Love You Hard

by Abby Maslin

* * *

  Day 11. This morning Sarah leads us through a meditation and practice designed to help strengthen the first chakra. The first chakra is known as the “root chakra.” It’s located at the base of the spine, and it’s associated with all things “earthy”—grounding, safety, security, basic needs. Apparently this is the chakra I need to have a conversation with.

  “Try meditating on a mantra today,” Sarah encourages. “Maybe I am safe and secure or I have all my needs met.”

  I like both these mantras, and as I close my eyes and begin drawing attention to my breath, I start with the words I have all my needs met.

  The more I repeat them in my mind, the more the words begin to settle and the truer they feel. I do have all my needs met. I have a home and a job and a husband and a healthy child and enough money to pay the bills. I have far more than most people in this world, and yes, it is enough. It’s enough to bring me joy. It is certainly enough to sit in gratitude of.

  All the fears I perceive, all the things that threaten my feelings of safety and security, exist in the future. My worries about TC’s health and the quick cognitive decline that affects many TBI survivors as they get older. My anxiety about running out of money one day, in the event I am no longer able to work either. My fear of growing bitter over time if I don’t find a way to feel satiated in my most important relationship. None of these apply to the right now. TC is at home, healthy for the time being. There is money in the bank to pay the bills. I am healthy. I am fine. More than that, I am safe and secure.

  I see now why breath is the most integral part of life. And also why it was the first thing to abandon me the morning TC went missing. Breath keeps us present. Breath keeps the internal systems in order. Breath is the presence of God, the omniscient reminder that everything will be all right.

  I quiet my thoughts once more, and I inhale.

  * * *

  Every seven days of the training, we have one day off with which to do whatever we please. As our second day off approaches, I begin debating how to spend my time. In a few weeks, TC will be here in Santorini with me, and I don’t want to do so much sightseeing that there’s nothing left for us to experience together for the first time.

  A bunch of my girlfriends have decided to take a sailboat charter. Inside I’m dying to go. The idea of a yoga-free afternoon spent day drinking in the sunshine sounds exactly like what I need. It also sounds like so much fun that I feel guilty about the idea of doing it without TC. I tell the girls I’ve decided to stick around the hotel for the day instead.

  As I sleep in late and lazily make my way outdoors for a morning swim, I realize there are two kinds of alone in life: mentally alone, where you are trapped in your own mind with no one to share your emotional experience, and superbly, sublimely alone, as I am right now, drinking a frothy iced latte with a wet towel wrapped around my waist. I’ve been the first kind of alone often over the past two years, but the second kind of alone is a novelty.

  I can do anything I want.

  The ideas are limitless, but all my limited imagination can conjure up is a day spent finishing my book and swimming in the pool. Perhaps there are grander adventures to be had in life, but no one should discount the joy of uninterrupted reading.

  Later in the afternoon I split a taxi with Carri and Sarah and head into town. They are off to have dinner at some well-known restaurant, but I am more than happy to spend the remaining hours of daylight wandering from shop to shop. Actual shopping in Oia is expensive. It’s the ritziest part of the island and completely overrun by tourists. Instead, I window-shop up and down the narrow, whitewashed path that runs the length of the village, awed by the displays of glittering jewelry and handmade scarves.

  Along the way, I happen to look down and see a terribly steep and narrow staircase leading down into a bookstore. The store itself is built into a cave, and the entranceway has been painted with a colorful mural of bookshelves. To get inside, only one person can travel up or down the stairwell at a time and even then, it’s an exercise best left for the most agile and slender of customers.

  Atlantis Books reads the sign over the archway, and as I step inside, I’m pretty certain I’ve stumbled into heaven. Inside, the shop is crowded, patrons poring over tables of first-edition English books and beloved Greek classics.

  I wander into the back, where there is a display of children’s books, and run my hand over the smooth covers. There is magic within these cave walls. I may very well spend the next hour browsing, reading one sentence at random from each book and leaving empty-handed with a giant grin on my face. And, if so, it will be the best time spent.

  I am deeply grateful to be here. On this island. In this little store. There are hardly words for my gratitude, just a deep sense of calm. And the knowledge that it’s within my power to find this contentment at home.

  * * *

  With each day, I grow more eager for TC to arrive in Greece. There is so much I want to show him: the luxury cliff dwellings outside the village of Oia, the winery down the road where our group recently spent the afternoon picking grapes, the bustling city of Fira, to which there is a ten-kilometer coastal trail with spectacular views. I want to share it all with him—the whitewashed churches with blue-painted steeples, the fresh figs hanging low in the trees, the palpable romance of a place that boasts endless aesthetic beauty. If we can’t find romance here, on the most romantic island on earth, we aren’t likely to find it anywhere.

  Santorini is romance incarnate. Admittedly, of the traditional variety. Romance, as I’ve learned, however, can take many forms. It can be sitting beside a dumpster digging through a bag of lobster guts together. It can be the cup of chai delivered to your classroom door on the day your husband knows your throat is sore. Or the way he holds your hand during your father’s memorial service, reminding you that the grief is not yours alone to carry. Romance can be wordless—the simple act of accepting each other’s humanness—and most often it is.

