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"Is everything alright?" My mother asked as she dried the last glass from our weekly family dinner.
"Yeah," I replied automatically.
"Are you sure? You can tell me if you guys got into a fight or something, that's perfectly normal."
"No," I laughed, my head slightly turning as I tried to think about the last time Jake and I'd gotten into a fight. I couldn’t remember a single one. "We don't really fight."
"Ever?"
"No," I shrugged, wondering if it really was all that strange? "Not really. Is that weird?"
"I don't think so. Jake just looks unhappy tonight. You both do, if I'm being honest."
I try to hide the doubt on my face. It's not a new doubt- not in the slightest. I've thought about it extensively in the last year, but Jake and I weren't unhappy. Not at all.
After all, we'd been together seven years. 3 of those in high school. Married the second we graduated high school and spent all 4 years of college together. Surely after all this time of it just being the two of us, I’d know if something was wrong.
It was unsettling to think that our 8 year anniversary was only a few months away. It seemed more like a fever dream than my actual reality. So I often found myself refusing to think about us in introspection- and when I did, I found that the conclusions I came to were not at all comforting.
I was only 23 and I'd been with the same person for 8 years. Completely and utterly devoted to this man before I was even legally an adult. 8 years, the number rang in my head. Shouldn’t I be sure of my relationship- of my marriage after 8 years? Even before we got together, we were childhood best friends. Everything had been a natural, if not expected, transition. It all happened so quickly, yet felt so far removed from our current standing.
But along with the amount of time we’d been together, the way everyone said that we were just meant to be also rang in my mind. I prided myself on being the cute, wholesome story of high school sweethearts. We were the lucky ones finding our other half so young.
Written in the stars.
Destined to be.
Twin flames.
Soulmates.
All things I used to wholeheartedly believe.
I clung to that more than ever in the last year. Because as much as I wished it untrue, I had so many doubts.
It wasn't anything that he said or did. It wasn't even anything I said or did. There was no argument or betrayal that made me question Jake.
Nothing that made me look at him differently, and yet I did.
He looked so different from the person I agreed to spend the rest of her life with. But that's how it was supposed to be. As humans, we were constantly changing. Evolving. It was perfectly normal that he wasn't the person he was sophomore year of high school. There'd be a big problem if he was- I knew that.
Yet I couldn't overcome it.
I'd always believed that we'd grow together, as a unit, but with our own respective growth I found the chasm widening between the two of us. It didn’t stop us from trying, our arms were constantly extended out- desperately trying to reach the other despite our own physical limitations. And with the gut wrenching knowledge of those limitations, I found the cracks in our foundation cementing.
Simply growing apart and in completely different directions.
Maybe it was something in the silence, everything that remained unsaid, unspoken. I'd spent more time than I'd ever admit trying to convince myself that this was us settling into being out of school and becoming full-fledged productive members of society.
That the quiet was normal, that losing the spark was an inevitable part of life. But as time went on the quiet went from comfortable to complacent. Jake didn't bring me flowers just because he felt like it. And I didn't surprise him by attempting to make his favorite childhood dishes.
This remained at the forefront of my mind lately and I'd taken it to heart. I cooked his favorite things. Bought him tiny little gifts to show my appreciation. And in response he brought me flowers again. Still nothing changed, and I tried not to see the cracks. I tried to ignore how there was something so fundamentally broken about the two of us. That the fact we found ourselves running out of things to talk about was completely normal. That the quirks I used to find adorable irked me. That he spent more time at his garage than at home. I knew he wasn't cheating, that wasn't who Jake was, but it was unnerving nonetheless. The way we moved around each other, like the other was simply an obstacle- a hurdle that we had to overcome a few times a day.
Just thinking about it created a twisted, nauseating feeling in the very marrow of my bones from ignoring the truth that we both so willfully ignored.
The question plagued my mind: when did my partner in crime, my person, start to look like a complete stranger?
When did we stop talking about our dreams for the future?
Because now, the future that kept invading my mind was terrifying. What was once our future, melded together in perfect harmony, now looked like a frightening fork in the road: his future and mine. No longer intertwining or even remotely parallel to each other.
Guilt consumed me when I closed my eyes, the children I dreamed of were no longer blessed with tan skin and warm green eyes, but remained without any physical distinctions. My dream home no longer had a garage or shed for Jake's work, or even a semblance of his distinct style anywhere in my wild imagination.
