58. Kendall
Kendall
“You had postpartum depression.” Magdalena says. A statement not a question.
“Yes, I had severe postpartum depression. That and a whole lot of fucking grief. I mean a doctor just hands you this small, pink, wriggling bundle of flesh and you’re just supposed to say thank you and you’re expected to keep it alive and happy?
That’s kind of fucking nuts,” I scoff. I don’t look at him but I can feel Kai smiling next to me.
“And no one talks about that. How wild and beautiful and terrifying that is. How motherhood rips you wide fucking open, leaving your heart vulnerable and exposed, just to see how and if you put yourself back together again. No one tells you how hard it is to give up everything that you are to become someone’s mom. ” I sniffle.
“Perhaps if people talked about it more often, less people would become mothers,” she acknowledges.
“Probably,” I agree.
“But not you,” she observes.
“But not me.”
“And how does that make you feel? How does being a mom now feel?”
“Still terrifying,” I admit. Because are you even a parent if you aren’t scared, worried about every decision that falls on their little shoulders? “I still have no idea what I'm doing half the time. But I do love it and I love Akio more than anything. I’m very happy and lucky to be his mom.”
“Going back to what you said before about grief and sacrifices… Can I ask about some of the things you were grieving? What are some of the things you had to give up?”
She’s good. We’re in the thick of it now. I’m in the trenches baring my fucking soul. I’ve been cut open, my entrails laid across the table for everyone to see. I just hope it’s enough.
“I was grieving the life I had before I was a parent. I missed Kai so fucking fiercely and I was grieving our relationship too. And I knew that my dreams would look different. I just hadn’t expected it to annihilate me.
I really thought I had ruined my life. That I was an imposter of a mother.
I questioned if I loved Akio enough, if I was enough for him.
I thought that every choice I made was wrong.
I felt wrong. I went to a very dark place. ”
“Can I ask how you got out of that dark place? Did you have a support system to help you with Akio?”
I force a smile. “I had my moms. They helped me with Akio and encouraged me to get support for my mental health. I started seeing a therapist who specialized in postpartum depression. It was slow and painstaking and difficult but six months later, I started feeling a little better, like I had a better handle on being a mom,” I explain.
Magdalena shifts her body to Kai now, I assume trying to gauge his emotional reaction.
I haven’t really looked at him since I started word vomiting about this traumatic part of my life. I’m not sure I want to.
“Kai, how does this part of Kendall’s story make you feel?
” she asks him. Unwillingly, I turn to him and see tears brimming his eyes; his features are soft but there’s a distinct look of distress on his face.
Out of all the things I have said in these sessions so far, this confession cut the deepest. I realize that now.
This isn’t the nick of a small unremarkable blade.
This is a knife twisting in your gut, a dagger to the chest to carve out an already bleeding heart.
Fatal. Damning. Irrevocable.
This will be the secret or one of the secrets that break the camel’s back. I’m sure of it. And really, how many can one person take?
“I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have helped,” he says choking up. “To know you were in so much pain feels awful. Like my heart fucking hurts hearing this.”
I start tearing up again too because what else can I do? What else are we supposed to do with our heartache except release it, share it with those closest to us, and try to forge something better out of it?
“I’m so sorry, Kai. I don’t want to put you through any more pain. I know you would have done everything you could if you were there. None of this is on you, okay? None of it,” I reply, my voice unwavering, trying to reassure him.
“The hell it’s not,” but there’s no edge to his voice. It’s all quiet desperation, pleading, achingly tender. “I can’t live without you, Ken. I don’t want to. Okay? I can’t. There is no me without you,” he says with a shaky breath, a tear sliding down his face.
“I know, Kai. I know. Me either. But I’m not in that place anymore.
” I squeeze his hand in an attempt to ground him and slow his breathing.
I can tell he’s panicking, spiraling, his brain putting pieces together he’s never seen until now.
My eyes meet his dark smoldering ones. They are burning with vulnerability and concern, and I see the moment he steps back from the ledge.
“Okay,” he replies. For a moment, I think that might be the end of our time—it feels like we’ve been here for hours. Then Magdalena turns back to me.
“Kendall, do you blame yourself for your pain and your grief? For Kai’s?” she asks. I want to laugh wildly, hysterically because of how absurd the question is.
Who else is there to blame but myself?
“Yes,” I choke out. “Of course I do.”
“Can you forgive yourself?”
“I don’t know,” I say, squirming on the couch.
“Okay, we can work on that together. What about a conversation with your younger self? Could you do that?” she presses. God, I hate exercises like this. They always feel so fucking awkward and forced. But I also know sometimes they’re necessary so I reluctantly oblige her request.
“I guess?” I respond.
“If you could talk to her now, your younger self, what would you tell her, what would you say to her?”
“I would tell her that even though you feel like you can’t do it, that you don’t know how to be a mom, you can and you will figure it out.
That eventually you find a groove and a rhythm and Akio's smile brightens every day and his laughter becomes your favorite sound.” I’m sobbing and hiccupping now but I fight through it.
“I would forgive her for not feeling like she was enough, for not feeling ready, for not bonding with him immediately. I would tell her she is so much stronger than she thinks she is. That there is so much beauty and wonderful things waiting for her on the other side of the pain. That you and Kai find your way back to each other and everything will be okay.”
