Unchanged

We hadn't seen each other in five months. That was what we agreed on. Five months, while arbitrary, was what my therapist and I had worked out during our (what felt like hundredth) call about the break. She thought five months would be a fair amount of time for someone to work through something and find a path to recovery. A fair amount of time for me to stop clinging and start breathing without him. Enough time for him to prove to himself and to me...that he could.

Standing in the doorway, I didn’t know what exactly I was expecting. Maybe for him to look completely different. I had romanticized what silence could do to a person. I thought about what time could press into someone’s skin. I imagined his eyes clearer, his voice steadier. I pictured his posture strong, shoulders pulled back with a new sort of pride. Maybe a haircut, maybe clothes that fit like he cared, like he had walked into a store and thought I deserve something new. I wanted to believe the months had given him rest. Maybe a routine. A life, even if it was small, that he had started building while we were apart.

But he looked exactly the same.

Tall and timid in the doorway. The same shaggy blond hair that fell into his face and into his eyes. The little crow’s feet around those eyes and a half-smile that still undid me if I looked too long. Barefoot, as always. He was exactly the same.

The difference was me.

I had lost almost ten pounds in those five months, mostly from the sharp edges of heartbreak. At first, I could hardly eat. Food tasted like cardboard, my stomach recoiled at the thought of swallowing. Later, I filled the empty time with workouts, using sweat and soreness as distraction. My face looked sharper now, my jeans hung loose on my hips. My skin held the faintest trace of sun from the trips I had forced myself to take. A lake house, a beach, a camping trip...each one an act of defiance, proof I could leave the house. Proof I could still laugh and enjoy live. Trying to show myself that I was not only his absence.

Lisa, my hairstylist, had convinced me to add highlights to my dark brown, curly, hair. She called it a “fresh start.” And it did feel like one, in the way that small external changes sometimes become symbols for bigger internal ones.

But the deeper change wasn’t physical. I felt braver. Almost stronger in a way I didn’t ask for. I supposed it was carved out by grief in the nights I cried so hard I wasn't sure I could stop. I learned that pain reshapes you and somehow makes you braver. Simply by insisting that you go on living in spite of it.

And here I was, standing in his doorway, brave enough to knock, to face him again, though my heart was like a small child curled him and hiding under the covers.

The love, though, hadn’t changed. That was the cruelest part. It sat in me, steady and unyielding, stubborn as stone.

“Come in,” he laughed lightly, opening the door wider.

The house looked exactly the same.

My heart sank.

In the months I had imagined this moment, the only thing I pictured healing. I had imagined walking in to freshly painted walls, the colors we had once debated finally chosen and finished. I imagined the tarps folded away, the paint cans gone. I imagined the piles of clothes sorted, the plastic bags taken to donation, the floor visible again. Maybe furniture in the living room, a couch with soft fabric, something simple that said, I live here now. I’ve made this a home. A reflection of a man who had faced his demons and chosen to move forward.

I hadn't imagined it being the same.

But nothing had changed.

I slipped off my shoes automatically, muscle memory obeying his old rules. His trigger about dirt in the house still lived in me like a scar. It felt almost cruel, how easily my body remembered.

Inside, the air was stale. He kicked a pile of unopened mail off the ground where it had fallen and collect from the mail slot.

I felt grief swell in my chest... heavy and slow.

The paint cans were still lined up against the wall, their lids crusted over like old scabs. The tarps sagged over the doorways. The bags of clothes leaned into each other in sad little piles, untouched, the dust gathering in the folds of plastic.

And him. Staring at me. His hands in his pockets and his weight shifting between his feet.

I swallowed and asked, “How has the job hunt been going?” My voice cracked sharper than I meant it to. I wanted it to sound casual and light.

He looked down, his voice soft, almost tender: “I haven’t been working.”

It was said so gently, like if he whispered it, it wouldn’t hurt as much. But it did. His words carried the same weight as all the months before. Cycles of hesitation and paralysis...promises to start tomorrow. He said he meant to apply, he meant to fix the house, he meant to change. But meaning to and doing it were different. He was still standing, firming, on the sidelines of his own life, watching others run forward while he stayed frozen.

My love ached. I felt so foolish. It surged inside me, wanting to take his hand, wanting to tell him we could start again, that I would help him. That was always my reflex with him. It was my reflex with anyone I loved. To carry and lift...to hold until my arms couldn't hold on anymore.

But I knew better now. Years of therapy had helped me understand that holding so much of someone is only a temporary fix. Eventually they have to take it back. My love could not drag him out of his undoing.

I had imagined something so different for him. For us. A life built with courage. A man who chose himself, who chose growth, who could finally, by extension, choose me. But he was unchanged. Exactly where I left him.

“You haven’t changed,” I said quietly, almost to myself.

He looked at me calmly, almost defiant. “Why do I need to change?”

For a moment, I thought maybe he was right. Maybe he didn’t need to change. He had survived thirty-five years this way, slipping through cracks, hiding his illness from the world. Why should he? Why now? Why for me?

I looked around the house. My eyes caught the sagging bags, the ghostly tarps, the way dust had settled thick in the corners, clinging to every surface like it was holding its breath. A small voice in my head whispered: Be kind. You can help him. You know how.

Was it my voice? Or my therapist’s? Or the old voice that had always bound me to him, the one that said save him. I couldn’t tell anymore.

I moved toward the stairs and sat down, but he rushed forward.

“Oh - don’t sit there" he said, almost urgently.

I froze.

“Sorry,” he muttered shyly, his eyes darting to the step. “I haven’t dusted those yet.”

Dust. Of course. Another one of his OCD triggers. This specific trigger, he swore he was moving past. Last we spoke about it, he told me he was learning to see it as harmless, ordinary, part of life. But his apology gave him away.

It was still alive in him, as sharp as ever, dictating where I could be in the house.

The realization hit hard. The five months hadn’t been for him at all. They had been for me. To heal and grow, to finally see clearly.

Hovering above the step, I saw him not as I dreamed he could be, but as he was.

A man I loved, yes. But a man who would not, maybe could not, change.

And though my love was still there...stubborn, steady, pulsing through me, the disappointment was heavier. It outweighed the love.

Because love, I finally understood, was no longer enough.