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I’ll leave the light on

The danger of working without a net is that there’s nothing to catch you if you fall - you’re always one step away from being splattered across the pavement. I exacted no promises, no oaths. I always knew in the back of my mind that I, like the famed Humpty Dumpty, could go tumbling down.

And minutes into the New Year, I did.

When A. and I started dating, the mantra was let’s not think about it. And we didn’t for a good long while. We enjoyed each other’s company but kept separate lives, separate interests, and separate residences. A., as I’ve mentioned before, was married for eight years to his high school girlfriend, spending his twenties cooling his heels at the marital bed. The last thing he thought when he met me was I’m going to fall in love and move in with this woman. And the last thing I wanted was something serious.

Except that as time went by, we discovered that we were eerily compatible. We made the same jokes and called each other silly names and took to parading about with a rubber chicken named Mendoza. Four months into dating, I realized that I loved him. Five months into dating, I told him.

He nearly broke up with me the next day. I told him if that’s what he had to do, then no harm, no foul. Like a Vegas Dealer, I’d be out. There was a slight strain for a month or so, which dissipated into our normal relationship which was deceptively easy and totally fun. We soon became the couple that everyone rolled their eyes at, the couple that everyone shook their head at muttering, could you not be so goddamned happy all of the time.

When A. decided to move out of his ghetto apartment and purchase a house, he brought up the idea of us living together. While it had occurred to me prior to this point, I had learned my lesson the first time when it came to bringing up Giant Relationship Steps. In August, he had found a house and in September of 2003, I moved into Casa Mysterioso.

We agreed up front that I wouldn’t pay any of the mortgage or buy any of the furniture. That way if the Great Shacking Up Experiment crashed and burned, I could leave, unfettered by stuff. I always referred to the house as “Adam’s house” or “my boyfriend’s house.” The only domain I asked to be in charge of was the kitchen, which he gratefully accepted.

Over the years, it hasn’t been perfect, but more or less we’ve been happy. We don’t fight, simply because most things aren’t worth fighting over, and the Big Stuff is generally stuff that can only be solved by talking, not throwing dishes at each others’ heads. Over the years, I still wasn’t purchasing big-ticket items but I’d pay the water bill or buy the grill. All of the grocery shopping, dry cleaning, and basic errands were done by me. I was the one to remind A. of his parent’s birthdays, pick out presents, and bake cookies for his co-workers. I did it because he was the one working out of the house; I thought it only fair to be the one working in it.

The last year I began calling the house our house. I stopped asking permission to have weekend houseguests (which he always told me I didn’t ever have to, but I wanted to be respectful.) I still worried about my career, but tried to relax a bit, knowing that I wouldn’t end up out on the street. This is my life, I thought, and began to settle in.

In the meantime, A. started to get moodier. Angry. He never lashed out at me, but his mood could change in an instant. I chalked it up to an insane schedule at work and tried to take more off of his plate, which he steadfastly refused. After an evening that started out as a nice dinner out and ended in some silly, offhand remark that blew up in my face, I asked him what was wrong. He didn’t want to talk about it. I asked him if he wanted to talk to a Professional.

I know what’s wrong, he told me, so I can fix it.

I left it alone.

So we went into the holiday season. I buried myself in Thanksgiving prep, he buried himself in work. We still loved to stay up and talk about stories we were working on. We still laughed. We still loved each other with total abandon. He planned the entire trip to French Polynesia and I thought, this is it. We just need to relax.

A week before the trip he IM’ed me. Can we talk tonight?

About the story [for an upcoming one-hour special]?

No, about other stuff.

He came home, I fixed us a couple of cocktails and we sat in front of the Christmas tree which I had struggled to put up that day. In the glow up of the twinkly white lights he told me about how he went from his parents’ house to being married to a house with roommates to living with me. He needed to be alone. To pick up his own dry cleaning. To remember his own parents’ birthdays. To make his own dinner.

To take care of himself.

Well, I said, it looks like that we have two options.

And those are?

You either have to get over it, or you have to fix it.

I don't like either one.

Neither do I.

We agreed to table it until after the New Year, until after the trip we had looked forward to for months. But things came to a head in the wee hours of 2006. What started out as an incredibly lovely evening ended up in a complete and utter emotional mess, A. sitting on the ground looking out onto the water, tears streaming out of his eyes and me perched on a chaise lounge, wondering how we had gotten here.

The fact that I can’t promise anything to you, who is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, should show you how fucked up I am.

I’ll move out, I told him.

He nodded.

We’ve discussed it front, back, and sideways; there doesn’t seem to be any way to keep us together, even with me moved out. I wanted to extract some sort of promise from him – that we’ll revisit this in three months, in six – but I know the reality is that imposing a time limit will only make things worse. The worst part is that we’re still madly in love.

But I know more than that you can’t make someone love you, you can’t make them happy. You can’t figure out what’s wrong and fix it. The only way I can show him how much I love him and how much he means to me is to let him go.

I am both devastated and pragmatic. I’ve been concentrating on the business details: dividing up projects we’ve been working on, contacting a woman who finds housing for people with pets, dealing with the financials of it all – simply because the moment I sit down to consider that I’m losing my partner, the love of my life, and my best friend all in one fell swoop, I won’t be able to function. I know there’s going to be a time when I’m ensconced in my new home that it’ll all dawn on me, where I’ll fall to the ground and weep, huge wracking sobs that will have Daisy licking the salty tears off of my face while I wonder how, at 33, I am back here again, except that I am fatter, I am poorer, and I have just lost the most treasured person of my entire life.

I get that moment. But just that one. I don’t get week after week of slack articles, dousing myself in wave after wave of pity porn, detailing my utter and complete misery. Because I don’t want it. I have too much to do. I have too much I want to do.

And I’m not that person any more.

Perhaps this is the Universe’s way of kicking me in the butt, reminding me that I have much on my plate and I need to sit down and outline the book, work on the online comic, finish the spec, start the screenplay, attend to my twenty-pound weight gain and get back into a better frame of mind. I’m a bit sick of being the Universe’s bitch. I’m sick of it biting me in the ass.

This is the year I bite back.

So A. is going to therapy, and I, with Daisy, am going out of his life and out of his house.

I wish him health. I wish him happiness.

But I have to admit, there’s a big part of me that I wishes him back to me when he finds both those things.

I’ll leave the light on.