Chapter 4: Facing Down the Ghosts

It is a week since I returned from Phoenix, and I have a date with a Turkish man I had met at Taverna Plaka a few weeks earlier.  His name is exotic and unusual, and my girlfriends refer to him as "couscous" and giggle, because we're not sure how to say his name properly.  We meet at Café Intermezzo and then he drives us to the Istanbul Café to sit on the huge floor cushions and eat Turkish food.  He orders everything in his native language, which seems glamorous and fun.

He kisses my hand, and I tell him that he is sweet.  He says, with his strong and endearing accent, “I am sweet because of you.”  He claims that many of the girls he meets are not as smart and interesting as I am.  It’s all very flattering, but I'm taking it all with a grain of salt - or a grain of couscous, as it were.  After spending a nice evening with him, I feel strangely like I am cheating on Will, even though I have made it clear that I'm not ready for a relationship and there have been no demands for exclusivity.  It's too early for me to commit to anyone.

I am struggling to let go of my marriage fully.  A friend has told me every time I start to miss him, to go back to the journal I wrote that tells what kind of guy I want in my life and how much of that I didn’t get for the last ten years.  She’s right.  What I miss is having someone next to me in bed at night.  I miss cooking for someone else.  I realize that what I miss is the illusion of what I had.  I am grieving the end of the hope I had for that marriage to survive.  I must go through the stages of grief and let it die, once and for all.  This divorce is almost final.  I can’t wait to see where my life is going to go.  There’s so much potential, and I want to be happy. 

I can't wait to be me again.   

Soon, it is a Tuesday in mid-September, and I am returning from a trip to New Orleans, where I ate well and had a great time.  I am smiling at random people I pass and glowing from the inside out when the phone rings.  It is the ghost of my relationship-almost-past, and I consider just letting it ring, even as I am compelled to push the green button to start the conversation.

I say, "Hey, what's up?" and he blurts out, “Is it too late to call off the divorce?”

I stop in my tracks, right in the middle of the concourse outside the T gates in Atlanta.  “What?” I say.  “Why are you doing this?”  He tells me he had been having nightmares about losing me and realized that he made a mistake.  I agree to a face to face meeting and drive straight from the airport to his parents' house. The radio is silent, and I don't call anyone.  The noise of emotion fills the car and I am aware of nothing else.

We sit on the porch to talk, and his eyes are red and teary.  He says that he realized what he had; he realized that I had all the qualities that he was looking for.  That the grass isn’t greener.  I tell him that he had broken my heart so many times and I didn’t want it to be broken again.  I tell him that I have learned that I don’t want name-calling and temper tantrums in my life.  I tell him that all summer, I had begged time to hurry up and get to the part where I could stop hurting.  I tell him that I thought the heartbreak was going to kill me for a little while.

But it didn’t.

None of my friends would be happy if we get back together.  I hate that I still have love for him in my heart, after all he has put me through.

A piece of me wants to give in and go back to where we were when he left, but I am already way past that.  It is too late to go back, and curiously, I am relieved by that realization.  A stubborn sprout of resentment has pushed its way through my foundation and is forcing me to look up and see what was and not what I hoped it was for so long.

I go home, feeling stronger, and over the next week, I almost forget about him because I am moving on with Will.  I am caught up in the amazing feeling of being cherished. Will knows exactly what he wants, and it’s me.  He refers to the future and kids and “the center of his universe” meaning his someday wife.  He tells me that he has been crazy about me for a long time, and I get the feeling that he has always known that I am the right person for him.  He tells me that he just wants me to be happy.  Even if it’s not with him. When he says that, my heart drops, and I know that I am hooked.  I can't lose this man from my life.

I come to the epiphany that no matter how much therapy my soon-to-be ex gets, he’s never going to treat me like Will does.  And even if Will’s not the right person, for some reason, I can now see how I want to be treated.  I don’t want to settle for anything less than being cherished because it’s what I always wanted.

In November, I have a financial crisis with a tax mistake, and I panic.  It feels right to call Will at 10 PM, and he says, “Baby, we’re OK.  If that’s the worst thing that happens to us, we’ll be fine.”  The way he says it makes me feel calm; he has my back.  I can almost feel his protective arms wrap around me through the phone.  He says "us" as if it's a foregone conclusion.  He assumes we are already on the path to our future, and I grasp that we are, indeed.

I tell Will about my appointment with the Emory spinal clinic next week to x-ray my neck again, five years after the sprain, and he says, “Well, not being married to a Neanderthal jackass will help.”  He regrets his words and adds, "Sorry, that was cheap shot."  But I don’t take offense.  Not being married to a Neanderthal is definitely going to help in the long run.  In so many ways.

And I am looking forward.  I can see having a family with Will and we could be very happy.  I feel like I’m falling in love with him but I’m not ready to tell him yet.  In due time, I think to myself.  In the meantime, I have faced down the ghosts of false hope and decided to give myself a better life.  This man could love me the way I always wanted.  I just need to give him a chance.

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