normally felt attracted to in a man. This was a man that was made for me, and I felt it to my core when his hands touched my face and his lips hesitantly yet confidently met mine. This was what forever felt like, and I had a new understanding of the entire concept.