Feeling the impending separation between us at the end of each Saturday was almost unbearable, and yet we knew, as evening shadows lengthened, that we had to part. We didn’t talk about it—how painful it was, or when it would happen. We just shored ourselves up for the inevitable. We both knew when it was time and we’d get up, shake out our blanket, fold it, and put it in John’s trunk.
I sat as close to John as I possibly could and he put his arm around me as we drove to my apartment, where he silently walked me to the door. With one final, lingering kiss he was on his way. I stood in the doorway with tears streaming down my face and waved good-bye.
We talked on the phone every night, and this sustained us until we saw each other the following weekend. We said all the things to each other we couldn’t say or didn’t want to waste our time saying when we were together.
I love you.
I adore you.
You are everything to me.
I wish we never had to be apart. 283
But we didn’t make any definite plans to live together, mostly because John wasn’t in a position to make plans. He didn’t have a job, and although he looked for work, he wasn’t actually in any shape to work. PTSD wasn’t an official diagnosis in those days, but John was definitely suffering from it. At times, he had flashbacks so debilitating that he couldn’t get out of bed. He told me that whenever he heard a helicopter fly over his house he would automatically fall to the floor. He said the sound catapulted him right back to Panama in his mind. And whenever he heard a loud sound, like a car backfiring, he went on alert.
I didn’t know about “triggers” at the time, although I had my own. I couldn’t go into an auto repair garage without getting dizzy, or be around a man who worked on cars and had grease under his fingernails without becoming nauseated. The sight and smell of Vaseline made me gag. Much later, I would discover that these were symptoms of PTSD, and that my triggers were things that reminded me of Steve.
John and I had both been traumatized and we both suffered flashbacks because of it, but I was too cut off from myself emotionally to address my own problems. So I focused on John’s instead. I listened to him the few times he opened up about his pain, and I expressed empathy and compassion for his suffering. I told him I imagined it must be horribly difficult to live with the pain. I soothed him with my voice and let him know I understood how difficult life had been for him. I did all the things I wish someone had done for me.
Looking back on it now, I wish I could have given myself the same compassion—compassion I so desperately needed— instead of constantly being self-critical. I wish I could have countered my mother’s criticism and my own tendency to shame myself with self-compassion. I wish I could have given myself the support and understanding I gave John, told myself the things I told him: “You’re going to be okay. You’re doing the best you can under the circumstances. It’s understandable that you would be having a difficult time getting your life together, you’ve been through hell.”
chapter 40
As the months went by, John and I became more and more serious about each other. While nothing had changed in terms of John getting a job or being more financially independent, he started talking more and more about us being together.
One day, as we were getting ready to pack up to go home, John looked at me, held my hand, and placed a ring on my finger. It was the ring he always wore—the ring his father had given him.
“I can’t ask you to marry me, Beverly, not yet,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, we are already married. I want you to have this ring to show you how much I love you and to seal my commitment to you.”
I knew the story about how John had come to have his father’s ring. When he graduated from high school, his father had come down from Northern California to see him. The next day they had gone out to lunch and John’s father had handed him the ring, which had first belonged to John’s grandfather.
John told me how he’d felt overcome with love for his father in that moment. He had fond memories of his grandfather, who had died many years before, and he knew his father loved him very much. He’d often admired the ring on his father’s finger and he knew what a gesture of love it was for him to give it to John.
“This was my father’s ring,” John said, clasping his hand over mine. “I want you to have it.”
I, too, was overwhelmed by this gesture of love. “I can’t take your father’s ring, John,” I protested. “He wanted you to have it.”
“And I want you to have it. We’re together, Beverly. It’s not like I won’t still have it. It will just be on your hand instead of mine.”
I couldn’t say no to John’s loving gesture, and in return I gave him my class ring, which he promptly put on his pinky finger.
I hadn’t grown up thinking about my wedding day the way so many other girls do. It hadn’t been part of my life plan. My mother had such negative things to say about marriage, and since she’d opened up and told me about her own marital history, I wondered whether I too might be incapable of committing to marriage. In fact, when I thought of being married I always worried that I’d wake up one morning, take a look at the man lying next to me,
