Paying the price of the memories: 20th anniversary edition
"Take what you want and pay for it," says God.
—Spanish proverb*
Twenty years ago today, I waited anxiously at the airport for my new life to begin. I was there to pick David up following his multi-week trip to Israel to work on an archeological dig. It would be the first time we had met since I left my marriage—something he learned after the fact, to be clear. But once he knew and I explained my long and torturous road to making that decision, it didn't take long for both of us to confess our feelings for each other.
There was a lot on the line. I was separated, but not yet divorced, and even now, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, North Carolina law still does not recognize separations. In NC, you have to be physically separated from your spouse for "a year and a day" before you can even file for divorce. And finalizing a divorce can take months—or even years (ask me how I know...sigh).
Walking into my new life put me in significant danger of legal ramifications. And I had no fucks left to give on that score. Because I was there to embrace JOY.
And there he was, walking towards me, wearing a turtleneck in June because he was always cold. (I still have that shirt...) When he saw me, the smile on his face lit up the corridor. I thought my heart would burst with happiness.
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There have been so many days in the last 4 years—so many recollected moments of genuine bliss—that I wish it had burst in one of those moments. Wish that my life had been blown out swiftly like a blazing candle, rather than my being condemned to keep breathing as the flame guttered out and the darkness overtook everything.
But life doesn't work that way, and maybe that's for the best. My therapist regularly asks me, "Would you go back and change it if you could?" And my answer is always "No." How could I?
How could I regret that night, when he first came to my apartment, and we drank wine and danced on my balcony to "There Must Have Been Something Good" from The Sound of Music?
Or the time when he performed the poem "Lessons of the War" (from memory) in my living room—delighted that he had finally found someone who loved poetry as much as he did?
Or the phone calls when he quoted Shakespearean sonnets to me while I sat on the patio at Starbucks and goosebumps rose on my flesh and tears filled my eyes?
Or all the nights he met me in the driveway at midnight bearing a glass of wine for me and enveloping me in his big bear hug, laughing that deep laugh that made my toes curl, and kissing me breathless?
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These are among the many reasons that I cannot allow myself to be bitter, or to hate him, as so many people in my life seem to want me to do. Doing that would mean I would have to destroy the memory of what he gave me—the sure and certain knowledge that he loved me deeply and that I was finally seen.
He may have rewritten our story, but I won't follow his lead. I was there. I know what we had.
And what I've lost....
But today, 20 years later, I just want to remember that magical night: his smile, his arms around me as we danced, and the feeling that I had—at some unknown point in the past—done something good enough to deserve the tidal wave of happiness that washed over us that evening.
It was worth everything I paid to have it...
*Because the phrase originated as an unwritten folk proverb, there is no single "first" recorded usage with a specific date or author attached. The earliest prominent literary citation of the proverb appears in a 1929 novel, Windfall's Eye, by English author Edward Verrall Lucas. Novelist Agatha Christie also used the proverb in multiple novels in the 1930s and is generally credited with popularizing the phrase.