Everything Is Perfect, He Said
In bed with a beautiful Argentinian artist after my husband leaves me, I learn that everything is perfect.
MAY.
I can’t decide whether to tell him this is my first time having sex since my divorce, or sleeping with another man for seven years. I opt for a regrettable “wait, I should tell you something… never mind.”
I’m in Costa Rica, in bed with a beautiful Argentinian artist who’s lived here for two years, and he miraculously doesn’t pry, responding only with a quiet “Okay,” and a kiss.
In March, my husband and I started trying to conceive. I’d waited nearly two years for him to be ready, and it felt so freeing and exciting to move into this next stage.
In April, he left me.
In May, I moved everything I own into a storage unit and took a redeye to Costa Rica.
Since the moment he said, “I just can’t waste your time anymore,” and drove to a hotel, I’ve cried every single day. I grieve a person, a relationship, the family I thought I would have this year, and the future I’ve spent seven years building. I am overcome with panic that I may never have a family. I am weighed down by the pressure to start a new life when the grief is collapsing my desire to live. I must heal quickly and meet someone this fall, before I’m 37, which already sounds too old to be wanted. We’ll need to marry fast, a baby immediately after.
In a few weeks I’m going to Costa Rica to host a retreat, to hold space for others though I can hardly keep it together myself. I decide to extend my stay to live and work remotely abroad. Surely a few weeks of surfing, breathwork, and yoga will accelerate my healing. Then I’ll return to LA, freeze my eggs, and find the love of my life, who, it turns out, is not my ex-husband.
It’s a couple weeks into my trip, and today, in this exact moment, I am not crying. I am not lying on a floor surrounded by moving boxes, or texting my therapist from a hotel bed in the jungle. I am vertical, sitting with a group of new friends at a beachside bar in a quiet town. The sun is setting over the ocean in rich orange hues as surfers cut into waves. Across from me, a beautiful man speaks to me about the interconnectedness of all living things.
Since the moment I realized I would need to date again, and eventually sleep with someone new, the thought has filled me with dread. Yet as I talk to the artist across from me, who is thoughtful and deeply spiritual, I wonder if perhaps I am capable of it.
We go to a second bar, although he isn’t drinking and I’ve only had one hard kombucha. We dance, and talk, and when we leave together he kisses me. I’m taken aback, surprised by the feeling of lips that aren’t my husband’s. It’s strange and exciting all at once. He pauses, running his fingers over my face, feeling my eyelashes, studying me with such serious focus.
“Wow,” he says. A younger version of me might have laughed at such earnestness. Here in the moonlight, I drop completely into the moment.
He invites me to his apartment, and I hesitate. It is far too soon for this. I keep kissing him anyway. I can’t imagine a day when it won’t feel too soon. Will it ever feel as though he didn’t leave me yesterday?
I walk into his room and we crawl into his bed, and our clothes come off, and my body tenses up as I stare at the man above me who is not my husband. This isn’t how this should be, I think, realizing suddenly how rare it is to find intimacy that comes with genuine comfort and joy. I am disconnected from myself, from him, from my reality. I want to return to the person I loved doing this with, not this person I hardly know, doing everything differently.
I love traveling, but I’m ready to go home.
Eventually I ask him to stop. I sense that we both feel like we’ve failed. We fill the awkward silence with words.
“How old are you?” he asks me, caressing my face as we sit facing each other in bed.
“Guess?” I say (unfortunately).
“30? 29?” I laugh at him for throwing that last one in there for safety, but people do tend to guess I’m younger than I am. Suddenly I’m terrified to disappoint him with my age. I tell him the truth anyways.
“I’m older,” I say uncomfortably. “I’m 36.”
I guess he’s 32, but he’s 38.
“I think this is the best age,” he says. “At least for men, 30-50.”
“It’s strange as a woman, we have our biological clock.”
“Do you want kids?”
I nod.
“Do you have any?”
“No,” I quietly sigh, the quiver in my voice revealing my grief.
There’s no longer a question of if I should say it, it simply emerges: “I just got divorced. This is my first time sleeping with another man in seven years.”
He raises his hand to my face, sighing deeply, as if it all makes sense now.
