I told him I had once lost everything I had, too, and that I think that can be God’s way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him.
I decided I would fill the emptiness in me with God and with paint.
Unfortunately, he still hadn’t asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low.
I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.
The voice sang on, “I am ready, I am ready, I am fine. I am fine, I am fine, I am fine.” I played it again. I was not fine.
Each guy stamped the passport of my heart. “You’re worthy.” Stamp. “You’re enough.” “You have not failed completely.” Stamp, stamp.
I remembered learning from my favorite professor at Belmont to “surround yourself with people who are better than you,” and I was now living that mantra.
I used to cover my windows in heavy curtains, never drawn. Now I danced in the sunlight on my hardwood floors.
That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.
But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.
I threw his framed picture off my balcony just to hear my heart break.
I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.
It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.
He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.
I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket. A souvenir of the moment where he said maybe. I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.