When Love Turns to Labor

Life feels different now without him. Quiet. Almost like the nights we would spend whispering as the starlight spilled in through the fifth-story window of his apartment. Only this silence is hollow. It carves a piece of me out like the first fall pumpkin. Gutted. Spilled out for the world to see. Its seeds represent the very act of what it means to be a lover girl. Often our words are eaten and forgotten, too.

A quiet musician, a content creator. A modern-day romance. Something I had yearned for. The miracle of my life being completed by the soul of a stranger. His soul touched mine in ways I’d been searching for what felt like an eternity. His kindness was a blanket of heat, charm blurring my vision. The need for support, loneliness, that yearning for the type of love I’ve only dreamed about, swallowed me whole. I saw a man who understood me. A man who had experienced similar pain dating back to the beginning of our existence. We came from tumultuous families, leaving us awestruck at the thought of becoming more than chaos.

Sometimes I still think about the first night we spent together. Staring into the sky, thinking of all the times I prayed for that very moment. All of the times I’d hoped for a love that meant more than just my body. I finally found it. A man who not only accepted me but also my daughter, the most important piece of me. I never imagined that after sharing a life with such a man that I would have to at some point navigate it alone. I’d spent months trying to understand where things went wrong. In essence, it went wrong the first time. My empathy swallowed me whole as I had resonated with the same emotional exhaustion he had about life. We would lie in bed and talk about how hard life was. We saw each other. Yet when the time came, he ran. Foolishly, the repair of this relationship, many months later, out-screamed the truth of his character.

I’d spent all this time bending over backwards to be the tourniquet that kept this man’s emotional state together. Partially because I know the ache of mental illness. Partially because I truly believed that I could save him from his thoughts. There is a darkness over him. A shadow that lingers in the corners of every room he stands in. The parts of him that won’t let greatness occur because pain has now become comfortable. He became this superhuman to me without realizing the true meaning of what that pedestal would do to his ego. His grand gestures continued to memorialize the life I’d been trying to leave behind.

Imagine the disappointment of building a life together, sharing a bed, researching the town daycares for my daughter so we can finally live under one roof together, all to be sent a screen recording of him on the apps. What hurt more was the denial. The idea that he could talk me down through venom rather than love. Something only a guilty man will do. The love didn’t leave though. It thinned. It became maintenance that I just couldn’t afford to invest in anymore. I loved him but I loved my daughter more, which was part of the reason I gave him a second chance. She adored him. However, that second chance is no more than wet crumpled piece of paper in the palm of my hand. I began to wonder what love would look like to her if I stayed.

So here is the start of life that this time last year was the greatest Christmas gift in the form of his existence. I am still a lover girl. I just no longer confuse love with endurance.