Guest blog: Remembering to Look Up
As part of a collaborative blog series on the topic of Risky Love, guest blogger Shuly Xóchitl Cawood reflects on the experience of dating after divorce.
Photo by Elias Maurer on Unsplash
I met him at a Halloween party. I was wearing a costume (“twin” with side ponytail, blue jeans, white shirt, along with my identical friend). He was not. This was years ago, when I was single after being married and then getting divorced. I was out of my marriage long enough by then to be ready to meet someone. I was not out my marriage long enough to have lost the fear of falling in love. I take that back: I had fallen in love post-divorce, but that had created more rubble in my heart, not less. I feared it might never work out with anyone again.
Still, when I met him—this man without a costume, who had come as himself, believing that was good enough (and it was, of course)—I could not help but have some hope: he was charming, he had huge eyes and thick eyelashes, he was sarcastic and funny, and he was from my home state of Ohio, which was several states away from a small town in North Carolina where we were standing that night at that party, among partygoers and costumes and chips and candy and beer. I missed Ohio terribly, and although that story is another long story, what you need to know is this: he felt instantly like a little bit of home. He did not shy away from asking questions about who I was, the kind of questions few people ask me at the beginning, or sometimes ever: what brought you to this town, why did you get divorced, what do you believe in.
This last, such a tough question. Looking back, my most accurate answer would have been: not myself. But of course I did not say that, not in words, but as we got to know each other—under the disco ball at the party, by the bonfire outside, and days later over hiking, over lunch at his home and over another lunch in town, over long phone conversations and trails of emails—I showed him this belief. What I mean is that after a short time, I told him I couldn’t see him anymore. We could be friends, but that’s it. Not because I didn’t like him, not because he got on my nerves, not because we weren’t compatible, but because I was terrified of getting hurt. He liked me too much. He was doing everything right—asking me out, articulating his emotions, expressing strong interest—but I knew the type, and I knew the ending: If he likes you too much at the start, don’t trust it. It will never last. I let my head have all the answers, and I pushed away the whiny voice of my heart that was saying give it a try.
What do you know about the right thing, anyway? I asked my heart. You’ve screwed up more than once. I’m not listening to you anymore.
But then an odd thing happened: I cried for three days, as if I hadn’t been the one who had made the decision, as if someone else had forced me to do this. I wiped the tears away and pretended they hadn’t happened. I focused on dating someone who wasn’t him, but I kept thinking about him.
Stop it, I told my heart. Seriously, cut it out.
But, as they say, the heart wants what it wants. Still, I looked the other way. I went on with my life.
One day, not long after—a week or two or three maybe, I can’t remember—I was standing on the east side of town just after a date with someone I liked, but conversation had been filled with silences, and I wasn’t great at silence. Silence felt like boredom and disinterest combined, a flavorless concoction. It was a weekend—a Sunday, I think, though I remember less well the day than the feeling of it, a day where you want to roll down the windows, when the season is turning cold but the sun says that warmth is still possible. I got in my car and drove west before I could think myself into stopping. I drove out onto country roads with fields and cows and fences with openings that you can only find if you look hard enough. I arrived at his house—yes, the house of the man who didn’t believe you had to wear a costume—and knocked. He answered. He opened the door wide, and he let me in.
I stayed not one hour, not two. I stayed nine. I want to tell you nothing happened, but what I mean is nothing physical happened—we didn’t hold hands or kiss or touch. We talked. We talked and we talked, and words tumbled out of me the way they hadn’t at lunch earlier that day, the way they rarely did with anyone, and certainly not with someone I barely knew. People were always telling me I was too private, I kept too much to myself, but he and I talked until the sun fell into the horizon, until the darkness climbed his stairs. We could have seen a dazzling of stars had we stepped outside and looked up, but we were too busy talking.
When I think back to that night, no, nothing happened, and yes, everything happened. We talked the entire nine hours—about who each of us was, about our histories, about spirituality versus religion, about life’s meaning, about marriages and divorces and life lessons and about who we each wanted to be and who I was scared to be. I’ve tried to write this story a few dozen times, and I have never succeeded, not because those nine hours meant nothing but because they meant more than I can adequately explain.
I drove home that night and the streets had changed: the lights inside the closed stores burned brighter, the air was clearer, the road back easier and shorter. The stars blinked back at me, wondering why I hadn’t looked up in years and seen that the sky was close enough to touch.
I realized that night that I had finally found the thing that had been missing for years, so many years I had thought it gone forever.
I dated the man who had shown up as himself at Halloween. Yes, I fell in love. I did not stop myself this time; I did not fear falling. We went to Christmas parties together. We celebrated New Year’s. We bore the cold together and looked toward warmer seasons. On our best days, we talked as if we could not talk enough, as if our time were limited and we had to get everything in as quickly as we could.
I hope that we did.
We ended one day at his house, though neither of us knew it then. We argued about something small, but the argument had roots, and the roots sunk deeper into the earth below us with each passing week until they had taken over.
I was not surprised when things ended—after all, my head had warned me back at the beginning—but an odd thing happened: I did not cry for three days. I did not break. I hurt, but I kept ticking, as I always had.
See? my heart said. Now was that so bad?
I vowed to never lose again the thing I had lost for years and found that one shiny night: trust in myself, belief in my ability to remain intact, to move on. Belief in who I had always been, but forgotten.
Many years have passed since then. On some days I still struggle with confidence and strength and bravery, but I struggle better. When fear comes—and it does come—I try to remember that night and the road home, how it was easier, clearer, brighter. I try to remember to look up.
Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of three books, including the forthcoming short story collection, A Small Thing to Want, and the memoir, The Going and Goodbye. You can learn more about her and her writing at www.shulycawood.com.
