The problem with knowing it’s time to go, is that you give yourself permission to be absent, before you’ve actually left.
Or at least, that was my mistake.
I knew with no uncertainty that I was going to end my relationship, break off my engagement, give up the first house we were weeks away from owning. And right next to that was the fact that I had a very real, pressing deadline rapidly approaching that the rest of the world deemed as “more important” – my doctoral defense. I was to defend my doctoral research on Friday, June 8th. I had worked tirelessly to get to that point, and it was true that I had to give it my all just to get by. I told myself, fine, I will give it my all, I will put my focus there, and then…I will go.
I started having that conversation with myself after that night in Connecticut. I started telling myself it was only a few more weeks before I would start the next, real chapter of my life. It was only a few more weeks before I was going to undo everything I had put together ever so carefully in the past 10 years…
And because I was so focused on all of that, I really didn’t even see her coming. At least, not like I would have thought.
The months leading up to my defense were insanely stressful, but also filled with celebration – as very dear friends were getting married that April – in Puerto Rico! Although I was close with the couple, I really had only met them through friends of the groom. So when all the pre-wedding festivities began, I met several of the bride’s friends, and She was one of them. We crossed path a few times, but really met at the bachelorette weekend in Newport, RI – and immediately clicked. Maybe because I was surrounded by so much “heteronormative” adult behavior (marriage festivities, buying houses and the like), I just assumed we were going to be great friends. Nothing else crossed my mind whatsoever.
We did become great friends, and fast. We exchanged numbers when we were in Puerto Rico (to make sure we all knew when we were leaving and going to group events, obviously), and from that moment on we basically never stopped texting each other. Harmless really, maybe a little suggestive or flirtatious had my mind entertained that possibility. It wasn’t until one night, left alone by our exhausted male counterparts, that we opened up a different level of deep conversation. And after that conversation, I knew we were both women who were open to the fluidity of sexuality on some abstract level.
But still, I didn’t it let it be about us. Not yet anyway.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t smile to myself more when I thought of Her in the weeks that followed our sexuality conversation than I had the weeks prior, but I didn’t know what that meant really. Or maybe, I didn’t want to know, because I had him, still. The week before Memorial Day 2012, She invited me to hangout with her and her kids that Saturday. She said it was a long-shot, that I probably had plans (it was a holiday weekend after all), but her husband would be at a bachelor party late into the night and she would love the company. I don’t think I have ever agreed to something so quickly in my life.
I suppose I should have known by my own behavior that there was something different with Her, but for once I was wildly self-unaware – perhaps more on purpose than I’d realized at the time.
I told him that I was going to Her house that Saturday to hang with Her and the kids, to keep Her company while her husband was away. I didn’t talk to him about it, I told him my plans. I didn’t usually do that, because that’s not really the way relationships work. But again, I had given myself permission to check-out of my relationship…while I was still in it.
I can still remember getting ready to go to Her house that afternoon, choosing a casual summer dress I’d worn a million times, never with a bra (I’m a braless kind of chickie in the summer – or whenever possible), and asking him if I should wear a bra with that dress. His puzzled expression and question, “aren’t you just going to hang out at Her house?” to which I quickly replied, “yea, no, I know, right…” was a clue that I was thinking along different lines for the first time.
And then I couldn’t help but wonder in my own mind, why did it feel like I was getting ready for a date?
I brought a bottle of our favorite rum from PR, she made me dinner. We had champagne and wine, a lot of it. Every way I looked at it, it looked like a date. But we weren’t talking about it.
The kids went to bed, the beverages kept flowing, and we found ourselves talking late on the couch in the basement, the same place we learned about each other’s fluid sexuality.
And suddenly the conversation was absent of words. And suddenly she was kissing me. The most gentle, soft, life-changing kiss.
She stopped to ask me if that was ok, and even though on a thousand levels it wasn’t (I wasn’t actually unattached), I found myself saying yes…
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