You all wanted to know who the man in my life is. Well, it’s very simple. It’s the Ex – or rather, the man who used to be the Ex and is now the Boyfriend.
And before you groan and close the page, know this: I know your misgivings, I know your concerns. I know them, for I had them too, and on moments I still take a breath and proceed with caution.
What you don’t know is that since I posted on his “trying to get me back call”, he’d been consistently calling and I had consistently said I needed my space, to which he would repeat he was going to give it to me, yet prove to me he was indeed a true and changed man.
He went on a scheduled trip to hometown A to see his family and came back saying the same thing: He wanted me back and wanted to come see me. I kept saying no.
Then two weeks ago, when the world came crashing down and I was sobbing on the phone, he said, “Screw it, I’m coming to see you”. This was Wednesday. Friday he was here. He held my hand and let me cry. One morning he was in the shower while I was in the living room on the phone telling a friend about the grad school thing. I had a misunderstanding with said person -long story- and I ended up crying: the bad kind of crying, when you howl and sob and can’t talk. People, I’ve never seen anyone walk out of a room faster. He just came out, asking “What happened, what happened!!” and held me tight. I cried there for 5 minutes and then I told him. He said, “I’m sure your friend didn’t mean anything bad” (She didn’t, we cleared it up). “But you sit and cry all you need to cry”. Later that day he asked what he could do to make it all better. I jokingly said I would be better off pursuing my hobby professionally and going to culinary school to be a chef, but I had no money for that. He said he’d pay for it. When I replied I would never let him do that, he said “Your happiness is my happiness. If your happiness is going to culinary school, then I’m paying for that. I just want to see you smile”.
In the moments alone, I thought about all of this. I thought of how scared I am that this will just be temporary and I’ll come crashing down. About how much I’ve grown without him and Ihow I don’t want to lose what I’ve accomplished.
But I also thought of a man running out of a bathroom worried about me. About a man who traveled just to hug me when I needed him. About the look in his eyes when he finally said “Te amo”, I love you (if you know the story you know why this is a big deal. Not because I didn’t know he loved me but because I needed him to say it, to acknowledge it). I thought about how he now listens in a way he didn’t. How he has owned up to all the pain he caused me and is accepting that I need time to trust him fully. A man who has been steadily working to get me to love him and trust him again. When we broke up long ago, it was so sudden and unexpected that I felt my boyfriend had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by someone who looked like him but wasn’t him. Such was the change he had undergone. Now it seems the aliens returned him and he’s back. Violet once told me that if he ever changed – really changed- I would see it, everyone would see it. I can’t explain it, but I see it. And oddly enough so do my friends who’ve seen him here, with me.
We have a long road ahead of us. We’ve had our arguments, because there is baggage. But there’s also love and there’s a true desire to make this work in a way that makes it all worthwhile.
One request: If you have no good things to comment, please don’t. I’ve had enough skepticism and “oh, you’re being silly to trust him”, etc from my dad and other friends to last me a lifetime. I know what I’m doing. I know it seems crazy. But I also know that I’d rather follow my heart than always wonder if I should’ve. I know enough now that I know I can pull myself out if it’s not working. But for now I’m putting all I’ve got into this. It’s worth it.
