This is an edit of the short fiction story possibly being used as a chapter for a novel to be written at a later date

Self assessment – I enjoyed writing this fiction piece and found it to be the second most challenging assignment. I found much inspiration in “Sonnys blues”, and also wanted to shed light to a different relationship style and family dynamic and the problems that come with some partnerships in the LGBT community. This piece also sheds light on toxic relationship patterns.

Running Shoes

“You know I can’t tell you how many times I have told myself that I would never be here again. I couldn’t ever put myself through the pain of loving someone so deeply. Relationships have never been my thing, I can’t tell you what I was thinking when I said yes to marriage, but with Michelle, it felt right. With the highs, and the being in love, and the days where you just love them so much there are also the other days. The lows. The days that nobody really talks about. The days that don’t get posted on my Instagram. The days where you don’t know if tomorrow she’ll wake up with different feelings and a new plan for her life, and the thought alone drives you into a day long anxiety attack. All in the same breath I can honestly say that my wife makes me sad and confused but the joy she brings me is something I couldn’t ever lose without a fight.”

This was only our fourth session but I knew that if I didn’t get all of this out to the only person obligated to not judge me, it would never leave my lips. After a few painfully dragged sessions I knew it was time to talk about something other than my job. Dr. Klein’s office does not really feel like a doctor’s office, and for the first time I felt at ease. You can hardly see the nude walls underneath the excessive but bright and welcoming decor. “Live, love laugh” followed by loving bible verses, 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be misled: bad company corrupts good character, a verse my mother had beat into my head as a child. A couple of abstract paintings, a print of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, cover the walls above the comfortable mauve sofa I am sitting on. On the window sill there were several plants, thriving and loved, it seemed, as their stems sprouted vibrant and rich green, healthy leaves that fell to the floor. I get the idea that she’s kinda like me and that makes her easier to talk to, that is at least what I am hoping for. There are photographs of what I assume are loved ones, family and friends, in settings that looked like they were filled with joy and laughter. Days at the beach in one, some sort of white collar celebration in a hall in another and a photo of a large dog and an ecstatic Dr. Klein with her arms wrapped around it. This woman’s mind is painted all over these walls as I wait for her to pick up where I left off. I guess someone who knows love most likely knows loss, maybe she will understand me. Perhaps, i’m crazy to assume this or imply that I know anything about her but I already feel crazy for seeing a therapist in the first place, so anything to make her feel like a friend I’m having coffee with versus a highly educated and trained woman who is diagnosing me as we speak.

I thought back to the first time my wife, Michelle, mentioned therapy to me over a late breakfast. I had slept in until about 2 pm but nonetheless she sat with me at the kitchen table with coffee, toast, and eggs as I raved about the perfect avocado I was slicing into. I was really good at talking about everything but why I was sleeping in until 2 pm for the second week in a row. A single awkward silence later, “Babe, I know it’s only been a few weeks but I think we need to really start thinking about what we are going to do with the back room. It’s not good or healthy for either of us to continue acting like it isn’t there.” Michelle said slowly, as if she was afraid of what her words were igniting within me. I knew deep down her intentions were golden, I just couldn’t accept it at that time.

The back room. The room that was supposed to belong to our daughter, Rose. Our daughter that never made it home from the hospital. Our daughter that had at one point brought us so much joy before we even knew it was a girl. The back room that we had spent the Happy Days putting together. With its blush pink walls, and the accent wall containing wallpaper covered in roses and wildflowers, and white curtains to frame the windows our daughter would spend her days looking out of as she grew from a tiny baby in our arms to a curious and mischievous toddler then, God willing, a happy girl with the world at her fingertips. We were ecstatic. The day that we applied the wallpaper we went through 3 containers before finally laying it flat and perfect, but we didn’t care, we laughed the entire time. The name “Rose” in gold letters hung proudly above the cherry wood grand crib we assembled the week before, finishing it off with a simple crisp white fitted sheet because I was still stuck in between the two crib sets my mother had bought us. I was in my nesting stage, 34 weeks along, 6 weeks to go. I had begun sorting all of Rose’s clothes by size, filling her drawers and the closet with the dresses and rompers, onesies that our loved ones had gifted us. I packed our bags for the hospital, put the car seat by the door and installed the base into our Honda CR-V. Since the first mention of children a year into this relationship, nothing else had brought us more joy than knowing one day we could raise a whole person together. I picked up my coffee and held it with both hands, allowing my body to feel pain from the hot mug instead of the weight in my chest that came with these thoughts and Michelle’s suggestion.

