A Beautiful, Terrible Thing

by Jen Waite

  Now I am curled up in bed, my stomach twisting and turning with that familiar feeling of dread. It’s as if the universe is snickering at me behind my back: You thought you were making progress? I’ll show you how weak you really are. My appetite has disappeared again over the last couple of days, and my eyes are glazed and lifeless.

  A year ago, I was in France with Marco, walking hand in hand along the cobblestone streets of a small Provençal village. Louisa, growing in my stomach, was still too small to be noticeable to passersby, and we shared the news with strangers whenever we could. “Babe, maybe you should get a size large because . . . you know.” Marco placed his hand on my middle and smiled proudly at the silver-haired lady helping me pick out a handmade tunic from the racks at the Sunday market.

  I thought I was done grieving this monster. I was so sure I had jumped into “recovery.” But right now, lying in bed while Lulu naps, I am nowhere. I feel stuck. I am a single, thirty-one-year-old woman with a baby living in her childhood home with her retired parents. There is a constant tightness in my chest when I think about the future and how I will bridge the gap between right now and the life that is waiting for me. I say this to Lisa during one of our sessions, and she says, “That’s positive movement.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, surprised.

  “If you’re even focusing on something other than the event, the trauma, the betrayal, the heartbreak, that’s positive movement forward,” Lisa says, and kicks off her green loafers and curls her feet underneath her body.

  “Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was thinking that I’m in a really bad place right now because all of the sudden I’m coming out of my grief fog a bit, realizing, Holy shit, what am I going to do now?”

  “Of course. You’re going through the natural progression of recovery. You’re moving out of complete devastation and shock, moving through the grieving process, and starting to think about the future. Do you see how huge that is? That you’re even thinking about the future?”

  My stomach unclenches for the first time in days. Being stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed is a good thing?

  “But . . . ,” I say, worrying aloud, “I have no applicable skills for Portland, Maine. That’s something I’m starting to think about a lot. I have seven years of being an actor in New York. . . . How am I going to support myself and Louisa?” I have been living off the four credit cards I have for months now. Marco hasn’t sent a single penny, and I know that I need to start working again. The thousands of dollars in debt that I have already incurred sits in the back of my mind constantly. Time is running out.

  “I am sitting here, looking at a smart, beautiful, young woman. I know for a fact you will be more than OK. If you could see yourself in five years, I guarantee you that it would ease all your anxieties and stress. I know it’s easy for me to sit here and say that, but I also know that it’s one hundred percent true. How old are you again?”

  “I’m thirty-one,” I say, and wince. “Kind of old to start over.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lisa says with a genuine laugh. “Thirty-one? You’re so, so young. I hadn’t even met my husband at your age.”

  I look at Lisa, surprised for a moment. I assumed she was in her early thirties or maybe even younger, and now I reevaluate. My body feels lighter as I take in her words.

  “But . . . ,” I say again, “I am also very anxious about the fact that my life has been completely turned upside down and I gave up my career and Marco is moving on with his life like nothing happened. As if Louisa and I don’t even exist. According to Facebook, he got a fancy new job as the general manager of a chain of restaurants.” I twist my fingers together and take a deep breath. “It gives me panic attacks sometimes.”

  “OK, hold on. You’re thinking about this from your brain, your nonsociopathic brain. So yes, it’s completely normal to have these thoughts and this anxiety. But here’s the thing: Marco’s pattern of behavior is to hurt and betray everyone, literally everyone, who has ever genuinely loved him. Do you think that someone like that is living a fulfilling and happy life? I know it’s hard from your perspective, but when you step back and think about what you know, you can see he has a history of hurting and betraying people, you know he is a pathological liar, you know he has a pathological need to live a double life, you know he doesn’t feel love or make healthy attachments . . . in the long run, who would you rather be? You or him?”

  I smile. “Me. I would so much rather be me.” And then, “You know, an interesting side effect of this whole experience? I’m strangely less socially anxious, like in public. Little interactions used to make me really nervous, and I would overcompensate by being super friendly. I guess I’ve always been a people pleaser and wanted people’s approval. And now I don’t give a shit. I mean, it’s not like I’m mean or cold, but I’m not effusively nice or witty or charming because I want someone to like me. Like, I bought a shirt at Target the other day and talking to the cashier didn’t make me nervous like it used to; we had a nice, genuine interaction and that was that. It feels strangely peaceful.”

  “Well, that makes a lot of sense. You’re seeing other people as real people, separate from yourself now, with their own stories and issues, and you’re probably also realizing they’re not judging you or even really thinking about you because they have their own lives and problems. It sounds like you used to see strangers as self-relating, as an extension of yourself, and therefore you were worrying about what they were thinking about you. Now, you’re realizing most people have their own lives to think about and aren’t spending their time thinking about yours.”

  “You’re right, I guess that’s true,” I say, crossing one leg over the other. “I feel like I keep going back and forth between emotions. Sometimes I feel OK. Sometimes I feel right back to square one. When am I really going to be ‘recovered’?” I ask anxiously.

