Choices

The seven months that we spent apart was a whirlwind. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and my mind. I moved closer to the restaurant I was cooking at and rented a room from a guy I found on Craigslist. I cooked at a restaurant that I really enjoyed with co-workers that I still keep in touch with. I went running on the beach, right past the apartment I used to live in and I admit to stopping the first few times and just staring at the patio where I used to sit and I'd just cry. I would think about all those happy feelings I had living there and all of the terrible ones I felt as well. I dated the guy I rented the room from which was a huge mistake...shocking, I know but I guess it just felt good to be with someone nice again. That only lasted a few months and I began looking for my own place. I found a cute little basement apartment, still nearby where I was cooking. The landlady was the sweetest old woman and I was happy once again. I had my own place in the Bronx and I loved that little apartment. I had butterfly stickers on the wall that my sister sent me and my clothes hangers were pink and black velvet. My ex moved in sometime in 2013, by calling me one night and telling me he had nowhere to go. Should've been a red flag that his parents wouldn't even take him in at this point and he had obviously burned all of his bridges. My girly apartment quickly turned into our space as he shoved his concert tees into the closet and began to redecorate while I was at work. So, this basement apartment was an opportunity for me to have my own space again. I decorated it, bought some furniture, kept it nice and tidy. Life was beginning to feel normal again. I felt like I was on the right path again, living the life I had wanted to live when I moved to New York. I began dating a regular from the restaurant. He was quite a bit older then me, I think about 16 years older, which was not my usual dating preference but he was youthful and loved good food and wine. I think we lasted about three or four months. In that timespan we went to Paris, took multiple trips to Florida where he owned a home, flew to Chicago to dance the night away to the blues, ate at top restaurants in the city and saw some of the best jazz concerts I've ever seen at the Lincoln Center. The heart wants what it wants and it doesn't what it doesn't. I found myself feeling really rushed in the relationship. He had the pressure on me to move in with him, getting into the habit of mentioning it almost every night as we said goodbye at my car or in front of my apartment. A friend of mine said "what's the worse that could happen?" so I took that sage advice and ran with it. I moved all of my items out of the basement apartment and into a rental home with him. It didn't take me very long to feel like I had majorly fucked up. And here I was, eyeball deep in this relationship, living with the guy, and how was I going to get out of this one? My sister came to visit in January 2015 and while she was visiting, I received an email from my ex. He was at a halfway house in the city and wanted to meet up to speak with me. I had always felt that the relationship ended with no satisfactory finality, so I agreed to meet him at a diner to get some closure. I took my sister to JFK and met up with him at the diner. Of course before I got to the diner, I stopped at CVS to buy him things he had requested, like a little travel bag, razor, toothpaste. You know, things a convict doesn't have when he's just been released. Stupid me, I was already wrapped around his finger and I hadn't even seen or spoken to him in seven months. We met at the diner and he did all of the talking. I should've given him hell. I should've made him accountable for all of the shitty things that he said to me and shitty way he made me feel but I didn't. I just sat there and listened to all of his bullshit stories. I drove him back to the halfway house and he kissed me before he got out of the car, and I kissed him back although it felt weird and wrong. Driving back home I knew I had to end the relationship I was currently in. He was waiting for me an pissed. He had read the email my ex wrote me and suspected that I had met up with him. He was right and had every right to be angry. Well he wasn't angry, he was pissed and his temper slowly began creeping up more and more. He kept coming into the bedroom and then leaving to pace the house, only to come barge in again and repeat this process for a while. He told me I had to leave, which I was fine with and I actually left that same night. I was already mentally done with the relationship and my ex was an easy way out. Well not an easy way out, more of an unhealthy, familiar road that I had traveled. So off I went and got back into the process of finding an apartment, moving my ex and myself into it and figuring out this part 2 of the relationship. This time alcohol was not allowed since that's what destroyed the relationship in part 1. Onward we continued that way, managing hotels together, moving to different cities, bickering here and there with only a mean outburst from him a few times a month. We married in November of 2016 and he got on one knee while gazing up into my eyes so lovingly. I was moved and felt more in love with him in that moment than I had ever felt. The years went on and we stuck with the sobriety until May of 2020. At this point we were living on the West Coast and I remember we were listing to Stick Figure and I said "this makes me want to smoke weed and it is legal here...." that's all it took. He was onboard and within the next few minutes we were googling where and how to purchase weed. We placed an order and he made a pipe with a screen for us to smoke out of. Eight months later, the bottom would fall out of our relationship in one terrifying night. Everything we worked for, all the dreams we had, all of it gone in one night.