“I’m just saying, Aria. I know it’s hard”, she said after a long, deep sigh, “I get it more than you want to believe. I’m tired too, I’m hurt and I wish things would have been different but we have to face what happened and I would love it if we could do it together but you won’t let me in and it’s aggravating to me. Look at us. This is the longest conversation we have had in weeks and you’re talking about avocado instead of this huge elephant in the room. I feel like my words are falling on deaf ears and I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t. You need help working on this, WE need help with this. We’re hurt and it doesn’t make any sense to either of us but we have to try baby we have to and if you won’t take help from me or get help with me then maybe you should see someone who can help you through this so that we can get on with our lives.”

“Get on with our lives?” I went from silent to outraged in a matter of seconds. “How do you expect me to just get on with my life when I thought that raising a child with my wife was going to be what was next. You think this is easy? What life am I going back to? What’s next? I just can’t, Michelle. I don’t know where to put my feet. I don’t know which direction to walk in because it seems anyway I go is just going to pull me further and further away from her! I don’t understand why this had to happen to us.” Tears started to run down my face and I began to realize that this is why I was sleeping so much. I had been running away from these tears, from this conversation, from this woman, from this truth, since the second we came home empty handed from the hospital two months prior. “This is why I can’t talk to you, you just don’t get it and I don’t want to hate you for that. This conversation is over” I said calmly, trying to regain my composure as I tossed the remainder of my breakfast into the trash and walked back to my room.

“Aria… ARIA”. Dr. Klein sternly pulled me out of my thoughts and back to her office. “So you were saying. Your wife, Michelle, right? Is that why you’re here?”

“I won’t say that she is the reason that I am here but our marriage just isn’t the same anymore, I’m not the same anymore and I guess because I can’t see myself and she’s one of the few that really sees me, if she’s worried about me it has to be for a reason” I admit out loud for the first time.

I began spewing out everything in my overly worked, incredibly drained brain before Dr. Klein could ask me any more questions. It was now or never.

“You know when I moved here from Miami four and a half years ago, I thought that boarding a plane to the other side of the coast would help me escape sorrow. I thought that leaving both everything I knew and everyone that knew me behind would make all of my sorrow dissipate into thin air. I thought that I had out ran my sorrow but it has been my uninvited guest at every holiday, birthday, and change of season since then. I spent a lot of time thinking I was just homesick but I think what it really is, is that I wasn’t ready to face my sorrow. That’s the thing about sorrow, you know. It sat me down and had a talk with me before I left and told me that the harder I ran the smarter they would get. Yet there I was, even after having moved to an entirely new state where not a soul knew me, running again. Sorrow then began to wake me out of my sleep to remind me that we are married till death do us part, in depression and healthy days, rain or shine. You ain’t going anywhere without me.” I was rambling on but I knew it was needed.

“Why did you leave Miami to begin with?” Dr. Klein asked me as she leaned forward, locking her eyes into mine, allowing me nowhere to run.

“Well, I thought everyone leaves where they grew up at some point. I just had to shake it. I knew I needed a fresh start and I needed to be away from my family and I felt maybe I could benefit from starting over by myself.” this seemed like a simple enough answer but we both knew that I wasn’t going to get away with this answer that had so much more depth than Dr. Klein could ever know.
“You speak about sorrow like its a ghost that follows you everywhere you go. How do you deal with this recurring feeling? What’s your escape? We definitely all have one, naturally.” she said as she fumbled a pen in between her dainty fingers.

“You know we are so quick to judge a heroin addict but who is judging the rest of us for indulging in OUR drug of choice? Its legal, so it’s okay, right? We don’t have track marks, instead, we have bags under our dark eyes after a netflix binge and we carry extra pounds to remind us of the feelings we ate through all 5 seasons of that show we just couldn’t stop watching. We too, have shitty sleeping habits, much like someone on drugs, but nobody is pointing fingers? Why not? Why are our coping mechanisms okay but we crucify and label them the lowest members of society when they use drugs to escape, just like us”

“So what is your drug, Aria?”, Dr. Klein asks me. “Where do you go, when you can’t physically outrun your sorrow but you know you just can’t take anymore”

“You know before my wife and I got married, she left me once. We weren’t sure about us and I was still struggling with coming out and being out as a young, queer, black woman who had been groomed for marriage and motherhood. I didn’t think that I fit in this picture that Michelle was trying to paint. So she left and I moved. I’m always doing that. Relocating to see what some new place has to offer me that the old one wouldn’t dare. That’s at least what I tell myself to make me feel better. Maybe I really just can’t own my shit and thats why I always leave. Honestly, when I can no longer bear the reality of my environment that’s it, I’m on my way and I don’t look back.

