Last night I slept with the hat you used to wear to work every day, the one you let me keep when we broke up. I snugged it into the space between my right arm and my body and would have turned to wrap the whole of me around it if not for a certain insistent cat curling into the curve where my left side tapers into my hip. I wish I had kept your favorite sleep shirt too.
The other day, driving home, I suddenly needed you, and I thought I might do something crazy like find your car and fill it with millions of plastic googly eyes, the kind kids affix to puppet socks, the kind that make you laugh, small ones and big ones, with pupils of every color, all those plastic circles jiggling invisible grins, I'd pour them all in so when you opened your door, it'd be like one never-ending wink from me to you. I thought I might go to the bank and ask for a hundred dollars in newly minted pennies, crack every roll on the lip of the driveway we sort of planned together before I moved out, spill the coins into a giant, shining heart, under which I'd place a note put together with notebook paper, glue, and cut out letters of the alphabet gleaned from advertisements from The Plum. The note would say only this: Joey the Fish. And you would remember our first weeks together and all our elaborate inside jokes and how easy it was. I thought I might buy you a dozen sunflowers like the first flower I ever gave you, but multiplied, and leave them in odd places around the outskirts of your house so that you might not notice them at first but then you'd go to take out the recycling and meet a yellow-petaled head thrust between the can's blue lips like the happiest, strangest straw you ever saw, and later you'd find one glowing serenely in the washing machine like the promise of fresh socks and a new day.
It's the first time it's rained in months, with exception to one early morning a few weeks ago where it rained for a few minutes and nearly nobody noticed because it happened before most alarms had brought the day to anyone's attention. The sky hasn't looked this forlorn since we were together, since the days of sad pizza and wet eyes and words heavy and tired as so many old pennies.
You asked me if you were to ask me to marry you if I'd say yes. But you'd been drinking. And you'd been smoking. You said it was always me, that I'd always been the one. And I said no. But I moved in with you because I loved you, because I knew you could get free of your garbage if you wanted to, because I believed you would.
But you weren't ready yet, and I got sick. When you'd leave the house in the morning, I'd go through your laundry and sniff your clothes for the scent of smoke. I'd thrust my hands into your pockets, my fingers seeking the plastic oblong shape of a lighter. I'd go to the fridge and count your beers. I'd check the recycling bin outside for empties. When I didn't see any, I'd dig. And when I'd find something, or even if I didn't--maybe especially if I didn't--I'd grab the key to the shed and look there, just in case. Once I found a couple of cigarette butts beneath the shed. Once I found some beneath the bush by the back porch, and there was that one time I found the old cottage cheese container hidden beneath the hood of the grill and filled with smoked cigarettes and the same gray sludge I imagined coated the delicate tissue of your lungs.
I'd wade through the bins in your closet, searching for secrets, searching for hidden cartridges for the electronic cigarette I hated so much. In the kitchen, I'd grab your box of nicotine gum and spill the blister packs onto the counter by the sink and silently count, spending the rest of the day sick to my stomach because you were using more and more, because you were using, and I was still there, despite myself. Sometimes the impulse was so strong, I'd poke through your backpack when you were in the bathroom or working in the yard. I'd find cigarette stubs and lighters, an abundance of nicotine gum, lozenges, a whole pack of smokes. What my hands found depended on what phase you were in.
I couldn't sleep. I was guilty. I'd never been guiltier. Because I was reading your text messages, too. I was reading tiny snippets of truth that roiled in my stomach and made me feel wicked and foolish. I burned like your cigarettes, like your cheeks after a few beers. I hated myself for not having the strength to stop hoping all your lies would one day fall away from your lips like ash, all used up. I wanted to stop resenting you. I wanted you to stop resenting me for wishing you would drop your addictions. I wanted you to keep your promise to me. You'd said if cigarettes were my "hill to die on,"you'd quit, but all four seasons came and went, and I was still counting.
