Our story goes like this.
Last August I met a man. It had been eight years since I’d been romantically involved with anyone. He worked in the village where my friend lived, and she said he could be a good person to know while I was there housesitting for her. There was an immediate warmth between us. We spoke about tomatoes and past lives we’d unknowingly shared in Brixton and Bristol. He was open and kind and we spent time together; a lunch, dinner with a group of friends. He had a kinetic joy about him. It was clear early on he was interested in me, though I was unsure. I’ve always prized my freedom, and the memory never fades of the difficulty of rebuilding a life — rebuilding a self — after a long-term relationship.
But the connection we had grew. As we got to know each other better we spoke about jobs and family and feelings. We talked about our battles with mental health, mine after an escape from corporate publishing, his from a high pressure job in London. He shared about an addiction that had plagued his twenties. I felt his pain and I saw his bravery in battling it. I shared my own hurts and shames, my rebellious adolescence and recent difficulties with my parents. Our story was written by friends and the works of fiction I’d read: a genuine meeting of minds, a real-life connection in a world of online hook-ups, two flawed people remaking their lives in the wake of disaster.
Still, I thought about it hard before I got involved. He was fragile, as I was. I didn’t know if I felt the same romantically as he did — if I felt the same about romance. But I knew that I had to trust, that I had to risk my heart to love someone. Over the next month while I stayed with my parents, as my grandmother declined and died, we spoke almost daily, and I realised I loved him back.
In the months after he brought me a crazy amount of joy. He understood me and accepted me for exactly who I was. He cared about my writing, met my friends and family despite his social anxiety, and was there for me in January when I had a small bout of depression, always ready to listen, to make me laugh. He could remember every single thing I told him. He made up songs, and we made food together, elaborate dishes eaten at lunchtime. We went for long walks and he matched me step for step.
We also dealt with some issues in the first six months, including a recent romantic relationship with a much younger woman he worked with and who lived next door to him. I battled my jealousy and distaste for his actions, and we talked about honesty. We were having a grown-up relationship, both of us with faults, both giving each other space to exist. But there was one fault beneath them all, a version of the story I hadn’t been told.
One day around three months ago, while I was in the midst of moving house, he had a fall and hurt his shoulder. After the fall he went to A&E, left with no diagnosis, and spent three days in agony alone in his house — though I didn’t find that out immediately, all I knew was that something very bad was unfolding, as gradually he disappeared, not picking up the phone, not answering my messages. I knew he was struggling, but he’d told me he was depressed, so I thought that all I had to do was keep loving him. He’d recently quit his job, and with the job had come a house that he therefore had to vacate. He was going to move back in with his mother temporarily, but I was going to be there for him while he got back on his feet.
After two terrifying days of silence, when all I’d received was a message saying he’d been to hospital but couldn’t talk — my immediate thought was he’d tried to take his own life — he messaged me to say he’d relapsed, he was so sorry, he’d made a terrible mistake. Still, I was full of the certainty of love. My story then was: nobody is perfect, and even though he has made a mistake, love can fix this. More: this is what we were meant to meet for.
When I finally visited him in the village he was in so much pain he couldn’t move. He was a strange shade of yellowish-white. We finally went back to A&E, though I, stupid silly me, was convinced he’d just strained something and it was an extension of his mental anguish. As one surreal interview after another with different health professionals took place, as we discovered he’d not only fractured but broken his shoulder, as we entered deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital (a hospital in which, twenty years earlier, with a previous boyfriend, I had found out I was pregnant), I realised that everything he’d told me was built around a gaping hole of omission. An omission that made every interaction we’d had into a lie. A true web of lies that I can’t ever truly untangle; I’ve tried; but the more I pull it apart the more I find myself stuck. He told me the right amount of truth, admitting enough of his flaws to convince me I knew them all; not so much that he had to face himself or face losing me. That he had battled addiction, but he had been in recovery for seven years. That he had fallen out with his father but that it was due to his mental health. That he’d slipped this time, but he wouldn’t again.
The truth is, I saw an edited version, shaped to make me stay. The truth is, I helped him construct it, though unwittingly. I wanted to believe him so badly that I told myself the warning signs were my own hang ups after being lied to over many years by a previous partner. The partner that I’d become pregnant with, and aborted with — a decision that meant I could escape him and his lies years later.
The truth is, I knew something wasn’t right weeks before the hospital, but the lies were told with such narrative verve and such an appearance of openness, that I had believed them, believing also that trust had to be blind. And I told myself another story too: that I could love an imperfect person, that love always comes with a helping of hurt.