  I share as many of the details of Greece as I can with TC during our daily ten-minute FaceTime chats. The seven-hour time difference makes it difficult to connect, but I can usually catch TC and Jack in the early morning as they are sitting down to eat breakfast.

  “Mommy, show me the swimming pool!” Jack yells into the screen from behind his bowl of oatmeal, and I smile. It’s hard to believe just how much he continues to change, especially his vocabulary.

  “Look, I got a Troodon, Mommy. Do you know about this guy?” He holds a plastic dinosaur figure excitedly in front of him.

  “No, baby. Tell me.”

  Jack is a walking encyclopedia of dinosaur facts these days. His only request before I left was that I bring home more dinosaur friends as a souvenir. A tall order for an island not known for its specialty toy stores.

  He begins listing off the various attributes of the Troodon, that beloved birdlike dino from the Cretaceous period, as TC sits next to him, grinning. “And how are you?” I finally manage to interrupt.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” TC pulls the iPhone in closer, giving me that famous double-chin shot he’s known for during our FaceTime chats. Having only one hand with which to hold the phone and manage everything else is tricky. “Had a neurologist appointment last week and everything was looking good. Actually, he said he’d start taking me off the Keppra once we get to August.”

  Ever since TC’s injury, he’s been on a heavy dose of preventive seizure medication. Because he’d been seizing so badly by the time paramedics arrived that day, doctors were worried about recurrent episodes. Epilepsy can be very common after brain injury.

  “That’s so great!” I say enthusiastically. And it really is a major milestone. Next month will be the two-year anniversary of TC’s assault and he hasn’t had a single seizure in all that time.

  “Yeah, so that’s good. Oh, and I’ve been talking to some people from work. It looks like it’s gonna work out with m
e doing some part-time stuff in the fall.”

  I practically jump out of my pool chair. “Are you serious, T? That’s incredible news. They’re really open to it?”

  Even though TC has been officially unemployed since four months after his injury, when his disability allowance ran out, his former employer has been more than generous with their time and attention. Everyone in his office has stayed in touch, offering their help in any way we needed.

  “Whenever TC is ready to come back,” I remember his boss telling me in the hospital, “we are ready to have him.”

  At the time, I interpreted her words as a polite gesture, especially given the severity of TC’s condition. He’s been working so hard over the past year, though, reading ferociously and participating in any small way he can to get back into the industry. The idea that he’s really done it—that he’s really about to return to work—is truly awesome.

  “I’m just speechless, honey. So many good things for you, I might actually cry.” And a moment later I am choking back happy tears behind my black sunglasses.

  “Thanks, Noonie,” he says, his voice characteristically measured and humbled. “I’m mostly just excited to be out there with you in a few days.”

  I smile. “Me too, babe. You will love everything about Greece. I can’t wait to show this place to you.”

  After we say goodbye and hang up, I realize how easy it is to miss TC now that there is actual distance between us. Our conversations since I’ve been away are both genuine and friendly. I am fiercely proud of everything he is accomplishing at home, from his professional work to the care he’s taking of Jack, and it’s true—I do miss him.

  I am not so foolish to think that our problems are behind us or that the friendship we are rebuilding will be enough to sustain decades of marriage, but it feels as if we are exiting the smog that was obstructing our ability to see each other clearly. We are just two people doing our best. Trying to make a life again.

  One thing I am certain of is that I was right to come here. I have learned things in the past two weeks I never expected. About yoga, of course, but also about this version of myself that feels alive: zany, outspoken, full of laughter. I am working hard—the daily practices aren’t easy, and there is a massive amount of information to take in and memorize, but I am fascinated by it all: the Sanskrit, the history, the insanity of trying to balance on my arms in grasshopper pose. And I am soaking up the knowledge with an ease I’ve never before experienced.

  It’s yoga I love, but it is also this group of women.

  In their company I can see how hard I’ve made myself over the past two years just to survive the flying shrapnel. I’ve been training myself to keep people at a distance, to rely on only myself. The thought of depending on anyone in the way I used to depend on TC was simply terrifying. I never wanted to experience the ground opening up beneath me again.

  But something is happening in the presence of these women: they are softening me.

  It’s a relationship of mutual admiration. “I look over at you during practice and watch you in those balancing poses, and it’s just gorgeous, Abby,” says my friend Michelle, herself a gorgeous Australian. “All that strength.”

  I guess it’s no surprise I’m pretty good at standing on one leg. If ever there was a kinesthetic analogy for my life, that would be it. I can teeter very beautifully.

  There is no pressure among us women to compliment one another here, but there is permission. And it makes me realize how often in life we hold back from sharing the things we appreciate about one another.

  I know Michelle means what she says because I feel it myself. There are postures and movements in which I do feel gorgeous. In those moments everything aligns, from the positioning of my hips to the clouds in the sky, and I feel more beautiful, more me, than I have in a long time. Lord only knows how that moment looks to an outsider or what I might see if someone took a photo. In reality, I’m sure my leg is shaking and my face looks constipated and it’s altogether far less perfect than I imagine it in my head, but that’s exactly why I don’t need anyone taking photos here. This practice is about one moment, held in time, never to be duplicated.