Hearing that out loud gave me the chills. I guess this is why people go to therapy. To say all the truths they were afraid to speak.

“Wait, let’s go back to that. Why, other than not being able to own your shit, as you say, do you think you do this? When did you decide that this was the one size fits all band aid for all of your problems.” Her words pierced me in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t going to run in and out of this office like I had hoped. I couldn’t even get to my loss, I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud to anyone other than Michelle and our close friends that knew what had happened. I wanted to understand it, though. I wanted to understand why I had been dreaming of places to flee off to for weeks now. Being with Michelle was as stable as I had ever been, I hadn’t thought about moving for years. She brought me a peace and a desire to stand still that I had never experienced. Michelle was my home, with or without our daughter. It was just so hard to get that picture out of my brain. So many plans that wouldn’t pan out and that was the hardest pill to swallow.

“Well, I think I stayed too long in my first relationship, I think I stayed too long period, in a lot of places with a lot of people that were never meant for me, now I would rather leave than be left. I took every punch, I ate all the abuse except at that time I didn’t call it abuse. I called it “what I deserved”, it seemed normal, I think. I thought maybe if I leave when I am unhappy I wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to hurt me. The first time I escaped I fell in love with the idea of never being in a place I didn’t belong” I answered, answering questions I thought it would be her job to answer. Isn’t that what people go to therapists for? So that they can fix your problems that you don’t know how to fix? Dr. Klein started jotting in her notebook. Well, now she’s definitely diagnosing me or dreaming of different drugs to prescribe me or maybe she’s tired of my irrelevant problems and is doodling waiting for this hour to be up.

“What if there’s a way to just fix the problem or adjust to an environment you feel you don’t fit into instead of running. Aren’t you tired of starting over? Don’t you want to have a home.” She says to me slowly and in her most matter of fact voice.

“Why fix the truth?” I say, defensively. I would rather present an argument than reveal that that’s honestly the only thing I had ever wanted. “Once someone shows you who they are do you really think time and more pain would make them change? I would still be walking away, I’m just less damaged by it all if I get out early, I’m safe”.
“Okay, so using your very own solution, let me ask you this” Dr. Klein was waiting for this climactic “my patient finally gets it” moment and I wasn’t ready for it. Waiting for the moment where she would make me eat my words and I could definitely wait to hear it. THIS! This is why I was hesitant about coming to therapy. Yes, Michelle and I had been having so many problems since we lost Rose. I was okay with that though, I had her by my side even if we were both in ridiculous amounts of pain. That’s what marriage is, right? For better or for worse, and this was just the worst. Sure, we had begun to take it out on one another in ways I never planned to. I was snappy, she was tired. I didn’t want to talk and she didn’t know how to walk away. She claims to understand what I went through but I just don’t see how she gets it. Michelle didn’t have to stick herself with hormone needles every single day on every single try that we made to have a baby. With a 35% success rate we should have expected in vitro fertilization to not work, until it did. Michelle and I had sat by the phone waiting for that call. We didn’t know whether we would get good or bad news but we were there, together, waiting and hoping. We cried when our Dr. told us that we were finally pregnant. I was only a few weeks along, and anything could happen at any time but we couldn’t help but to be ecstatic as we cried tears of joy in one another’s arms. We got to work immediately preparing our house to be filled with the cries and coos of a newborn baby and eventually the laughs of a happy child that we planned to love like no other. Knowing that it was my body that had failed us, after 34 weeks of growing our little girl, not the money or the operation itself, was soul crushing. We got through what some people consider the hardest parts of conceiving, yet still remained defeated. We had both felt loss we just felt it differently and she couldn’t begin to fathom the pain I was enduring as I worked to accept that this body I was in possession of just didn’t work. As a woman I had one job, so we are told. Bear children. If you can’t do that, what are you good for?
“If your partner makes you feel sad and confused, for reasons you still have yet to state, maybe this is her showing you who she is. Someone will always show you the bad after you’re already too engrossed in the good to allow it to stop you from leaving. Now, she’s shown you it all. You have felt the deep love and joy that her company has brought you. You are feeling the low lows that were also given by other individuals at a different time in your life, and that low put you on a plane. Where will this one put you? This is something that only you can decide, Aria. Decisions. I think that’s the most difficult part of the process, at times, and I believe that’s why you avoid it by running. At some point you’re gonna have to figure out why you are sad and confused, is it your wife making you sad and confused or is it you?” Making choices was never my strong suit and if she knew this after a few sessions then the rest of the world had to know as well.

