Just after they married, he found he suddenly wished he’d let her go, go on that trip across the Gulf of Mexico, spend two years writing him emails from that tiny island some fool had the gall to call Grand. He woke up next to her each morning, the woman he loved, and couldn’t fight the desire to be waking up alone, missing her but not with her.
She was still beautiful but not in the same way. The culmination of having her did not compare to wanting her and he couldn’t have prepared himself for that. She was trying so hard, too hard. She was so available. Unsure of what he expected or what was actually wrong, he could only really blame himself. He had buyer’s remorse with most everything in life. It isn’t even that his expectations are too high. He simply never found that fulfillment others talked about finding. The access to her and everything that included left him a bit disassociated with his feelings, raw and itching to protect himself. He had no idea why he needed protection. The urge to see a certain amount of the enemy in others was always there and he’d learned to live with it. He’d learn to deal with this too. He was no quitter and he did love her. He’d asked her and he’d promised and this was it. What worried him was how long it would take for the disquiet within him to settle into the normal lull he was accustomed to.
He could see in her eyes that she noticed the change in him and that she was afraid. Was he supposed to work out solutions to both their problems now? He’d hoped she would throw herself into some work. They were only in they’re mid-twenties and careers were built at this time of life. Her ambitions had seemed satisfactory to him in during their brief courtship. She had a college degree, she was working, she was interviewing for full-time positions. Her desire to help others and spend her life in mission work was a phase, he was fairly certain. He was building a name and a business and investing here. There was nothing in his plans that involved moving anywhere. He certainly saw no future in a foreign location.
If his feelings and thoughts weren’t complicated and menacing enough, she had feelings and one thousand words to describe them. He only had two, too much. That’s what this new marital status really was if he were honest, too much. Too much work, too much expectation, too much of her in all the places she never was before. He used to have a schedule and she was a part of it and that felt so great, making her a larger part of his formerly private space was not at all as he expected and not much of what he’d desired.
As all of this was racing through his head, she stirred beside him, eyes finding him, arms reaching out.
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