The Plea
Beloved: Please stay.
Please don’t walk out the door. Please listen to me. Please hear me.
Lover: I know I lashed out. I’m sorry about the broken glass, the cracked wall, the broken you. I didn’t mean to bull through our “talk.” I’m just so angry.
I’m just so hurt.
The Admission
Lover: I am speaking to you from that hurt you flung at me in year two of our marriage.
I’m sorry for my anger, my impatience, my harsh words, my shameful thoughts, my bitterness and my silence. It’s just that I bottled it up for a time such as this. So I can use it against you. And I don’t know when I started to think like that.
But I am also speaking to you from that joy we drank in on the airplane, our first kiss. So public and long. I know you were embarrassed. But I couldn’t resist. You were so …
I am speaking to you from the pain, the love. And I want you to stay.
But marriage; I just don’t get it sometimes. I don’t know how to “die to myself.” I don’t even know what that means.
The preacher just spouts it out like blood and death should come naturally to me in a modern world. How do I bleed for you?
The Why
Beloved: I want you to listen.
I want you to hear.
Don’t walk away. Don’t stack up those stones. Stop building that wall so I can’t get in. That’s why I lash out. That’s why I close myself in. That’s why I don’t talk when you want me to. That’s why.
The Reality
Beloved: What is this vulnerability good for? Am I “authentic” to hear myself roar? It means nothing if I can’t come to you. Hold you. Whisper to you.
I don’t want public realness. I’m not going to post my hurt just because I can. I want private intimacy. I want to experience desires met in real time and in real communion for one another. Me to you. You to me.
This is how we go forth. Not in admitting to the world. But by confessing to each other. I know that now. So, I’m turning off the feed, the social, the silly Netflix, the disruptions, the interruptions, the fantasy-replacing-reality of our life together.
And I want you to stay.
I am not trying to be courageous. I am trying to save our love. I am not the brave one. I am trying to do the right thing.
Is that what it is to be righteous? The preacher said it’s fulfilling our obligations. I suppose I obligated myself to you.
But the work, the hard truth of it. Where do I find the strength?
The Abandonment
Beloved: You left the other night. You drove off after we fought. And I wanted to break something.
You said you were sick of my words, my lack of words, my laziness. I couldn’t win. I wanted you to go.
But I wanted you to stay.
Lover: I left you the other night. Oh, I didn’t leave the house. I opened my laptop.