If you stepped inside this picture, the warmth of the sun is a lie, and though Alabama skies are blue, there’s thick clouds just off to the right. There’s cold that’s bone-deep and the ballet flats on my feet were a piss-poor choice. And yeah, the beauty is there; for as long as you can endure the wind.
Amber Haines recently wrote: “We write about the yellow leaves and how the trees bow in the wind, when we’re really writing about ourselves…”
I want to tell you of our conversations the conversations he and I have, the ones that start with the orchid I’m not supposed to know about, but only half of the story is mine to tell.
At the root of it all, there’s love. The kind of love that’s messy and splattered and confusing. The kind that justifies hard choices, the kind of love that lets go when you’re drowning. The kind that gives up on a broken marriage, but hopes beyond all hope for healed hearts.
I don’t know why some marriages last, and others don’t.
I don’t know why some people make it work, while all our sleepless nights and loud words and heart-battles were seemingly for nothing. I don’t know why I lived and live a mess, while you get to instagram the most perfect coffee shop scene of your man in plaid laughing with the toddler on his lap.
It wasn’t that we didn’t try. Because, damn I tried.
All I know is that when you’ve had enough of a harsh winter, you walk inside and close the door against the wind, you take your scarf off and you find something that warms your soul.
And we’re brought full circle to the idea that only half this story is mine to tell…
I never meant to let him down, but there’s only so much winter this Alabama heart of mine could endure, and if you remember, I left in the Spring…
I don’t know either.