  “You are the kind of person who likes to identify the problem and solve it in the most efficient way possible, yes?” Lisa asks with a smile.

  “Yes,” I agree.

  “Well, unfortunately, this process is not going to be linear. I know you want a list that you can go through and check off and be done with: ‘denial,’ ‘sadness,’ ‘anger.’ But that’s not the way it works. It’s not so clean. However, I can tell you this: You are doing the hard work right now. What you’re not doing is running into another relationship, hoping that you can skip over a bunch of steps by burying yourself in someone else. That’s when women start getting into really bad patterns and really bad situations.” She looks at me intently. “It might not feel like it, but you are doing the deep work and living the process. You have to trust that. What we might want to start thinking about, what you might be ready to start thinking about is: What drew you to Marco in the first place?”

  “You mean like, what part of it was my fault?” I ask apprehensively.

  “No,” Lisa says forcefully. “That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is you understanding what parts of you were drawn to someone like Marco. If you can do that inner work, if you can start to become aware of those parts of yourself, that is when you will start to take back your power.”

  I stop for a moment, considering my answer. What was it that Marco saw in me that I didn’t see in myself?

  “I liked feeling like I was part of a fairy tale,” I say slowly. “I liked feeling adored.”

  Lisa nods as if she knew what I would say. “What’s interesting, though, is that you were able to ignore or filter out a lot of data at the beginning of your relationship with Marco. Such as him having a girlfriend and him lying to and hurting someone else. You were able to twist that around in your mind to fit your agenda. I think that’s what we want to start concentrating on. How you mold or filter data in order to serve your version of reality.”

  “Oh God.” I cross my arms tightly. “This is hard.”

  We spend the r
est of the session talking about how I pick and choose what I want to see and how I reject data that does not fit my paradigm. Lisa says that everyone does this to a certain extent but that, for some reason, I have a tendency to filter data to an extreme that has proven to be detrimental. I’ve always thought of myself as an optimist, but now I’m starting to wonder about the difference between being “optimistic” and being delusional. I was so eager to believe in the fairy tale that I blinded myself to some serious character flaws. I was so bound to my belief that Marco was “the one” that I took in all the “good” (love bombing, intense feelings, sexual chemistry) and rejected the “bad” (lying, cheating, a dark, murky past).

  “It’s like within a few weeks you had already decided that you and Marco were going to be together forever and so any data that clashed with that reality, you just threw away.” Lisa pauses for a moment as I take this in. “Those first months of dating are supposed to be kind of a trial period, to determine whether you like the other person and want to be with him.”

  “Oh, Jesus, that’s so true. At the time, it felt like . . . it truly felt like life and death.” I think about how building a sense of self and having boundaries are so important and how I had never consciously developed either before. For the first time in my life, my thoughts and feelings and actions are all beginning to align with one another. It seems like such a simple concept, but now, if someone or something doesn’t make me feel good, doesn’t bring me joy or fulfill me in some way, I simply don’t engage. Before, so eager to please everyone around me, I had never stopped to take stock of how I really felt or what I really wanted. It is incredibly freeing to invest in what nourishes your emotional well-being and stop engaging with the people and things that make you feel less than. Somehow, I never realized that I always had a choice in creating my own reality.

  I leave Lisa’s office and walk in the hot sun to the coffee shop on the corner. I still feel the anxiety in my chest, and it travels around my body, making pit stops in my head and stomach, but now I feel something else mingling, knocking around tentatively. I get in line behind three other people waiting to order coffee and hold on to this new feeling making its way through my body. What is it? I move up to the counter and am about to give my order to the hipster at the cash register when suddenly I realize, it’s hope.

  “A small latte, please,” I say with a smile, and the boy gives me a big smile back and I take in the smallness of this encounter, focusing on the warmth passing between us. A year ago, I would have smiled brightly and felt vaguely anxious: What does he think about me? Does he think I’m nice? I better be extra polite to make up for that rude lady in front of me. Now, I have no room for those feelings. I look at the boy as he takes my five-dollar bill and makes change and wonder what his story is, is he a student at the Maine College of Art working a summer job to pay for tuition, far from home and adjusting to living on his own and all the small freedoms and responsibilities that go along with it?

  “Thank you,” I say gently, looking him in the eyes, as he hands me back two quarters and a dime.

  “Have a nice day,” he says.

  “You, too.”

  —

  THAT afternoon, my phone lights up on my bedside table, and I see the name “Marco.” My stomach plummets. I’ve been in “no contact” for weeks now, but his unpredictable texts still come in and jolt me into a panic. I reach over and swipe the text open.

  “I was going to end that waitress. She took advantage of me while I was drunk, and I was so scared about her telling you.”

  What is he talking about? What waitress? He must somehow know that my friend called and told me about the women from the Thirsty Owl. My heart speeds up. Before I know what I’m doing, I break no contact and type back, “What do you mean ‘end’?”

  “I was going to execute her. I was going to push her down the stairs at the restaurant. No one would have known.”

