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“Now. Keep going,” his voice prompts me and I obey. I keep going. I think I’m spent, but his order does not allow me to stop.Or maybe I don’t allow myself to stop.I just want to please him, so I continue.
“Free,” I hear him say, and I relax and I collapse.
Only to wake up an hour later. He is still there, holding me. He shushes and soothes me back to sleep, but my mind is again restless.
“I don’t think anybody will understand this relationship,” I say, curled up inside of Him, fidgeting to get comfortable.
“Who is in this room?” he asks me.
“You and me.”
“That’s all that matters.”
I suppose that’s true, too. All that matters is that we understand it, because it’s our relationship. I can’t define it, but I know what it means.
Can I live this way? Maybe.I’ll figure it out. I’ve got someone who understands me. I’m not in this alone.
* * *
12
Kitten and a Boat
March 15, 3:00pm
It’ll be okay, David tells me. Two weeks ago, I saw him walk out of a phone meeting with a face like a thundercloud. He must have gotten some very unwelcome news. Today, I find out he’s let the Chicago team go. Everyone except the consultants who were working on large projects with him.
When Leslie became the partner in charge, he had given her a year to make this into a profitable unit. She allowed the young team to spend too much time gossiping and too little time working. And while David didn’t mind the office water cooler talk, Leslie, who was supposed to be managing them wanted to be their friend and never held them accountable. And eventually the bill for having too much to do and not doing it came due.
We had survived on little more than hope since Jaime pulled out of the deal. That and David’s old connections who kept asking him to do big projects. He wasn’t a big fan of working on these projects, but the old business model of working with large corporations paid well while our startup unit was experiencing its ups and downs. The very clients we hoped to move away from so we could work with promising entrepreneurs. Ironic? So it goes.
And now, I lost myself in our failures. Have we lost a major opportunity? Or perhaps we never actually had it. There were so many things that could have gone wrong between meeting and investment. I couldn’t logic myself out of this one, though. Disappointment begat disappointment.
Our remaining team had no desire to give up, and neither would I. I didn't want to give up our dreams, either! David’s calmness helped. He explained that this always happens with a temporary failure: you lose people who were not fully committed, but the loyal and few always try to make it work.
Despite his calm words and demeanor, this failure hits me hard. And I start spiraling into a downward cycle. I can’t even get out of bed. If I’d let my rational brain kick in, I would have told myself, who doesn’t fail? I didn’t want to think. I wanted to feel. I had trouble getting up in the mornings. I listlessly wandered into the kitchen to make breakfast— and then crawled right back into bed. I’d spend the day mindlessly browsing online. I spent my unproductive afternoons at the pool, solely to get out of the apartment. I couldn’t focus. I started swimming laps, and that helped. Exercise at least assured me that I had achieved that day.
I pile every mistake and disappointment into one. It’s a peculiar, destructive habit of mine. Understand that at this moment, every single bad thought I could dredge up from the bottom of my mind ran like wildfire and dragged me further down. Every mistake, every missed confrontation.
Maybe if we had caught what his ex-wife was doing earlier? If we had kicked her out of the suite before she had a chance to poison the well? It wasn’t just me, she thought he was sleeping with every cute girl at the office. But to me, it was personal. Maybe she succeeded with a few employees? I thought about them. How I could have prevented her from turning them against me. A cleverly dropped passive aggressive phrase about her boyfriend, perhaps. If they told David I needed to be cut from the team. He probably would have responded that I had reached partner status and helped keep the company together. Most of the team would have agreed with him. We probably would have lost a few over it.
I felt the guilt from that, too.
Now I’m being selfish. I made this all about me, and it wasn’t about me, but the team. Each client depended on all of us, including themselves, and to try to hijack total responsibility for the project’s failure, ignored all of their efforts towards its success. They needed me alert and working, not wallowing in self-pity. I couldn’t see that at the time.
* * *
April 21, 2:00pm
I may have been upand down all month, but David remained surprisingly calm and gentle. He didn’t press me, not for the most part, and, moreover, he regularly checked in with me. He cared about me. The first week I did almost nothing. Moped about alone.
Then he started poking me a bit. The second week, he flew out, as scheduled. He forced me to get dressed and showered and attend our normal meetings and networking events. Pretending to go along with a normal schedule worked. I started automatically falling back into a normal routine. Waking up, working, socializing, and sleeping. I’d wasted most of the month, but that’s sunk cost. I couldn’t think about that. I threw myself into recovering what we could and building what’s next, so much so, that David – the ultimate workaholic’s workaholic began to get concerned.
Finally, he told me to take a break. That I needed to trust him, and he’d make everything right. That I might as well take a couple days to myself and do something fun. “Remember Laura?”
She had already moved to Los Angeles by this time, and she asked me if I would share in her birthday celebrations.I suspect a setup between her and David, but I didn’t know. Who cares? I missed her! So, of course I said yes. The promise of the trip cheered me up, too. I sorely needed an excuse to kick me out of my bad mood. I couldn’t afford to take much time off, however, so I flew in for the day. We planned to spend the day on the beach, then catch one of her favorite concerts, after which I’d fly out that evening. I knew I’d barely catch the beginning of the concert, but that didn’t matter. I love spontaneous day trips.
I woke up bright and early and headed to the beach. Her muscular friend picked me up from LAX and treated me to crepes for breakfast. I’d never had such an enormous crepe packed with cream cheese and lox. The morning crept forward, but I didn’t hear anything from her. Then I got word that she’d been delayed and wouldn’t arrive till that evening. Her friend apologized, but he couldn’t keep me company. He could take me to the boardwalk, however. I wandered, sipping cold drinks and munching on soft pretzels. I can’t remember the last time I lazed around like that, a whole day to myself. I didn’t even try to join in any of the crowds. I watched a fire spinner with flamed hoops; a mime; a girl doing cartwheels on the sand. Why not? I ate at a Pinkberry, feeling quite hipster.
