32. Daniel
Daniel
"The Wait"
I go home from the park and I sit at my kitchen table and I open my journal, which has become, over the past five months, one of the most reliable things in my life — not because it solves anything, not because writing things down is magical, but because it requires me to say things precisely, to commit to the true version rather than the version that lets me off the hook.
I write: She said okay. I don't know yet what okay means in practice. I'm not going to define it. I'm going to let it be what it is.
I write: I am afraid of failing her again. Not in a way that paralyzes me — in a way that I want to take seriously. The fear is appropriate. The response to the fear is the thing I'm responsible for.
I write: Who do I want to be?
And then I write the answer, which is longer than I expect, which takes me most of a Thursday afternoon, which includes things like: a man who is curious about his own life, not just his career.
A man who can sit on a back porch in the cold and not reach for his phone.
A man who knows his wife's shampoo. A man who cooks dinner on a Tuesday for no reason other than that he wants to.
A man who goes hiking in the rain because Angie is excited about the fungi and that is enough reason.
A man who chose to change not because the house was empty but because he understood, at last, what the house had been full of.
I close the journal.
I call Jonah.
"Good news or bad news?" he says when he picks up.
"Neither," I say. "Just news. We're going to try. Slowly. Together."
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "How do you feel?"
"Terrified," I say honestly. "And more certain than I've felt about anything in years."
"Those aren't opposites," Jonah says.
"I'm starting to understand that," I say.