He Came back
When a Lover Returns
He came back without an apology. I wasn’t really expecting one or sure if I even needed one. I changed. An apology was not going to change my mind. It is over for me.
Although he claimed that his absence was of a spiritual nature, time to get things right in his head. Time to reevaluated where he is and where he’s going. Time to reassess the relationship we shared and to determine his need for reconciliation.
Lovely sentiments, but I wasn’t immersed in his treatise or had forgotten his disrespectful behavior that cause my exit. I had already processed the end.
In my absences, of a spiritual nature as well, I tend to return with a level of clarity and observations I didn’t have before. Such is the case here, he was gone for about 18 months. That was enough time for some thorough reflection and growth on my part. He was MIA long enough to unpack the intensity and brevity of our relationship. We had dated for about a year.
What I was now sure of is this—I met him in the wake of grief. The world had settled a bit after COVID-19 in which both my mother and baby sister died. My sister actually died from COVID-19 complications. I was still processing it all and ready to breathe again.
Before that breath came an emergency surgery. My spine was collapsing on the nerves that controlled my legs. I was told that I didn’t even have time for a second opinion. I needed surgery immediately or I was risking permanently being confined to a wheelchair.
I had been routinely going to see a Chiropractor for some pain in my neck and shoulders which a tinge of back discomfort. I heard a whisper from Holy Spirit, “ask for a back diagnose.” He did some x-rays. The report came back everything was fine for my age and bone density.
Holy Spirit’s whisper got louder, “ask for a back diagnose.”
“Is there another way to check my back?” I asked the doctor. He did a MRI.
The new report gave a different diagnosis. With an office filled with patients, he told his staff to pause a minute. He took me in his office and apologized.
“I’m so so sorry,” he said. We looked at my collapsing bones together in silent. He explained what he had missed in the x-ray that showed up in the MRI.
A holy hush emerged in the room as he announced that time wasn’t on my side. I felt God’s presence in that moment along side the fear.
We immediately looked for a surgeon close to my home. He made the appointment for me. He said that I needed to go straight to the appointment that I didn’t have time for another doctor’s opinion only a surgeon could save me.
I was an empty-nester at the time and all my family members lived about a thousand miles away from my front door. The idea of a spine surgery and its risks put me in such a state of despair, but God’s peace enveloped me.
I lived on the three floor of an apartment building. My mother was dead. My son was in college. I had to survive this.
The surgery was successful. The recovery was hell. I begged for death many nights. I had never felt pain like that before. It felt like someone was sawing me in half every night. Sleep was a foreign friend I used to know. It was torture.
My ability to go to the bathroom was the worse. My sister had moved in with me during this time to help my son.
My longing for my dead mother intensified. She had been there for a lifelong of surgeries. I had hammertoe surgery and she was there. All of my scrapes and scars, my mother was my caretaker. Now she was dead.
I met him after everyone had left. I was walking with a cane. My son had returned to school and my sister took a job in California on the other side of the country. He was the exhale I needed.
He reminded me that I was still attractive as a disable woman. The idea of dating post-surgery was possible with a new way of moving through life was what I needed. The cane was a humbling experience.
I had a new identity—disable person. I had chronic back pain. I was under pain management care. I was tested for abuse of narcotic drugs. Monthly visits to pee in a cup was debilitating. I felt like we were all treated like cattle being wrangled in stalls. I hated the experience.
The waiting room canes, walkers and wheelchairs, patients all ages and size were sprawled around this small office space waiting. The doctor was always and I mean without exaggeration an hour or more behind every month.
I couldn’t live like that, so I stopped taking the narcotics and started healing.
Prayers, therapy, stretching, self-help books, Tylenol and Gabapentin once or twice a day instead replaced pain management appointments. I needed his attention and affection for sure.
Today, he is loved. And yet there’s no room for a return at least the way in which he is desiring a reconciliation.
Usually ends are tumultuous—bridges are burnt to ash to never be crossed again, but I learned that when I looked around my life I stood in smoldering ash.
I learned that endings do not require fanfare, fireworks, or battles. We can simple go down a different path. Forks in the road are part of life’s journey. Sometimes the road bends to meet an old friend or lover again, conversely reconciliation is not alway a guarantee.
Sometimes a particular relationship was a pause along our journeys.
He is persistent though, I gotta give him that. My heart has moved on. There’s no longing for what was or what could have been. There is only acceptance of what is. And that acceptance is met with fondness not regret.
I’m delightful to see my reflection in the mirror today. I’ve grown. This man who was once my kryptonite; today is a blur of a woman I used to be.
Selah
My favorite part of this piece was the recovery time after the surgery. My favorite line "He reminded me that I was still attractive as a disable woman."
I felt my bones going on the discovery of the issue, the surgery, the recovery (aka management) and the donning of the new persona with you. Well done.