Chapter 58 ALEX #2
I slip back into my old routine and expand it.
I go back to work full time, mostly because I love the women I work with, who are more family than anything else at this point.
Catherine, Suzie, and Bailey come over for dinner once a month, and I have Sunday dinners with Bailey and her family.
I babysit Miles whenever I can, and he even comes to my house occasionally.
Anna and Jessica and I go out for brunch every other week, and I start going back to trivia with them. The first time I go, I see Ben, and he pales when he sees me and sits as far away from me as possible.
I ignore him, but the girls don’t.
Anna smiles a little too wide when she asks me how Theo’s doing and tells me how much she hopes he’ll start coming with us when he’s out. Jessica joins in, sweetly asking Ben if he’s ever met my boyfriend, and I have a hard time not laughing at the terrified look on his face.
He never shows up at trivia again.
Theo gets slightly calmer and less panicked as the months go by, but he hates prison. He gets thin because he hates the food and exercises as much as possible to help with his separation anxiety, which has gotten extremely bad.
The prison psychiatrist puts him on medication, and he seems different, calmer and more solid somehow, but less like himself.
He doesn’t like it, although it does help with the anxiety, much to his chagrin.
He’s also forced to see a therapist in prison, who he either refuses to speak to or lies to constantly.
I don’t care, because I buy two copies of every book my therapist recommends, books about trauma and self-esteem and domestic violence, and I make Theo read them with me.
We both struggle with it.
We read things that apply to us individually, but have difficulty addressing them whenever they interact with our relationship.
We read things that apply to our relationship and feel like they’re right for other people, but wrong when it comes to us.
There’s a level of intense codependency and trauma bonding that we can both acknowledge and recognize is technically unhealthy, but it doesn’t feel wrong to either of us.
I get comfortable enough in therapy and my support group that I start to let little things about Theo slip by accident.
When my support group leader pulls me aside and starts trying to address my relationship with Theo, I stop going to the group.
When my therapist starts trying to address my relationship with Theo, I stop going to therapy.
Without ever explicitly discussing it, Theo and I decide to do nothing to change how our relationship works, because it works for us.
We start fitting together in a much deeper way.
We get to know each other better, really know each other, because neither of us lies anymore.
We write each other long letters about the things that are too hard for us to talk about, and we talk on the phone every day, and I visit every week.
Because there are no conjugal visits in Oregon, it feels like a weird, continued version of us dating.
I miss him constantly, but I make a point to enjoy my time without him. I have the distinct feeling that once he gets out, it’ll be a while before I’ll be alone again.
I don’t mind.
He doesn’t want to let me out of his sight, and I always want him to know where I am.
I get the desire to start painting again a few months after Theo goes back to prison, and then I start painting a lot.
It becomes a fixation, and it’s all I do with my time outside of working and seeing my friends.
I paint abstract canvases in varied colors, but they always have the same general shapes.
Every time I finish a painting, I feel slightly lighter, but I don’t know why.
I keep painting the same thing in different forms for weeks until I finally feel like painting something else.
After a month, I look at one of the canvases and realize I’ve been painting various abstracted versions of Danny’s face hovering over me in the cabin, and then I tuck all the paintings away in the attic.
I almost have everything back that he took from me.
It takes me six months after my failed attempt to have sex with Theo to start masturbating again, and I don’t push myself, but I do everything I can to feel in control of my body again. I talk to Theo about it, and he begs me to take it slowly.
It doesn’t work at first, but I eventually get there, and I cry from sheer happiness the first time I have an orgasm.
I work to get used to the feeling of having something inside me again, which takes a lot longer to adjust to, but I finally get to the point where I can feel pleasure with no undercurrent of fear.
Once I have back the final thing Danny tried to take from me, I bring all the paintings down from the attic and burn them. Once they’re burnt, I write Theo a long, detailed, explicit letter about what I want him to do to me when he’s home, complete with a small pile of polaroids.
The next time I see him, he looks at me like he’s starving.
***
When his release is a few weeks away, we talk about what we’re going to do when he gets out.
Theo tells me that besides marrying me immediately and getting me pregnant as soon as I let him, if I let him, he’d like to take me somewhere, anywhere I want to go, because we both deserve a fucking vacation.
I ask him if he wants to help plan it, but he says he doesn’t care where we go, what we do, or how long we’re there, as long as it's somewhere he won’t lose sight of me easily.
He tells me he wants one week at home before we leave, to decompress and cook and fuck and relax, and I flash him a big, shit-eating grin.
“So, what you’re saying is that you want to fuck and play house?” He shakes his head at me, smirking.
“That’s pretty much all I’ve ever wanted, Alex.”
“I fucking knew it.”