  I stare at the text. Execute. I pause and take stock of how this makes me feel. I am not afraid. I am not sad. I feel something, but I can’t put my finger on it. I get chills. I am about to reply again when I hear Lulu waking up from her nap. I power my phone off instead.

  —

  AN hour later, I walk through the aisles of Target pushing Lulu in her stroller. My mom and her sister, my aunt Julia, are meeting me to do a bit of shopping, and I have arrived a few minutes early. I walk slowly past racks of clothes, taking in the huge, empty store. After living in New York for nine years, I am still not used to having personal space in public, and I luxuriate in the unapologetic suburban consumerism.

  “Oh look, Mags, I see them!” I hear the familiar ring of my aunt’s voice travel from the entrance of the store to the rack of clothing where I am holding up a striped tank top against my body. She was one of the first people I told about the real reason I was home. After a month of my parents dodging questions about why Louisa and I were in Maine for such a long visit, she came over for coffee and donuts at the end of March. I sat with Louisa in a chair at the head of the dining table and nervously picked at the donut in front of me.

  “Aunt Julia, I have to tell you something,” I said, swallowing down the lump in my throat. “The real reason I’m home with Louisa is because I found out Marco was having an affair when Louisa was a few weeks old, and I’ve moved home until I figure out what to do.” I stared into my coffee, and when I looked up my aunt’s face was bright red, tears streaming down her nose and cheeks. She sank into a chair, and for several minutes all she could get out was “What?” over and over. When I saw that she was crying, I let myself cry, too—big, ugly sobs. And then my mom started to cry and hugged my aunt.

  “But your wedding was just a few months ago,” my aunt finally said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club,” I said with a small smile, drying my eyes with a napkin. I explained the e-mail, the change in personality, his numbness, and the suicide attempt.

  I had completely forgotten that when my cousin Luke was a baby, my aunt’s abusive husband had disappeared one day with all their money and had never come back. She had remarried my uncle Sam a few years later, and everyone in our family had buried the first part of her story in a deep hole and thrown twenty years of new memories on top of it. She told me how hard the next few years would be but that I would be OK. “You have to grieve the family and the future you thought you would have. And you have to go through an entire cycle of holidays, birthdays, and seasons before you really stop feeling that raw pain. Even then, all the ‘firsts’ will be hard, the first time she sleeps in her crib, her first word, the first time she walks. But then one day you will wake up and you will be so glad it happened. And that it happened when she was a newborn. You will realize your lives are so, so much better without Marco, if this is really who he is.”

  I absorbed her words and stored them away, aware that I would need to draw on them one day. After that morning, when I was able to leave the house for a few hours at a time before the wave would crash down on me, the three of us (four of us counting a gurgling baby) met for coffee at Panera every couple of weeks. Eventually, I told Julia some of the horrific details and showed her pictures of Marco’s new girlfriend.

  Now I watch her fiery red hair over the clothing racks and marvel, as I do every time I see my mom and my aunt together, at the physical differences between the two sisters. It has been a family joke for as long as I can remember that my aunt, petite and curvy with bright red hair, was a product of the milkman. Secretly I have always wondered if there is some truth to this joke. It is not only the physical differences that give me pause. My aunt is a vivacious firecracker, legendary for her dirty jokes and emotional outbursts, while my mom is calm and spiritual, the steady ocean that our family glides on.

  “There’s my beautiful girl,” my aunt Julia says, wrapping me in a hug. “Or should I say beautiful girls,” Julia says with a cackle, and makes a kissy face at Louisa.

/>   “More like beautiful babes,” my mom says, and they look at each other and suddenly they are two sisters laughing together and the milkman thought dissolves.

  “I have something really disturbing to tell you,” I say as we head toward the baby aisles.

  “Excuse me? More disturbing information? Is that even possible at this point?”

  “Apparently Marco is the gift that keeps on giving,” I say with a wry smile, and then tell her about the phone call I received a week ago.

  Aunt Julia had stopped mid-step at some point during my revelation and now she stands stock-still. “Look at my arm,” she says, raising her arm in front of my face. “I have goosebumps.”

  “Crazy, right?” I say.

  “So this was going on the entire time? The cheating? Wait, wait, wait, so he had cheated before your wedding?” Julia says, furrowing her brow.

  “Dozens of times, probably,” I say. “If he was caught those three times.”

  Julia shivers and then starts walking again. “Oh my God,” she says, suddenly stopping. She leans into my ear on her tiptoes and says in a hushed whisper, “I bet he had sex with his friend Tomas, too!”

  She is so serious that I choke back laughter, raise my eyebrows, and whisper back conspiratorially, “probably.”

  But her suggestion sticks in my mind as we fill the cart with formula and diapers. I take out my phone and bring up Marco’s Instagram profile. I click the photo that has been in the back of my mind since he posted it two days ago. A selfie shot from above, lying on a beach towel, his chest and face slick with greasy tanning oil, making the straight male equivalent of a duckface. “Catching some rays,” the caption reads.

  The person in this photo was so foreign to me, so unlike the person I knew and married, that I could barely look at it before I had to turn away.