Chapter Two
The Story I will now attempt to recount, as best I can, what happened next.
For two months Ross and I talked on the phone incessantly and sent flirty emails and love letters and cards. We talked about everything-the big issues and favorite movies and life dreams and Coke-or-Pepsi. We talked about children and what we would name them and weddings and what kind ours would be. After two months I met his family and he met mine. And every step of the way I loved him more.
I found him to be kind and giving and responsible and fun. He loved Jesus and wanted to love Him more. And he loved me. Things between us were easy and natural. We had amazing chemistry together. To me, all that added up to mean forever. Some thought it was impossible to be sure since we had only known each other for a few months. (Five, to be exact). But we knew. Through and through. I explained to the doubters that love isn't an equation with exact parameters. It's just love. I didn't chose to love Ross. Didn't calculate if this was the right time of my life or if he was my mathematical match. I just loved him. He just loved me. We had both found our heart's happiness.
Ross and I decided that I would move to Boston at Christmas, two months before the wedding. He could stay at his parents' during that time and I could live in his (our future) apartment and we could see each other every day. Bliss! It seemed like the logical decision, easy enough. Except that I would have to quit my job, leave my family, leave my church, leave all of my friends, leave the South where I had always always lived, and move to the North, where I knew nothing about the way things worked. But, it was for love. For forever. It was worth it to me. Ross was the single most important person in my life and I would make any sacrifice necessary for him.
Some of my friends voiced (rather loudly) that they felt I was making all the sacrifices and he wasn't making any. Even when I would try to explain those accusations away, I felt there might be some truth to what they were saying. But over and over I argued that love was worth the risk. Wasn't abandoning all for love what life was about? Weren't there scores of songs about love being the ultimate? The one goal in life? Who cares about sacrifice when you've got love?!
And I did love him. Everything about him. His laugh and his heart and his faith and his drive and his hands and his family. His outlook and his sensitivity and his sense of responsibility and his intellect and his face and his patience and his character. Even more. There wasn't a moment when I doubted my love for him. There were times I got nervous about logistics and my own personal demons of self-doubt and my insatiable desire to control my life. But all in all I was sure. Ready. Delighted, even. This was my moment. My time!
The plan was for Ross to fly in on December 23rd and spend Christmas with my family and then we would drive to Boston. I had previously sent up most of my belongings by way of a friend and a truck. The rest I cram into my Honda, say good-bye to my friends-and my life-and go to the airport to get Ross. To start my new life. To push the big green button that says, This is it-no turning back! But leaving my life is harder than I was prepared for. I feel euphoric and depressed all at once. But I try to concentrate on what is ahead. Love and marriage. Ross.
I park the car at the airport and go in to meet him, feeling happier than I think I've ever felt before. Or maybe a different kind of happy. New Happy. I see him through the crowd and run to greet him-and his embrace seems forced. I stand back to look at him and hush away any thoughts of forced embraces. We go down to baggage claim and the forced-ness becomes worse. I sense him move, ever so slightly, away from me as I move closer. It isn't a move anyone else would notice, but I feel as if he is screaming and running away. I ask him if he is okay, and he says he thinks he may have eaten some bad pizza at his layover in Cincinnati. Good, I think. Nothing serious . . . just some pizza. All is well. By the time we load the luggage and fight through traffic to reach the interstate, I feel uneasy. I turn and ask Ross if he is happy to see me. He says, Yeah. For some reason, I don't believe him.
Christmas is a welcome whirlwind that leaves little time to think about the weird vibe between us. The forced embrace. The new look on his face. It's all relatives and dinners and presents and Christmas. Then, at 6 AM on the day after Christmas we begin the drive 1,296 miles north. It begins to set in for me that something is amiss. Off kilter. I drive first and Ross sleeps some which gives me lots of time to think. Most of that time is spent trying to rationalize myself out of a panic. Trying to convince myself that I have an overly active imagination and I am probably making something out of nothing. That it isn't remotely possible that something is wrong between us. We are perfect together. He adores me. We are getting married. I look at the diamond in my engagement ring as it shines in the sunlight. This is reality. Shiny happiness. Whatever crazy thoughts I am deriving from a few strange comments are simply products of a long trip and working too much. (He had been working nonstop so that we could spend more time together when I got to Boston.) Ross was fine. Tired and overworked, but fine. And I am fine. We are fine.
