Love Is (Not) Enough: A Memoir

I remember the first time we met. Do you? I went to pick you up at the airport. It took a while for you to get your luggage and walk to the concourse, but I saw you from across the room as soon as you walked in. You were holding the stuffed animal I bought you and your favorite pillow. When you saw me, you tensed up. I couldn’t tell what you were thinking, because you were just shaking your head and hiding your face. Then I realized that you were too shy to come toward me. So I came toward you instead and gave you a big hug. I remember thinking about how small you felt in my arms. But most importantly, I remember that my heart felt warm and full when you hugged me back.

I also remember that Sunday morning when you wanted to show off your cooking skills, but you had a special request: muffins. We didn’t have anything to make muffins, so I volunteered to go shopping. “Buy some chocolate chip muffin mix,” you said, “and I’ll work on the rest of the breakfast while you’re out.” So I went and bought the mix. Before I could even get out of the car and walk inside, I saw you running down the driveway toward me with excitement. You told me you missed me, but I’d hardly been gone fifteen minutes. I’d never felt so special before in my life. Never in my lonely life had I ever seen someone so excited to see me… which is pretty sad if you think about it. That’s why this is one of my favorite memories. It makes my heart swell with affection even now.

I remember the time I proposed to you. “I don’t want to be wasting my time,” you said, “so if you’re not going to commit, I want to move on.” I thought about that for a long time. Engagement? Marriage? For me?? Never had I ever contemplated that. Imagining myself as someone else’s wife was scary and foreign. But you know what? We’d been dating for a few years, so I thought about it a lot and decided you were worth facing my fear of commitment. So I took you to the local zoo on Christmas Eve to see the Christmas lights. It was cold and I was nervous, but after our walk around the zoo, I gave you the ring and you said yes. I was unbelievably happy. And I believed everything would be fine.

But I also remember many things in between. Things that happened before. And things that happened after. I remember the disagreements, the misunderstandings, and the dramatic public displays. I remember that time you ran off at Fisherman’s Wharf during our San Francisco trip because we disagreed on how to tip our waiter and I couldn’t understand your point of view. Seeing you run off like that in an unfamiliar place nearly gave me a heart attack. Cell phones weren’t as advanced back then and I didn’t know how to find you. What would I tell your parents if something happened to you under my care? Eventually, I tracked you down and the panic inside me died… but it was replaced with anger. That was probably one of many early warning signs.

I remember that time I selfishly, thoughtlessly pressured you into something you were deeply uncomfortable with—but you agreed to do it, for me. Our relationship was never the same after that. I think I’d broken your heart too many times by then. The stress of life, debt, and anxiety over the future pulled us apart in so many ways. We got so lost in our own personal hells that we forgot to pay attention to each other—especially me. I couldn’t focus on anything but poverty trauma, fear of uncertainty, and hatred toward my perceived inadequacies. I wish I’d been strong enough to push through it without all the emotional volatility. It’s too late for that now, though. The damage is done.

But even though we had bad times, I still remember how passionate we used to be. Do you? We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I wanted to touch and hold you everywhere we went. We loved each other in many places—department store dressing rooms, hotel rooms, and even that one time on the bus. But we didn’t care. We were too lost in each other’s company, too intoxicated by the push and pull of physical attraction, too drunk off our own naïve ideas of what love was supposed to be. What did we know back then? Not a whole lot, but what we felt was good, so we went wild. I love those days.

There’s also a lot I probably don’t remember, though. Thirteen years is a long time to know someone, and eleven years is a long time to live with someone. We had our growing pains, and we tried our best. But before we knew it, we were stuck in a nasty cycle of neglect and possessiveness. We said and did lots of things we didn’t mean. We hurt and traumatized each other in seemingly irreparable ways. But here we are, left with the painful broken shards of our affection. And we gotta repair somehow, whether we like it or not.

You were the one who ultimately pulled the plug. “I’m breaking up with you,” you said tearfully, right before the 11-year anniversary of the first time you moved in with me. What a coincidence, eh? My tender heart still loved you and didn’t want to give you up. But you were tired of giving me chances. Tired of stretching yourself thin. Tired of my emotional dysfunction, tired of my outbursts, tired of my unwillingness to compromise. And if I’m being honest, I was also a little tired of you. Tired of you dodging my questions. Tired of your unwillingness to speak with me about your feelings. Tired of the distance you’d been heaping on me for two years straight.

But I still love you even now, and I want you to know. I want you to know I’d do it all over again if given the chance—even if everything ended the same way. You are the greatest, most special, most spectacular love of my life. I never knew devotion and passion like that before, and I haven’t seen it again ever since. I regret breaking your fragile heart over and over again. I regret being inattentive and not loving you exactly as you deserved to be loved. It’s a shame that you followed me across the country for a romantic dream that I inevitably stomped to dust. I’m deeply sorry for shamelessly trampling the delicate flowers blooming in your heart. And I can’t blame you for your inevitable retaliation.

You know what I remember most of all, though? Your dreams. You want to be a restaurant owner that sells delicious food and drinks while your staff serves it in cute costumes. I laughed about it at first, but over time, I grew quite attached to it. “How can I help her?” I wondered. So I got into brewing coffee, thinking I could help serve your guests one day. I made sure to practice different brewing methods, too. I planned my future around that dream. Now it’s gone and I’m lost. But that’s okay; I need to love me for a while. And you need to love you for a while. We spent too much time on each other and now we must replenish all that precious energy we used up over the last decade.

I still believe in us, you know, even after all this time. Even after all the missteps and mistakes, after all the terrible things we’ve said and done out of strong emotions, after the drama, all of it. I bet we could do it again, but better this time. We’re not so young anymore, not so naïve, and much more prepared for the difficulties of love. There’s still so much I want to do with you and so many things I want to say. I want to travel with you, anywhere we want. I want to make blueberry chocolate chip pancakes with you on cold, lazy Sunday mornings. I want to retire with you in a foreign country. I want to kiss your face and tell you you’re beautiful when we’re both old and wrinkly. I desperately want another chance to love you the way you’ve always deserved.

But more than anything, I really wish all of these dreams didn’t have to be just memories. I wish we could go back to when we still believed love could see us through.