  There is an element of trust among these women I’ve felt in only a handful of friendships. So many times I’ve allowed my female relationships to become clouded by competition and judgment. I’ve examined my own life through the comparative lens of my friends’ lives, wondering, Is my marriage as happy as theirs? Why don’t I love my job as much as she does? Was it really wise for her to have that third baby? And in the process of doing so, I’ve betrayed the essence of friendship, that trust required to live in communion with one another. I’ll never be able to see others for what they are if I’m preoccupied measuring my life against theirs.

  I don’t want to play that game here. I don’t want to get on the mat with the intention of looking any kind of way. I don’t want to puff up my chest in an effort to save face about my deepest insecurities. I want satya, truthfulness, in every relationship here.

  And especially with myself.

  CHAPTER 29

  Today I want you to write down a question. One question to ask the all-knowing psyche.”

  This is Sarah’s final philosophy assignment for us. The twenty-one of us are huddled under the yoga shala in the midafternoon heat, trying to stay cool in short-shorts and wet hair as we lay stretched out on our mats.

  I cross my legs, my pool hair dripping rhythmically onto the pages of my teal journal as I tap my pen. One question is an impossible task. Immediately, I can think of a hundred things I’d like to know.

  Where do I want to live?

  It’s maybe not the most significant question, but it feels large. At the heart of it, I want to know whether I’ll ever be able to make total peace with my city. For as much as I’ve come to terms with the specific landmarks connected to TC’s assault, there are still moments strolling down D.C. sidewalks that fill me with anxiety. How can I trust that when TC walks out the door in the morning, he’ll get home at night? Is it time to leave, to begin anew in a place we can build fresh memories?

  And there’s also this: How can I resolve this longing for a baby?

  Can I bring another child into this world with someone I’m still learning to love again? Someone whose health and future are so terribly uncertain? TC may never be able to balance his child in his arms or help with homework. How heartless, how selfish is it, to want a child when I have only the shakiest foundation to offer it?

  But neither of these is the question I write down. After a brief pause, my pen hits the paper.

  Will I ever love my husband again?

  My eyes well as I look down at what I’ve just written. I am punctured by self-hate and relief. This is the question that needs asking, but I can hardly make myself look at the words.

  I want to love my husband. That much is true. I am trying to love my husband. I think I do love my husband. But it’s not the same love, and I don’t know how to value it anymore.

  My feelings have changed. It’s not the love I felt seven years ago walking hand in hand through the city together, or even what I felt on our wedding day, when I looked into his brown eyes and convinced myself naively that we would take care of each other forever.

  What binds us now is different. This love is not sexy, or romantic, or lighthearted. This love is steel: made of loyalty, respect, solidarity, friendship.

  And I’m confused.

  I’ve been taught to believe that love is everything. It is the sun and moon and stars and sky. It has the capacity to fill you with every good feeling and nourish your every desire. Only real love, that once-in-a-lifetime thing, can satisfy the demands of a laundry list that long. That’s why we wait for it. That’s why we work so hard to find it. Because to accept less is to settle. And we were not born to settle.

  * * *

  I am nauseated. I hurry back to
my room the moment Sarah dismisses us and stand over the sink, trying to find my breath. What do I do now? I ask myself. Impatience, fear, and anxiety are begging for an answer to the question I’ve just posed, and I realize that’s why I’ve come here: I want my answer.

  Pat told me to enjoy this experience without expectations, but the little voice demanding clarity refuses to shut up. I have only a few days left before TC arrives, and I can see only two paths in front of me: staying in my marriage with the understanding I may never feel fulfilled, or leaving in pursuit of the kind of love I felt before.

  Both are terrifying. Both demand commitment. Both feel like a betrayal to my soul. Both may crush me.

  I lace up my sneakers, close the door behind me, and start walking toward the beach. I cannot escape myself or my uncertainty. I’ve made a promise to stop running toward answers, to sit patiently in the unknown instead. This is exactly the kind of practice I need.

  My shoes kick up dust as I walk hurriedly down the gravel driveway leading out of the hotel. I cross the two-lane highway, one of the few major roads on the entire island, and walk down the sandy hill that opens up to the beach. This quiet stretch of black volcanic sand is mostly unoccupied, littered by half a dozen towels and a few beachgoers stretched out on top of them.

  I pull down my pink athletic shorts and toss them into a pile along with my white tank. I wade into the water in the black swimsuit I’ve been wearing since lunch. I haven’t been all the way in the ocean yet on this trip, preferring instead my daily dips in the pool. As I wade deeper, I brace myself for the sting. And then I keep going.

  Each inch of flesh I expose to the water causes another rush of cold to enter my bones. I dive my head underwater until every strand of hair becomes heavy with the weight of the ocean. I pulse for a moment in the darkness, allowing the chill to nudge my senses. I come up for air and drink it in.