June 15th, 2017

Here I am again. Am I really so naive to think he could have changed in the six months I was gone? How many times do I need to learn this lesson? Am I really so desperate?

Who am I kidding? I’m the Queen of Desperation. I guess I just figured settling for the garbage infused trailer in Conway, Missouri would be better than living in a basement in Ohio for the rest of my life.

Man, I really know how to pick ‘em.

“Ellie honey? Are you okay?” My grandmother’s soft voice carried through the afternoon breeze and pulled me gently from my thoughts. I wiped my eyes and stood up from the bar my grandfather had built into the back porch. It had a stone top and wood trim, and the whole thing was covered by an awning made out of steel sheets. The deck connected the back door of the house to my grandpa’s workshop, and there was a grill tucked between the door to his shop and the edge of the deck. There was just enough room beneath the awning that a few people could be behind the bar without bumping elbows too badly. Grandma stepped from the back steps onto the deck and fetched a roll of paper towels from beneath the bar.

“Yeah gma, I’m okay. I’m sorry you had to see that.” I sniffed and tore a sheet from the roll she sat in front of me to wipe my nose.

I had been living with my grandmother for a week now, while Josh cleaned the trailer in Conway. We had gotten into another fight over the state it was in. I had told him I couldn’t stay there anymore and I wanted to leave. In a desperate attempt to keep me, he had suggested I stay with my grandmother while he cleaned house. Luckily she had the room, sort of. She made up an air mattress and stuck it in her sewing room. Earlier that afternoon he had come by like he normally did in the evenings, except this time he had asked me to come home with him.

“The house is all cleaned up, as best as I could get it anyway. Can we go home now?” He had his helmet tucked under one arm, and he had mine held out in front of him. I felt a rock form and settle itself in my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was get on that bike and make the forty-five minute drive back to BFE.

“It’s great that the place is cleaned up, but I don’t want to go home with you Josh. You and I both know that the trailer was only part of it. I’ve decided I don’t want to be married to you anymore.” Hot tears welled up and blurred my vision before cascading down my cheeks. I fumbled the last cigarette out of a pack that had been new yesterday and brought the filter to my lips. He waited, stone faced, as I lit and dragged hard on the smoke.

“I’m just realizing that being here and not with you all day every day, I feel like I can breathe again. I’m not happy. I don’t think I’ve been happy in a very long time.” As I spoke, the rock in my stomach grew. His face broke, and I could see angry tears in his eyes. He asked me to talk, so I gave him that much. I laid everything out for him that I had been bottling up over the course of our four year relationship. We sat on the couch in my grandparent’s living room, and the conversation quickly devolved into my feelings being invalidated at every turn and him trying to make me feel crazy, downplaying things he’d done and said to me or outright denying they ever happened. We went round and round in circles before I finally asked him to leave.

“I’m not going anywhere until we work this out, Ellie.” He said evenly, sure that I would see reason. I had to fight the urge to scream at him.

“Don’t you understand that I don’t want to work things out?!” I was on the verge of breaking down completely, so I went into the garden and fetched my grandmother to tell her that I wanted Josh to leave. She left me where she found me, crying at the bar, to go talk to him. A few minutes later I heard his bike come to life and mercifully drive away.

I would be a completely different woman the next and final time I saw him.

My grandma wrapped me in a hug and murmured words of encouragement in my ear.

“It’ll be okay, Ellie.”

“Everything’s going to work out.”

“The Lord is working in your life and has a plan for you.”

I thanked her and told her I needed a bit of space. She worried over me for a few more seconds before excusing herself to go fix dinner. I took a deep, steadying breath and closed my eyes.

Ba'ding!

I retrieved my phone (I’m going to have to figure out a new plan to get on) from the bar and saw a message from Alison.

“Hey boo! How’d it go? Are you okay?"

I fought a fresh wave of tears as I tapped out my response.

“He’s gone. For good this time. Will you come get me? I need a distraction.”

“Of course babe. Omw.”

I let my grandma know where I’d be, and ten minutes later I was sitting shotgun in Alison’s car, fuming as I recanted what had happened over the last couple hours. Alison listened quietly and would give her two cents (“What the fuck, really?”, “Wow, what a douche”, “Honey I’m so proud of you.”) while she drove us the handful of miles to her apartment. When we were parked in her space she pulled me across the center console into a hug.

“Tonight is gonna be all about you and helping you remember what a goddess you are.” We went inside her apartment and she played dress up with me. We were about the same size so she put me in one of her summery dresses and gave me a makeover before taking me out on the town (we went down the street for sushi, and that may as well be Going Out On The Town in a place like Springfield, Missouri). After dinner, we posted up at the pool in her complex and she informed me that she was going to make me a Tinder profile.

