I watched the jeweler take the ring you gave me and place it delicately on the scale. It twitched on the plate, wiggling on the thick rim of diamond shards that acted as the setting for an amethyst.
The jutting prongs were always getting stuck in the sleeves of my sweaters or my hair. It was exactly opposite of everything I’d pointed to in a series of lit-up cases at the mall when your hand still fit into mine so perfectly. I used to touch my thumb with the top of the stone, twisting my fingers in on themselves when I was nervous for reassurance that at least I wasn’t alone.
Parting with that assurance made my chest split and my breath hitch. As the jeweler flipped his glasses up and began punching on his calculator, I realized that, given the choice, I would absolutely do this all over again.
It’s been nearly two years since you said you weren’t sure you could marry me anymore. You shoved your hands into your pockets, leaned on the arm of the couch we both rescued from the trash, your backpack falling off your shoulder. You wouldn’t look at me until the words came out, and then you looked up and stared until I had to look away. It’s been a year and a half since I said let’s take some time to think about it. It was only supposed to be a break to clear our heads. It’s been a year and a quarter since I said, “Let’s not, anymore,” and you agreed.
You cried more than I did in that East Bay Starbucks. I’d spent so many nights tearing up over romantic comedies in which two people run back to each other, knowing they wanted nothing else. I just didn’t have it in me to cry for you then. Hours later, I dropped you at BART with your ever-present backpack, understanding you’d be back later for the rest of your things.
“OK, bye,” I said, because what else do you say to the man you are no longer going to marry?
That was how the rest of my life started, in a place that I didn’t choose on a path that I never planned on walking alone. You were supposed to be my happy ending, my real-life answer to fireworks and white horses. I’d followed you from the quiet rainy forests of Oregon to the loud, demanding Bay Area because I believed this was it. That you were it. I was wrong.
You used to be my home. When you left, I was sure I’d be unanchored forever.
They don’t tell you in the movies how these things — how people — can fall apart while they fall away from each other. But even though putting myself back together has taken years, I’d do it again.
Because I may have lost a fiancé, but I found a home here.
I replaced you with the sun rising over the cranes in Oakland and setting through the BART-car window. I replaced you with turkey sandwiches on the Embarcadero, with fog over Coit Tower and with the Transamerica pyramid rising up over my morning walk to work. I replaced you with the knowledge that each day, as I move from one end of the bay to the other, I am running toward something more than a boy in a movie.
I replaced you with all the books I wouldn’t read in front of you, feeling like a poser with a mass-market best seller sitting across from you and your Murakami. Now I read bodice-ripping romance novels on my commute, both hands gripping the paperback, hips swinging with the rock of the car so I don’t fall. I read fantasy epics and memoirs in the grass along Lake Merritt, looking up between chapters to watch toddlers playing. I read history and nonfiction perched on the steps of warm stone buildings in San Francisco, one ear open to the man next to me, telling the same story to anyone who will listen.
At first this was hard, since we often read together. I often found myself looking up to try to find your hand across the table or next to me. When I thought I felt your fingers on my shoulder, I buried myself further in the story. When I resurfaced, I found the small parts of myself I’d been hiding, the parts ravenous for everyone’s story and the truths therein that echoed my own.
I adjust my bag, full of the flowers you never bought me…before walking to my apartment without you.
I used the money the jeweler paid me for the engagement ring to buy a bridesmaid dress for my best friends’ wedding. I wanted to reinvigorate my belief in happy endings, even if the ending wasn’t mine. I replaced your insistence that the world was fucked up and people were awful with a new sense of optimism and a refusal to let the world make me shut down.
I now nearly cry over dogs on the street or when hearing from friends how happy and in love they are. Babies with their mothers make me melt, their tiny fingers reaching out to me at the Lakeshore farmers’ market, and when I smile and wave back, the mother grins. I adjust my bag, full of the flowers you never bought me and a brick of cheese that you would probably hate, before walking to my apartment without you.
You used to be my home. When you left, I was sure I’d be unanchored forever.
But I was wrong. And I would still do it all over again.
I am not Harry, running through New York City to make it to Sally by midnight on New Year’s Eve. But I’ve sprinted down Market Street to catch the next bus to Ocean Beach. I am not Kate Hudson, crying in a cab on the bridge while Matthew McConaughey whips off his motorcycle helmet to pour out his heart. But I’ve got the Bay Bridge at night, lit up and calling me home so loud and clear my heart bursts every time I cross it. I don’t own a boom box to hold over my head outside anyone’s window, and in my neighborhood, it’d just be one more song flowing out into the night.
Our credits rolled. But I did not end. I lost you, but I found the city, the Town, and a whole world ready to take me in.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Jessica Alter, founder of Tech for Campaigns. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