“I also want you to tell her thank you. To thank her for being who you needed to survive at that time, okay? I want you to send her kindness and gratitude. I don’t ever want you to forget the lessons that she taught you.
But I do want you to know if you’re ready, if she no longer serves you, you can choose to let her go. That version of you.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“What do you two need from each other in this moment? Is there anything you need to hear from each other?” Magdalena asks both of us.
Kai turns to me slowly. “Kendall, I need to know that you’re okay and that if you ever feel like you’re in a dark place again, you’ll tell me so I can help you.”
“I’m okay, Kai. I promise. And if I get into a bad headspace again, I’ll be open with you about it. I do think a lot of it was situational and I know I’m in a much better place now.”
“What about you, Kendall? Is there anything you need from Kai?”
I swallow. “I know what I need to hear but I can’t ask for it and I sure as hell don’t deserve it,” I admit. I can feel Kai move closer to me on the couch, his hand grasping mine.
“Ken, I forgive you. And honestly, I think a piece of me forgave you a long time ago. I’m not mad, I'm not angry. I’m not bitter over it anymore. We're okay. We’re better than okay because now I know how we got here.”
“Before our session ends, is there anything else you want or need to share about that time in your life?” Magdalena asks us.
Kai clears his throat. “Who I was back then, the things I did. That wasn’t me. I mean it was but it was also pain, grief. I was trying so hard not to feel those things. It’s in no way a reflection of how I felt about you,” he concedes.
“And how did you feel about her? If you could use one word?” Magdalena prompts him.
“Love,” he answers immediately.
It’s not an admission. Not exactly. But it’s pretty fucking close.
It’s a very simple answer to a terribly complicated question.
I’ve never yearned to hear three little words more.
I have never wanted to hear them less. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, everything I’ve ever wanted in my life and with Kai at the bottom.
But I’m not sure I’ll survive the jump, this incredible leap of faith.
It’s jumping and hoping to god we land on solid ground this time, that our newly built foundation could survive the impact.
Not that it matters; I’m already falling for him or perhaps back in love with him.
But how honest is that really? Because to fall back in love with him, it implies I fell out of it to begin with.
And the simple truth is that I never stopped loving him. Not for a second.
“Kendall, what about you? Anything else you feel needs to be said?” she presses.
I turn my body towards him and take his hand in mine.
“Kai, if I could go back and fix things, I would. I know I nearly ruined years of friendship and five years of love. Love that we built and worked hard for and cultivated together. I know that. I wouldn’t change everything because Akio was going to come whether we were prepared for him or not and we weren’t prepared,” I smile.
“But blowing us up, reducing us to ash, running away. I wouldn’t make that choice again.
I would fight for us. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t brave enough before, that I hurt you like that. ”
***
Every once in a while, there are things that don’t get addressed in therapy.
Things that we leave unsaid and unknown.
And most of the time, we let them go because we don’t want to beat a dead horse.
We don’t want to push harder than we already have.
For Kai, I could sense the not knowing was gnawing at him.
A few days later, while Akio is napping and we’re lying in bed together, he asks me something I suspect has been eating at him for years. He’s sitting up on his side, his head resting on his elbow, staring at me in a way I don’t know I’ll ever get used to.
“Ken, I need to know something,” he comments while he traces the lines of my palm and I hear the trepidation in his voice.
“You said you missed me a few days ago. That you realized shortly after you left that you had made a mistake. Did you ever think about coming back and telling me the truth sooner?” I see the hope in his face.
I can feel the breath he is holding. The only thing I can be is honest here.
“Of course I did. Every day. I went to your house once and I planned on begging for forgiveness and telling you everything. But I saw you with your girlfriend at the time and I just couldn’t do it.
I lost the nerve,” I confess. Saying it out loud, reliving the whole thing years later almost feels worse than the actual experience.
He looks relieved though and he deserves that.
Relief. Comfort. Peace. I’m starting to understand I do too.
“My girlfriend?” he asks, trying to work something out in his head.
“Leighton? The supermodel? The leggy blonde bombshell?” All incredibly obvious, accurate identifiers.
Not to mention she’s a woman that I imagine would be hard to forget.
But it’s abundantly clear he’s still trying to remember who I’m talking about.
And it hits me that the stock I put in their relationship was not the same as his.
“Oh right. She’s just someone I dated to get my parents and teammates off my back. They knew I was miserable over our breakup,” he responds nonchalantly.
“But I saw you guys together…” I trail off.
But what did I really see? A happy couple or just the image Kai had needed to portray to the world?
“Kendall, you saw someone I dated once and she happened to be one of many girls I slept with to keep a lid on my pain. It was a mask. A distraction to get you out of my head, which clearly didn’t work by the way,” he smiles.
“I don’t even remember being with her because all I could think about at that time was you. ”
How could I have been so wrong? How many nights had I laid awake crying over what I witnessed in that kitchen?
Wondering if the beginning of him and Leighton signaled the end of me and Kai.
Distraught over what I would never have with him.
So much fucking time wasted. And isn’t that what it all boiled down to in the end?
Time. Time Kai would never get back with Akio.
Time Kai and I could never reclaim. All we have left is what we choose to do with our time now.
And I’m not about to spend one more second not making the most of it.