I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Chapter VII

My dad's plan had been to keep me at the house by all means necessary until my mom could make it home.

She had left work early, driven to the airport to pick up my husband. To pick him up from a flight that my parents had paid for in order to bring him to me to try and fix things.

I stood there in shock for a span of maybe two seconds. My mom started crying. My husband walked towards me.

And I yelled What the fuck are you doing here?!?!?

He hugged me. And I cried.

I cried a lot those next few days.

We had to learn to talk to each other again. I had to take responsibility for my actions. As did he. We needed to talk without judgment. To work though such deep pain to see if there was anything worth salvaging on the other side.

We drove to Chattanooga for a night. It was my husband's final days before he had to go back to Europe. We needed to be in a neutral location. To just be a man and a woman. Not a daughter and a son-in-law hashing it out in my parent's living room, but a guy and a gal having a talk over dinner.

It all came to a head in the hotel room. We talked for hours. I didn't know a person could cry so many tears. I had been in a terribly dark place for such a long time. I did not believe I had any worth. Not as a wife. Not as a person. My husband pushed past his own pain, reached into that canyon of self-loathing I had disappeared into and pulled me out. I resisted. I kicked and screamed and fought with all the bitterness and hatred and sorrow that had become me, and he still would not let me go.

And when I asked him Why? Why he would want to stay with someone who made stupid choices, whose body was so fucked up that he may never have children, who ran away instead of making things better? His answer, in not so many words, was that I was enough.

That for all my flaws, for all the hardship we had endured, and all the hardship to come he loved me. That what-if children didn't matter. That I mattered. I was enough for him.

I have never been enough.

Not for my parents. Certainly not for myself.

I was for him.

The tide turned that weekend. There were still many more discussions to be had, but we were talking again. My husband left the decision in my hands. I knew where he stood. He was committed to making our marriage work. It was up to me whether or not he was enough for me.

By the time I brought him to the airport, my wedding rings were back on my finger.