Man of Few Words
And the Girl with So Many
He says the delivery digest email - the one that comes from the post office, telling you what mail is going to be in your actual physical mailbox, is the best email he gets all day. He loves opening it and seeing what is coming. He says the rest of his day is all downhill from there.
When he says this so simply and matter-of-factly, she giggles. He always makes her laugh, even when she’d rather spit fire and wallow in her own misery.
He is a man of few words. But when he chooses to speak, his words usually pack a punch, often in the form of a joke. Those punches, if they are directed at you, can hurt sometimes.
He works on computers. He reads all of the internet everyday. He somehow knows everything. All current events. The best restaurants. Every tidbit about every song released in the nineties. He is extremely intelligent. Hilarious. He can build or fix anything. He is analytical, diligent, and oh so…adult. He is always the most grown up in the room, the one you look to for directions, and to guide, while everyone else is misbehaving. He is always calm, cool, and collected.
He has the kindest, softest, brown doe eyes. He IS kind, which she believes came from an idyllic childhood, the kind of rare and stable upbringing most can only dream of.
He does his best to deal with the wild and crazy emotions his wife. The one who didn’t have the idyllic childhood. Who never felt the love, and had to fight for it.
She is mercurial. You’d think he’d somehow get tired of the rollercoaster. He just rides along. He goes along with her ideas. Or at least he does a good job at pretending.
She bats her eyelashes and smiles at him, and jokes about being the best kind of crazy. Uh huh, he says. Sometimes what he says is open to interpretation.
She remembers when she met him, at that party, back in college, the one they both almost didn’t go to. When she said hello to him, he barely said it back. She told him all about herself and he didn’t say much in return. Most of the time he didn’t give her more than a two-word response.
Later that night, the phone in her dorm room rang. It was him but she hadn’t given him her number? In the days before mobile phones, he told her he went through the student directory and looked for the girl with the longest last name until he found her. He was listening to all she said at the party.
After a short time of talking, she realized her heart had accidentally been caught on his sleeve, despite her best efforts to keep it, safe and inside her.
He was mysterious, and almost everything he said made her smile.
His few words were like threads, all connected to her. She wanted to keep pulling on each of them, unraveling his complexity. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she would eventually get to his essence deep inside, and she’d know how he felt about her, too. If she kept pulling.
She thought of him every day. She didn’t know about limerance then. She didn’t know what to make of the crazy feelings she had toward him. Was this love? An otherworldly obsession? She wanted to eat, sleep, and breathe him.
She told him how she felt, all her stories, all while kicking and screaming, jumping up and down, hoping he would notice, telling him to please see her. He did not. At least, she didn’t think so.
He moved three thousand miles away a short time after they met. They still talked sometimes. Not as often as she wanted to, which was all the time. He told her he was frustrated with her incessant need for attention. He asked her how much attention could one person possibly need?
She knew she was anxious about him. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t lose him, too.
He left her confused for years, even more so when he moved back to the area. She felt rejection over and over. It was back and forth. Up and down. But those intense feelings kept her coming back for more.
They circled each other for three years, inched closer and closer, and ultimately landed on together.
When they finally committed, it was so joyous, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him so hard, but she was tired and felt like she had climbed a mountain. Little did she know, there were so many left to climb. Their journey was just beginning.
They married and started their full life together. Their differences created a synergy. Their parts made up something greater than the whole. They worked so hard. Renovated houses. Played together. Traveled to far-away places. They built something from nothing. He was everything she imagined. And more.
Their years together continue to accumulate.
Some of the moments they’ve endured are still so raw. Deaths, illnesses, sleepless nights, her vitriolic words. Her handing off the baby and writhing around on the kitchen floor, unable to stop the tears. So many snakes in the basement. And no one wanting to deal with them.
When she’s pouring her heart out, and he just stares so intently at her, she screams and yells, and tells him to say something, anything.
He says he has heard every word that she has said.
He keeps most of his words locked inside. But he is steadfast. He is unequivocally there. His arms. His kind eyes staring intently. His ears…open.
Despite vows and commitment, she’s waiting for him to leave. She wonders when he’s finally going to see how broken she really is? She’s convinced he doesn’t really know her. If he did - he wouldn’t like what he saw. That somehow, even after all this time, she’s managed to trick him into being with her.
She believes that maybe she’s gotten good at hiding behind all of her words, all of her explanations. Maybe all these words distract away, fill the space, so she’s harder to see. They’ve become shrouded manipulations by a true master.
When they fight she accuses him of not loving her. Rather, she corrects herself, and tells him she has trouble believing it, really believing it, deep down, like those feelings you just can’t shake. Their foundation, her childhood, always cast doubts in her mind. If he wasn’t sure of her in the beginning, when things were beautiful and fresh, then how can he be so sure now?
His only reply is just a few words: that he hopes when he’s beside her on her death bed, maybe she’ll believe it. Maybe then.
When he says this it knocks the air from her lungs.
Those words do pack a punch.
But when she really looks back, there are flashes of thousands of images of their life together and those illustrate quite a sight to behold; they are worth so much more than words can express. There is so much beauty it is difficult to even comprehend. These images penetrate her in a way words never could.
She can hear his few words now, and they are all the right ones.
And finally she begins to believe he won’t leave her.
At least not today.
It was much easier to write about myself in the third person in this essay.
He’s not leaving. She would have to leave first, before he could consider it.
You're both very blessed to have each other. Give yourself more credit girl, you're not the mess you think you are in those low spots, you're growing with leaps and bouncing around and it's difficult to let go of prior versions of ourselves because we're afraid who we're becoming will be something less than what we've been. Allow yourself to shed the old skin, he'll be there for you.