The phone only rang once.
"Hello?"
"Do you like apple cider? Like, hard apple cider? I was looking for something to drink, but they don't really have anything good here."
"What?" he asked. I had mumbled, not knowing how to talk to him over the phone for the first time in more than two years. And now I had to repeat the whole thing. I made it through the rest of the nervous call quickly and hung up as soon as I could. Choppy. What was wrong with me? At one time, we had spoken on the phone for hours at a time and often woke up still on the line. And now I couldn't even have a conversation about cheap coolers without anxiety. WTF?!
A week or two prior, I had arrived. I had finally gotten, after a crappy, horrible breakup, to a blissful relationship, and I was okay to revive a simple friendship. You're reading this like, Girl, please! I thought you were talking to the father you never met or something! But to keep it short and sweet; building the bricks of a perfect home and then watching them fall down around me had left me bitter. For a long time after the fact—too long for me to be proud to admit—I was angry in my core. In the deepest part of me, there was fury, disillusionment, and a pessimistic perception of Black love.
I realized I was finally over it when I could look back on our relationship and remember the love, not just the breakup. But talk to him? Nah, I'm good. But eventually, I got to the stage where I wondered how he was doing, and then finally to the place where I wanted to actually reach out and ask him. And now this. This night we had decided to hang out, and I was low-key freaking out!
What would it be like to hear his voice again? To see him in person for the first time in so long? What would we talk about? (What shouldn't we talk about?) What movie would we watch? Oh, God—no romantic comedies!! Don't go to his house hungry. But also don't go empty-handed. What snacks should I bring? What did he like again? And then, finally, does he even drink apple cider?!
All in all, the evening was timid. I could feel us each navigating what was okay to say, to touch, to look at. Measuring how long the hug should be, and looking away when it seemed like we were staring—which was probably only a few seconds for us that night. I was careful not to do anything that would in any way upset bae, and vice versa, even though it wasn't that kind of party. (This could have been infinitely more awkward if we'd both been single!)
But it was nice. I survived. We didn't do anything deplorable, the earth didn't shatter or sing, or cry. It was just two shy friends hanging out. Reconnecting. Deciding to be human and pick up the pieces of a broken home to rebuild a friendship. Friendship. The way we'd begun in the first place. But more than that, I could not be more proud of myself in this moment. I recognize that some women get hurt and stay hurt. Some people carry that with them everywhere they go, into every relationship and every conversation. Some people never let it go, and that's a kind of burden on your heart and on your character that pushes people away from you. I am so happy that I've been able to heal and get past that past, so that I can move towards a happy future, and a happy present.
Whether you decide to be friends with your ex or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that you get yourself in order, no matter how long it takes. There's something about nursing myself back to emotional health that just put me so much more in touch with myself, and gave me a better sense of control over my relationships with other people. It showed me that I am tough, and that even when I am at my lowest, I can pull through, even if it takes me a while to get there. I have grown as a person and there's satisfaction enough in that.