Gradually, the numbers took over my life. I'd count how many times you'd go out and return with beer on your breath. I'd count the seconds between when you'd locked the door in the morning and when you'd started up the car and when the gravel in the road had stopped crunching so I could get out of bed and tally gum pieces and bottles. Eventually, the numbers got inside me. I lost weight excavating your life. Eight pounds total, and you'd comment on it, and I'd blame it on work stress, and almost everyone I knew half-believed I was anorexic, but I had a fever that was burning through me. My heart ticked like a cabbie's meter so I could hardly keep up with my thoughts or my own breathing and was left to count the beats at night while you were sound asleep. I called my sister and told her the number of chances you had left, which was one, and I asked her to promise to remind me of this figure if I ever called her in the future to tell her I was going to give you one more chance.
Finally, I counted the number of times you said we would go to couple's therapy, and I subtracted the number of times we'd gone from the number of times we'd promised to make an appointment and came up with a number that matched the number of notches I no longer needed in my belt. And when, on our final night as a couple, we searched for a counselor together online and your conditions mounted and my patience waned, and somewhere in there the arguments about all the other things we couldn't reconcile came up, I gave up. I didn't even have to call my sister because I knew we'd hit zero, and there was nothing left to count.
I moved out. You wrote me to tell me you loved me, to apologize. I didn't count the tears that fell as I read, and that was how I knew I was already getting better. I started going back to Codependents Anonymous, and I promised myself I'd do the program right this time, for the first time in my five years as a self-avowed codependent. I joined a step study group. I told my friends and family I would not date for a whole year, that I would devote twelve months to myself and my recovery.
You and I tried to be friends. Thirty days of separation, we'd agreed in an email, but when we met a month after the breakup, you gave me a list that left me sick with counting all over again:
number of alcoholic drinks and milligrams of nicotine in your life: zero
number of spiritual tattoos you'd acquired: one
number of times you'd jumped out of a plane since I'd last seen you: one
number of new, healthy people in your life: L, with L representing Lots
number of activities you'd tried that I'd always wanted to do with you: U, for Unknown but greater than zero
number of smiles on your face that I wished I had seen more often when we were together: I, for I can't remember because I was caught on the next two items in the list
number of times you said you missed me: zero
number of hugs you gave me: two, one at the start of our meeting, one at the end, both chaste
We planned to meet up again, but I had to cancel because I'd begun counting the days until I'd see you again, and all my hours were shadows next to the sun of getting to see you. I wanted so badly to have you back in my life. But I was angry, too. I had been counting so long, and in the end, it had all amounted to nothing, and here you were, not even aware of the numbers, and your whole life was filling up. Why had you waited until the space beside you in bed was empty? I tried to count the number of times I'd told you your addiction bothered me, hurt me, was a deal breaker, but I lost track and the numbers prickled my skin. I told you I couldn't talk to you anymore, that I needed space.
And after some fits and starts, you gave it to me. Five weeks of silence between us. The most we'd ever not talked in the approximate year and a half we'd known each other. I focused on my own problems, and I went out with my friends, and I settled into a contentment I had not known when we were together. I no longer had to worry about you or about us. But I missed you, and soon the counting began again, but it was different this time.
I began counting the number of times you'd watched a movie with me that I knew you hated but that I loved. I counted the times you'd said something so beautiful to me that I'd ached at the words. I counted your hands in my hair, your laughter in my ears. I counted our quiet afternoons, our Sunday morning breakfasts and cups of coffee, our kisses, the way you looked at me whenever I wore a dress. I counted the things we hadn't done together that you were now capable of doing. I counted the days ahead of me, the weeks, months, and years. I counted trips not yet taken, children not yet birthed, places not yet lived in. I factored you into them.
And then you wrote me an email, and I wrote you back, despite my concern, and our emails multiplied with our apologies and forgivenesses, and I felt X possibilities shooting up from the seeds of these new beginnings, and of course now I want to reach for you like a flower reaches for the sun, but I believe in promises, and I've had much practice counting, so I will live on meetings, and gold leaves, and emails while I endure the next few seasons without you, and I will sleep in a half-empty bed, one cat cinched to my left side, one hat snugged against my right, with countless thoughts of loving you warming me through the night.
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