Decoupling

My apartment on Richardson Street, just a little deeper into Brooklyn now, might be the nicest place I've been in yet. Someone at some point, no doubt because it was built to own, put a lot of money and thought into the fixtures, the amenities, the details around a wooden shelf here and a warm lamp there. I love how old brick extends from the floor to the ceiling on one side, making the place feel real and lived in. I lay there some nights on a wonderful mattress that holds me, high up in the roomy clouds, before waking in the morning from a deep sleep, and feel above all, comfortable. I can look around at the books and the sheet music and the records, which have all managed to fit in their rightful nook, thinking all has worked out okay.

It wasn't always this way. The pathway here was more than anything a path I didn't want, and I still look back longingly on what it was to pair your life to someone, to be in the world together in partnership, to no longer direct your energy to frivolous things, the search, the chase, the chance, the chaos, and instead be focused and deliberate from the quiet morning coffees to the peaceful tea-filled evenings because you were together and that was enough. I recall fondly thinking what it was to live without the questions that had always plagued me, the hows and the whys and the constant justifications and internal battles, instead leaning in for better or for worse because it just felt right. These were the things that drove me and that I will never regret believing in for the period of time that I did.

I would've asked for the longest time, for a large chunk of adulthood if I was being honest with myself, whether I believed in this whole concept at all. A brief survey of the couples around you, old divorced ones, young miserable ones, overcommitted tired ones, people who feel "tied down" and "in need of a break" and who head to Las Vegas to "let loose," examining any of this even at its most generous point doesn't paint an portrait that is appealing. And I drifted around uncommitted for what feels like the longest time. Then I met her, and for reasons unable to be catalogued on checklists or dating app profiles, and in ways I could never make anyone including her ever quite understand, the great questions of my life about moving in and marriage and children and what it was to look at someone and say yes just drifted away because of a feeling as strong as any I've known.

We are now more than half a year down the road, and in the quieter moments I've found this all breeds some level of confidence and hope, even when baked into the loneliness of packing things back in boxes and saying goodbye to things you love and retreating back out the door the way you came, locking the magnificent empty apartment one last time before venturing back out into a world you're a bit more alone in. Confidence and hope not just because I say I get it, this idea of why we dive back in again and again, the merits of exposing yourself to pain and vulnerability by leaning in and loving and relying on another. Even more, because I know it is something I can do, am capable of, and even might maybe want out of life, should I ever be fortunate enough for it to cross my path again.