Nothing Feels Better (Better Love 3)

“Well, you’ve told me all about your kids,” she says with a raised brow, “now tell me about you. What do you like? What do you do in your free time? What makes your soul happy?”

I’m speechless for a second, chin bobbing aimlessly, then I clear my throat.

“My kids make my soul happy. I don’t have much free time, I suppose. I work here, and I’m in a nursing program online. To be an RN.”

“Ah, and nursing is your passion?”

“Maybe. I get to help people.” I smile at her. “I get to meet great new people like you.”

Her answering laugh is full and melodic. “Yes, well, I’m sure it’s never boring.”

“Never.” I furrow my brow as I continue, “and as for what I like...” I trail off, then lift my shoulder. “I guess I don’t really know anymore. I used to want to travel, but I’ve never left Indiana.” I think for another few seconds. “And I used to like taking pictures...” In high school. Ten years ago. “But now...”

I’m just desperately trying to remain functional.

I grow quiet, that same feeling from earlier lingering in my mind. The reminder that there is nothing remarkable or unique about me. The reminder that I’m barely my own person, if I ever was. Roxanne nods, as if she is reading my thoughts.

“I had a daughter with my first husband. Her name was Marie. I remember those early years being some of the hardest. I read a book not too long ago by a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I wish I would have had it when I was a young mother. Adiche says it’s easy to lose yourself in motherhood. Easy and understandable. For a time, even necessary. It’s a priceless, beautiful gift, being a mother, but it’s also important to be a full person. To remember the woman you were before, and the woman you will grow to become.”

I stare at her, her words settling heavily on my chest. Do I even know how to do that? Do I even know where to start?

It’s not until I’m leaving the room that something else she said resonates. Was. She said her daughter’s name was Marie. She said she had a daughter.

“Roxanne?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What happened to Marie?”

Her smile is true, but her eyes are sad. “That’s a story for another time.”

When I get homethat night, after the kids have been picked up from Patrick’s and tucked into their own beds, I take out a pen and paper and sit at our small kitchen table with a glass of wine.

My eyelids are like sandpaper, and my body feels heavy, like I’ve been walking up a never-ending spiral staircase with a kid on my back. And I have, haven’t I? That’s basically my life right now. A never-ending spiral staircase, and I just have to keep climbing, because if I stop, even just for a second, I risk falling. Tumbling all the way back to the bottom. Back to Patrick. Back to that life. And my kids will be casualties.

I rest my chin on my fist. Tap the base of the wineglass with my fingers.

Is this how twenty-eight is supposed to feel? Bone-tired and bleak?

I stare at the pen and paper for a few minutes. Pick the pen up, just to drop it back down again. I take a sip of wine. Then another. I breathe in and out.

Who am I outside of June and Jude? Who am I outside of Patrick?

I take mental inventory of my body, my personality, and I don’t like what I find.

Bone-tired and bleak. Unremarkable. Valueless.

A sardonic, hollow laugh escapes me. Distressed furniture, distressed jeans, vintage everything. There’s a whole market out there that centers around buying something new and putting in the work to make it look old. But when it comes to people? When it comes to women? Distressed is unacceptable. Everyone always wants to trade out and up.

But I can’t trade out myself. I don’t think I want to. All I can do is strengthen and cultivate. Find value in what I have. For myself, and for my kids.

“Be a full person,” I say to myself.

Then I pick up the pen, and I write.

I start simple with a task I’ve already begun: find my music. Something that isn’t influenced by Patrick or the kids. Something that I like. Then I jot down photography. It’s fresh on my mind from today’s conversation with Roxanne. I move on to things I’ve always wanted to do but never could. Like get a tattoo. Patrick said tattoos on women were disgusting. Said they diminished a woman’s beauty and worth. Never mind he has an entire sleeve of ink. After that, I can’t stop. I’m on a roll. Every interest, every desire I had that Patrick stomped out, I put on the list. Making my own friends. Being more physically active. Patrick didn’t like when I worked out.

Who you fucking working out for, Lyn? You got side dick?

Sex.

I write it almost before I think it, and it surprises me.

Patrick is the only man I’ve ever slept with. The only man I’ve ever done anything with. I don’t like that he owns that part of me. It still feels like it’s his, and I don’t want it to be.

I laugh at myself. Drag my hand through my hair. Out of all the things on this list, that one might be the most terrifying.

My phone rings next to me, and my shoulders tense. I don’t have to look at the Caller ID to know who it is, and it makes me want to cry. I let it go to voicemail. It rings again. I let it go to voicemail again. It rings once more, followed by a loud banging on the front door. I squeeze my eyes shut and fight the sting, then I shove the list in a drawer and move toward the door.

If I don’t, he’ll get louder. He’ll make a scene. He’ll wake up the kids, the neighbors.

So, like every time before, I let him in.

Baby steps.