“I was married once for eight years,” he shares. “I still remember what it was like to sleep with somebody else for the first time. It was so intense. I cried afterwards.”
He wraps his arms around me tightly. I hold him back, suddenly feeling so seen by this person I hardly know.
“There’s so much pain, there are so many feelings. It takes so much time,” he softly whispers into my ear, the intimacy we struggled to find just moments ago emerging. I tense up hearing it takes so much time. I don’t have time, I think. It can’t take me that much time.
I say nothing in response. I have nothing to give. I only want to receive. His vulnerability feels like permission, and the tears begin, silently at first. I realize this is the first time I’ve cried today. I curl deeper into his arms that increasingly feel safe.
“Who wanted the divorce?” he asks me.
I pause for a moment. Then I say:
“He changed his mind about wanting kids and he left me. But he waited too long and now I’m 36.”
He rubs my back as if we’ve done this many times before. Then he whispers in the softest voice, in his strong Argentinian accent:
“Everything is perfect.”
I erupt when I hear it. I’ve considered that everything, one day, would be okay. I had not considered that everything is perfect. Instantly, though, even if only in this moment, I realize that it is. That swirling in the center of my grief is the life I’m meant to live. My tears wet his shoulder as he continues to whisper to me.
“You are exactly where you are supposed to be.”
I shake into him and I feel no shame, no embarrassment, no self-consciousness. He is shepherding me into this strange new experience with such gentle empathy that I am stunned. I feel completely held by the universe, which I once thought abandoned me. Yet here it was, delivering me everything I needed. Perhaps I was the one who had abandoned myself.
From this emotional closeness the physical intimacy emerges again, this time with ease and understanding and passion. I move into presence and notice that he is generous and tender and that my life does not look the way I thought it would, but that it is beautiful.
When I truly face myself, I can see that this ending was inevitable. In the end, I believed my ex-husband was my soulmate more than he behaved like one. As he detached and neglected my need for a timeline and clarity, I strived and pushed and fought for us anyways, for the family I so desperately wanted. When I’m truly honest with myself, with the help of this man who holds me, I can see how all that striving pulled me into a life that didn’t feel like my own.
It’s hard to face self-betrayal. It’s easier to live in anger.
I’m wrecked by the love that emerges when the anger subsides. Love toward my ex-husband, my funny best friend who I miss so dearly. And love toward myself, who clung to a life shaped by fear, relying on expectations and systems that suddenly seem unnecessary.
My new lover comes over a few days later. We talk for hours, I read his Tarot, we sleep together. It’s easier to connect with him now that he knows my reality. Tonight, my heart is still broken, my body remains heavy with grief, and everything is perfect. I came to Costa Rica to move forward with my plan, but what he’s given me is permission to live without one.
In the days that follow, we’re both busy and our schedules don’t line up. He texts me to ask how my day is without trying to see me. We schedule a day trip, but he cancels because of forecasted rain that never comes. The smallest disappointments feel massive. I was ready to be held, but I am not ready to be let down by someone else after the biggest disappointment of my life. I am done striving. I don’t text him again. There’s no romantic final goodbye. I know it will be a long time before I return to anything resembling dating.
Every morning in Costa Rica, I surf and let the ocean carry me. Towards the end of my trip, I’m out with my teacher and I get caught in a riptide that pulls me down the shore. He shouts at me to swim to him, as if that is not exactly what I’m doing. My shoulders burn, my eyes sting with sunscreen, and barreling waves continuously throw me off my board. I struggle back on, and try again and again to paddle out. No matter what I do, I can’t move forward.
The next time I’m knocked off, I stay in the water, recovering. I look back to my teacher, waiting for me.
You will get to him eventually, I tell myself. It will take the time it takes.
I surrender to the conditions of the ocean. My plan is no match for the riptide. My plan is no match for my grief. I am simply a five-foot human with a seven-foot board making my way through the largest and strongest forces on earth. I sit on my board, and I let the waves carry me away from where I thought I was supposed to go.
For once, I stop fighting the current.
I rest, knowing that when it feels right, I’ll start paddling again.
Hot damn you can write! Thank you for sharing your rawness. It’s beautiful.
I feel a book coming on. WOOF 💖