And when I put away my childish daydreams and I looked at our own house, my heart broke. Months ago, it seemed like a switch flipped and I found that I no longer liked anything in the house we'd built together. Not the bright blue kitchen. The sunny yellow color of our living room now looked muddied and unsightly. I'd even tried repainting it to breathe some life back into the room, but nothing changed. Maybe I was just looking for issues where there weren't any, but there was a feeling radiating deep within me that these weren't just doubts to sweep under the rug.
So when we returned home, I decided to try to fix what was so clearly broken.
"Jake, are you happy?"
The confused expression that flashed across his face did little to assuage these doubts. His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes creased in the corners of his eyes. Like he didn't quite understand the concept of happiness nor how it pertained to us.
I sat down in front of him at the table where we’d tolerated so many silent dinners and stale conversation, patiently waiting for a response while trying to school my anxious expression.
"Is everything okay?"
I nodded, feeling the consternation, both his and mine, that he wouldn't answer the question. "Are you happy?"
"I'm not unhappy?" He offered, my eyes shut as I tried not to place any implication or assumption on his words.
Eyes still squeezed shut, I spoke my doubts into existence for the first time. "Tell me you don't see it, Jake. That I'm just too in my head and we're happy and in love and that we'll be okay."
After a few moments of silence, I slowly opened my eyes. I'd hoped Jake would take my hand and vehemently assure me that there was nothing to worry about, but the crestfallen look on his weathered face told me everything I needed to know.
We weren't unhappy, but we most certainly weren't in love anymore.
That night, we didn't speak anymore of our doubts. And though it was evident on our faces, we pretended to be oblivious to the tension choking us and the dark cloud just on our horizon. Instead we climbed into our bed and clung to each other for one last night. There were no sweet-nothings whispered in my ear. No promises. Not even a declaration of love. Just a silence that was completely and utterly deafening.
And when I woke, I woke to a cold bed like I always did. I walked downstairs to find Jake clutching a mug of coffee, with another one placed directly in front of him, prepared just the way I liked.
We stared at each other for several long minutes. I watched his young, boyish face, now contorted with fear and anguish. And he watched mine.
"What do we do now?" He asked the question I'd been much too scared to voice.
"I don't know."
"Me neither."
"I love you, Jake. Always have, always will," I confessed.
"But?"
"But I don't think I'm in love with you. And I don't think you're in love with me either."
Once again, I wanted him to deny it. To say that he wholeheartedly loved me even when I knew it wasn't true. But more than anything, I wanted to be the one that could make him happy.
"Yeah..." he exhaled, his voice trailing off. "Now what? Do we separate- temporarily, permanently?"
"I don't think we should draw this out, Jake. You're not happy here- with me."
"I want to be," he desperately offered. "I so badly want to be."
"I know. Me too," I sniffled. "But we're not, and we both deserve to be."
He leaned back in his chair, hands still clutching his mug like a lifeline. "I always thought I'd be you, you know? That we'd have a family. Grow old together."
"I thought so too," I whispered through the tears.
"So that's it? We're getting a divorce- God, that doesn't even sound right talking about us," he chortled without an ounce of humor in his voice.
I wiped my eyes and tried to stop the unwitting tears. For my body to stop responding physically, emotionally, and so viscerally when mentally I understood that this would be for the best. "I know, I always thought you were it for me."
There was no embittered battle for our shared material possessions, nor a burning hatred that sparked the second he uttered the word divorce. Almost like an added assurance that we were doing the right thing, we parted coolly. Like room-mates moving out, a sadness and ache of nostalgia for the good moments shared but nothing tethering us to each other anymore. It was almost deceivingly simple, a few days after the words were uttered, Jake brought home the manila envelope. Our house was one of our only assets, with nothing else to give or take, no children to fight over, the papers were quickly signed and taken to the attorney.
Still, the day that we both left that house, our now separated belongings in our respective cars, tears streamed down my face. He stepped forward reaching forward as if to try to console me, but then hesitated, looking to me for permission. I silently nodded and closed the gap between us. I tried to memorize what his arms around me felt like, the warmth of his body, how my head fit so perfectly in the crook of his neck. I knew I was giving up a good man. Giving up the future that we both so desperately wanted. And in return, we were walking toward an unknown future with the hope that somewhere on the horizon we'd find a glimmer of happiness.
"We were happy, right?"
I sniffled and nodded, pulling away from him for the last time. "Yeah, we were."