In about the eighth hour of driving we are both silent and I am thinking about my life and how with each second it changes dramatically as we drive north. About how I'm on the verge of marrying this person next to me. About how we should just clear up whatever it is that's looming over both our heads. Even though I feel sure it's nothing, it's probably best to address it calmly and find the solution and move on. I look over at him and smile. I joke lightheartedly that he can't breakup with me now because I just left my job and my house and my friends and my family-and I would have nowhere to go. But he doesn't laugh at my little joke. I suddenly feel as if oxygen masks have dropped from the ceiling and we are spiraling towards our fiery deaths. Until this moment we have never had one argument or disagreement. This situation, however, is neither an argument nor a disagreement. It's something much worse.
Twenty-two hours from the time we leave my parents' house we arrive in Boston deliriously tired. I walk into his apartment and immediately lie down on the couch and fall into a profoundly deep sleep. An anesthetic kind of dream sleep that seems to go by in a blink. Hours later I wake up and find a note from Ross saying that he's gone into work and will be back later, right as he walks in the door. I feel displaced and confused, still in a fog from sleep. We drove for twenty-two hours straight and he decided to go to work? He suggests that we go to the grocery store so I can have some food in the house, and off we go. We suddenly realize how ravenous we are, so we stop at Subway, and while we're eating I ask him what kinds of things I should buy to make for dinner that week. (Because I don't have a job and my one daily task will be to make dinner for Ross.) He just glares at me. (He had never glared before, ever.) I go on to say that I can make dinner every night and we can spend some time together. Ross shifts uncomfortably in his seat and looks everywhere but at me. He says he doesn't know if he'll be able to make dinner every night. He says that he will have to work late sometimes and will want to get a pizza with the guys.
Umm . . . pizza? With the guys? Pizza with the guys you work with all day? Pizza with the people you constantly see instead of having dinner with the woman you are about to marry and until today has lived 1,296 miles away? (Flashback: Once when I was in second grade I was swinging on the playground at recess and fell out of my swing. The swing went back up into the air and came down crashing against the back of my skull. This felt a lot like that.) I was all for pizza and all for the guys, but why did he not want to see me? I had no job. No friends. Nothing to do all day but wait for him to get off work and come over. The only reason I had made the move was so we could spend time together. To be with each other every day. To have dinner together on a Tuesday night. He should be dying to spend time with me. He should cancel everything unnecessary because the love of his life is finally in town. Instead he's aloof and disinterested. Aggravated that I asked. There seems to be an underlying annoyance that I would presume to alter his schedule in any way at all. Like somehow I should understand that my role is to be available when he wants me and to be silent at all other times. It shocks me that he could be so non-perfect at this moment. So selfish. So opposite of who I believed him to be.
I don't say a word the entire time we are at the grocery, silently putting things in the shopping cart and moving up and down the aisles in a daze. He halfheartedly asks once or twice what's wrong, but I pretend he isn't there. I can't focus. Don't want to think about this new person I am stuck with. Can't think about being alone in Boston with nowhere to go and nothing to do. No one to talk to. To me, it isn't just a stupid comment he made, it is his true self coming out. How he really feels. Who he is. I want to demand a refund. Shout that my purchase has a defect I hadn't noticed until now. But all purchases seem final, and I feel trapped.
Things steadily get worse over the next few days. I could go into detail but who wants to relive every second of that again? I don't. The summary is that he continues to ignore me and act burdened by my presence. Continues to act like a completely different person. Continues to hurt me with slights and silences, generally overlooking me. I sit alone in the apartment all day wondering how I got here and how this happened. Wondering what I did to drive him away. Trying to come up with something, anything, to make sense of it all. Trying to reme...
