Happy You Have Her

It’s been a year and a half since our forever disintegrated into a never again.

We reserve strangely formal virtual conversations for birthdays, for Christmas. Otherwise, we do not communicate. It’s too strange. But I do check in on your social media upon occasion, just dropping by, because I still care about you and your life – I like to think you do the same for me.

In all your pictures she is caught mid-laugh, loose-haired and shining with exuberant mirth. An uncomplicated girl. I know everything about her without ever having met her – she wears her life in her simple dresses, her easy laughter; upon her unadorned face. She is exactly what you needed. You deserved respite from the pain of distance, freedom from uncertainty and complete absolution from my painted, powdered volatility.

The you I met during my brief return is a very different you to the one who grew up alongside me for almost seven years. We met once more in my heart’s nest, the city I can never recall without evoking memories of our lazy golden summers, our strawberry sunsets. I fit in the box the television came in. Have a good day, eyes screwed tight against the morning, goodbye toothpaste kiss. Waffles on Saturday almost-noons. Winter draught through the wide Georgian windows. Rushing weir water, torrents of foam, and ducks will eat anything you give them. Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t hate yourself. Dappled chestnut shade. Two names on the letterbox. Everything will be okay. And it was. Mainly because you made it so.

There was much we had to share, lots to laugh about. But you were strange and calm and new, reborn. You said I had done that, that this was my strange magic – the power to destroy and rebuild in a superior incarnation. You said that you were grateful. On the terrace, the sun played peekaboo behind the clouds, alternately bathing us in nascent summer warmth and pools of sudden chill.

“I’m sorry I was so terrible to you,” you said tranquilly.

I couldn’t condense the immensity of those tortuous months into words; can’t erase the scars they have left in my foundations, like striations in rock. But you know that. I could never hide anything from you, never disguise my feelings. Before your eyes, I have always been naked under glass. You will always know my impulsive, long-suffering, long-loving heart, even though it has long ceased to be the companion of your own.

You claimed our chapter was rife with inconsistencies, muddled plots, conflicted characters, confusion. We edited as best we could, but in the end I was the one who drew one long, jagged line under all that had come before; I closed the book. Now we are both sat pen in hand, but at separate writing desks, back to back, filling in page after fresh new page.

Enjoy her, the weaver of your new thread; she who makes your soul sing. When she comes to each milestone, I know she will excel. She will be cheerful and buoyant and able to ride horses, traipse through fields in summer sandals without treading on nettles, know your father always takes the small cutlery, which looks comic in his calloused builder’s hands. She will cover the dog in enthusiastic allergy-free kisses and grow a thick skin against the in-laws and their dream home heartache. She will never, ever iron your work trousers against the centre pleat, nor make the seams turn shiny. In short, she will fit in where I never did.

Of course, she won’t be perfect. Nor would you want that from her. You’re a living, breathing man; you have your faults and your follies. Life will be messy and strange and hard and bittersweet, but she will be beside you, her little finger tied to your own, and she will never leave.

You will finally be complete.

And for that I am glad.

Love her the way you loved me, the way I loved you.

It warms me to know that you have her.

Have a good life.