“I’m sorry, what?” The sun had disappeared behind a row of apartments as we relaxed on the edge of the pool. We both had our feet in the water, and she kicked me playfully.

“The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else!” Her laughter pierced the sky that was beginning to bleed orange and it echoed off the water around us. I blushed furiously as she pushed herself to her feet and padded over to the lounge chair our things were stashed under.

Everything I had ever heard about Tinder since it had blown up was that it was a place for hookups and not much else.

That’s fine by me. I obviously am incapable of anything more than that.

I decided I deserved to have some good sex for once in my life. In the five years that I had been “sexually active” I had only ever had mediocre sex. The one exception was Helen, but that wound was still relatively fresh and I didn’t think about it too much.

I pushed myself out of the water and followed Alison’s watery footsteps to where she sat, drip drying on the concrete with my phone in her hand. She handed it over and I was greeted by the stark white of the registration page. We sat on the warm pavement and set up my profile. She helped me pick out the best pictures and we even took a few new ones, and she helped me type up a bio. By the time we had it all set up, the sky had turned a deep purple and I was completely wiped. We finished drying off and changed, and Alison took me back to my grandmother’s. Once I was showered and dressed for bed, I put on some music and curled up on the pitiful air mattress under a thin quilt and swiped through the eligible bachelors of Springfield. There were a couple matches, but the conversations never got further than cursory hellos and how are yous.

And then I saw him.

The thing that caught me immediately was the warm and genuine smile he had in nearly all of his photos. He had the cutest gap between his two front teeth and he almost always smiled with his whole face. His eyes were incredibly blue and incredibly kind. He looked like the kind of guy that would make me laugh, and based on the tagline in his bio (Han shot first.) I knew he was someone I could get along with.

I was incredibly surprised when I swiped right on him and we were matched instantly.

I was giddy. I felt like I was fifteen all over again.

A boy likes me.

Our conversation was easy from the jump. Those first few hours there was a lot of small talk and flirting, and then we found out that we were only a couple miles apart.

Neither of us had a car or a license, but he had a bicycle.

We very quickly moved from Tinder to Snapchat, and things got spicy. My grandmother’s house had long since gone quiet; I was the only one up.

It was around midnight when I decided I needed to meet this man, and that I didn’t want to wait until morning. I had to work at six am, and I figured I could hang out with him for a couple hours and then get back home to grab a wink or two of sleep before work.

The idea of sneaking gave me a thrill I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager. I made myself as presentable as I could and tiptoed my way down the backstairs and out the back gate. We made the plan to meet each other halfway, but he had the advantage of having wheels so he beat me to the corner we had deemed our Meeting Place.

When I saw him in person for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised that our height difference didn’t bother me at all (being nearly six foot tall, I had always been one of those girls that desperately wanted a guy that was taller than me). He was incredibly handsome, even with the only light being from the street light he was standing under. He walked his bike at his side as we walked back to his place, and we talked about our favorite music. He introduced me to Voltaire (all hail the King of Goth!) and I introduced him to Steam Powered Giraffe. We discovered we liked a lot of the same bands and genres.

And then we were at his front door, and I met Tornado. She nearly bowled me over as we came through the door, and I was immediately in love with her. I noticed almost instantly how comfortable I was with him. His home was warm and inviting, and carefully chaotic. He put on some music, and we sat on his futon couch in the living room.

We only made it a few seconds into the first song before we had our first kiss.

It was exploratory and new, and full of passion. He was gentle, but commanding. He didn’t shove his tongue down my throat, and I could tell he knew what he was doing.

I’m not ashamed to say we slept together, and that he did in just a few minutes what none of my previous male partners had been able to do.

I was in ecstasy.

After we were done, I stayed. We snuggled on his bed and we talked for hours, about everything under the sun. And then around three or four in the morning, I reluctantly admitted I should probably get back to my room. We dressed slowly, and he walked me all the way back to my grandparent’s house to make sure I got home safely.

And then, instead of sleeping, we talked until I had to drag myself into work.

For the entire day after meeting Anthony, I was walking on air. I floated through work (I’m amazed I got anything done with how much we were texting) and then went back to my temporary home when my shift ended. My grandparents have never been observant people, and I was enjoying the bubble he and I were in so I didn’t say anything to them. It made sneaking out to see him that much easier.

I told him I loved him after only knowing him for barely 48 hours. And six years later, I still think it was the best decision I ever made.

In the ebb and flow that has been my adult life, Anthony has been the one constant I can always count on. This man took the empty shell of a woman I was and built her up into a confident and capable woman who knows her worth. He has taught me that true love is meant to be effortless. He is who I want to hold me until I become an ancient bag of sagging skin and silver hair. Looking back on the years leading up to meeting him, I understand now why nothing else worked out. I understand now that my grandmother was right about one thing.

The Lord did have a plan for me.