“Well, it looks like our time is up, just think about that question. Don’t buy a plane ticket, or a train ticket, or look at new apartments assuming it’s time to put on your running shoes. Ask yourself, when it comes to this marriage does the good outweigh the bad and is the good enough to push you through the bad when you cannot find the strength, and we’ll talk about it next week. That’s all you can do, hope that each week we can find some sort of clarity, even if you never reveal it to me, I hope you can find some”.

I scheduled my appointment for the following week and I was on my way back to reality. I left the doctors office but this conversation stayed with me longer than it was supposed to. This was a one hour slot in my day that wound up consuming my entire day as I ran from place to place running my afternoon errands before heading home for the day. Here it was, Sorrow, it was back. I tried to kick it at the bank because I was so distracted that I definitely forgot why I was even there. Now, it was time to go pick up dinner and go home when all I wanted to do was leave town with only the clothes on my back and think about the rest later on. I knew I couldn’t do this, and it made me walk even slower as I left the grocery store with nothing for dinner but some ice cream bars and yogurt. This is what Dr. Klein was talking about, wasn’t it? Look at me! Time to make a choice and here I am, fantasizing about skipping town.

As I approached the house my legs felt like weights being pulled to the bottom of an ocean. I put my car into park, and I just sat there for a moment. My icecream was melting and my mind was racing. I couldn’t bear another night of cold words and hard blank stares. I didn’t want to argue about who was in more pain, who was feeling our loss more than the other. I wanted nothing more than to avoid my snapping which would lead to her crying and pleading with me and then eventually it would end in an awkward and quiet night. I just wanted to stand in my pain a little while longer until we could find our way out. Us, side by side, together. That was when it clicked. As I watched Michelle through the window, seeing her when nobody was watching had to be the only thing that saved my marriage on that long, mentally exhausting day. She was tired. I knew she was tired. There she was, selflessly creating a dance routine for the coming week for her kids at the center despite the long day she had just had working her day job at the precinct. She has been on desk duty since we lost Rose, they wanted to make sure she was stable before she returned to work. Nonetheless, I knew her feet ached, as they always do, but the pain seemed to evaporate from her limbs. Michelle looked light as a feather as she graced our living room effortlessly, moving her body in a way that had captivated me from the moment I laid eyes on her. Watching her dance and become so beautifully engrossed in something other than Rose and I reminded me why I ever loved her. This woman always managed to leave me speechless when she danced ever since the first time I watched her grace a stage with her movement. We both were in pain, we were both tired, hers was different than mine but all in all thats what WE were. Tired, drained, exhausted to the point of no quick return. It took us years to save the money to have a baby together even though the world told us we were wrong for going against how God planned for women to have children. Why did we have to be different? Why when I was in the delivery room didn’t they do more to save her? I’m stuck between whether it was because I am a black woman, or a black lesbian. Was I still the scared little black girl that Michelle had left all those years ago? I thought I had grown past this. I thought the day that I told my mother not only was I in love but I was in love with the most beautiful woman I had ever met and it didn’t matter how we would do it, one day we would have a beautiful family. It crushed me when we called her to tell her the news and I could hear the “I told you so” at the tip of my mother’s tongue but for the moment, she chose to spare me and instead offered comfort. At the end of the day, none of this was my wife’s fault. Michelle was angry for different reasons, maybe it was time to hear them out. And me? I realized I was angry for reasons that came before Rose, before Michelle, before I moved here. Reasons that would take long hours in Dr. Klein’s office and long days of forgiving faults against me that had never been followed by apologies. So, I made a choice that I would later on share with Dr. Klein. I decided to choose my vows instead of searching for a plane ticket or a bus ride out of town, for the first time. I made a choice and it was time to stand up in it, and step out of my pain, beside my wife, for better or for worse.