He told me later — though I don’t know if this is true — that the story he told himself was that if he found the right person he could change. That I was that right person.
The truth wasn’t to be found in his words though, nor grandiose ideas of love. It was there in the hospital corridor as he was wheeled into theatre, in the doctor’s cynical gaze, in his fear of the operation, which finally, finally made him admit to regular substance abuse the whole time we’d been together; in his mother’s words, a surreal conversation, as we’d never spoken until that moment: he was going to hurt me more if I stayed. In my own sense that this was it, enough. I walked away.
This week I received an apology by email, and an offer to make good in whatever way he can, though something formulaic in the tone warns me. A wave of grief hits me, an oceanic force dragging me down, and I realise I have been holding on still, hoping for a miracle. It’s partly why I haven’t published this until now. But a miracle hasn’t come.
I feel sorry for him. But at least he had possession of the truth the whole time, and even though it was destroying him to have it, he will always have it and I won’t. I will always wonder. I will always doubt myself a little. What he has done to me is open a gaping hole of doubt that I find hard to believe can be closed back over.
To love madly and deeply we must also love truly. There has to be an empirical truth, an immovable rock of fact, because the facts of someone’s existence tells us who they really are. Not their words, not their truth. We aren’t better off not knowing, because we always do know, on some level, and it eats a relationship from the core. It eats us.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for someone obsessed with stories: that words are not the thing. That feelings are not the thing. That the way we behave in the world is what defines us, not the story we tell about it. The ability to narrate our lives, particularly our romances, may be one of the most destructive skills we have.
Every conversation with friends and family, every book I’ve read, all tell me a different story about love, each person sure of their version. He wasn’t the one. Love is unconditional. You can’t fix someone. If you’re meant to be you’ll find each other again. You’re better off without him.
All words. Bedtime stories for heartbroken girls. Comforting, but how to know what is the truth? Is there a truth?
I once said, in a moment of early clarity, that I’d be with him until the cons outweighed the pros; each person judges what level of hurt they can accept in a relationship, and only that person gets to decide. I keep thinking about the word ‘partner’, which I used to denigrate as businesslike and cold. But actually, it comes closest to what I want. A person who actively shares half of the burden of life, who gives as much as they receive over time, who has the ability to pull out when that is no longer the case, who knows I will do the same. Love can overcome all odds, but at what expense? Self-sacrifice for another can lead to losing the self entirely. And what about the person you sacrifice for? How do they grow if they don’t feel the pain of consequence? What do they learn if everyone they love takes the hit, not them? Maybe love was invented in the absence of other options, for those with no choice but to stay.
Lord, how we want to believe in love that conquers all. But there are some things it cannot conquer, and it should not or we ourselves become conquered. Conquering shouldn’t even be in the lexicon.
Three months after that day in the hospital, I don’t know what the future holds for me and love. I am OK. I have been looked after by friends and family, and now I’m into the After; when grieving is expected to end and life to begin again. Maybe you should date. Travel. Start a new hobby. I’m doing all those things, apart from the dating, and I really am OK.
But on reading his apology I realise that part of me has until this moment remained stuck, trying to figure out the un-figureoutable. Trying to unravel the mystery of him and our romance. Once again I find the only solace is to write about it, though as I do so I am again reminded of the inherent trickery in writing, in memory. So I am trying my best to stick to only what I know to be true right now, in the moment. And perhaps in the future this piece will serve as a reminder to myself of the confusion of heartbreak but also the way in which, for a while, I was loved and understood by someone. How I also knew when to walk away.
For now I will focus on action, the following of one breath after another, the way one foot moves after the other over the earth in front of it.
I don’t know how our story will end. But whatever happens, I know that I won’t.
Beautiful moving essay. Having been there myself, and also walked away I can imagine the process you wrestle with. I’d like to share what I have learned over the past 9 1/2 years of deep processing following our divorce.
: the love you feel and felt is real.
: you love the best part of him, and that best part is real.
: walking away was a better choice than living the insanity of an addict’s life
: addiction does not end, the only change which is possible is that person’s relationship to to the substance can change. But they remain an addict always.
: if you ever are reconsidering trying again with him, pause for one minute and ask yourself one question, “What’s changed?”
: when you can one day forgive the lies and hurt, allowing yourself to enjoy the real feelings you have had from being loved is helpful. The fact remains that we cannot split off the addict from the lover
Beautiful and challenging piece that must have been tough to write. Reminds me of Joanne Hogg’s film about an affair with an addict, “The Souvenier”. It is so tempting to fall for the illusion that we can save a person when others have failed. It rarely works out that way.