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It is this happiness, I suppose (which is really a few months old by now), that gets me to
thinking upon my return to Rome that I need to do something about David. That maybe it’s
time for us to end our story forever. We were already separated, that was official, but there
was still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday (maybe after my travels, maybe
after a year apart) we could give things another try. We loved each other. That was never the
question. It’s just that we couldn’t figure out how to stop making each other desperately,
shriekingly, soul-punishingly miserable.
Last spring David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest: “What if we
just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we
admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we
can’t live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives togeth-
er—in misery, but happy to not be apart.”
Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten
months giving that offer serious consideration.
The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might
change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone
who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to... stop trying to
eat his soul.
So many times I had wished with David that I could behave more like my mother does in
her marriage—independent, strong, self-sufficient. A self-feeder. Able to exist without regular
doses of romance or flattery from my solitary farmer of a father. Able to cheerfully plant gar-
dens of daisies among the inexplicable stone walls of silence that my dad sometimes builds
up around himself. My dad is quite simply my favorite person in the world, but he is a bit of an
odd case. An ex-boyfriend of mine once described him this way: “Your father only has one
foot on this earth. And really, really long legs.. .”
What I grew up watching in my household was a mother who would receive her husband’s
love and affection whenever he thought to offer it, but would then step aside and take care of
herself whenever he drifted off into his own peculiar universe of low-grade oblivious neglect.