Chapter 20 – Space. - by Writewithoma

He asked for space. Not in those words exactly. He never said I need space the way people say it in films, cleanly and clearly so everyone knows what's happening. He said it the way he said most difficult things sideways, carefully, in a way that left room for me to misread it if I wanted to. What he said was that he thought we'd been too much in each other's heads lately. That maybe stepping back from the intensity for a bit would be good for both of us. That he wasn't going anywhere, he just needed to breathe. I heard it for what it was. "Okay," I said. Just that. He seemed surprised by how little I pushed back. I could hear it in the pause after. I wasn't being easy about it I was being strategic. Because I'd done the calculation in the seconds between his words and my response and arrived at a clear answer: pushing would make it worse. So I didn't push. I gave him what he asked for, cleanly, without making it a scene, and I went home and I breathed through the tightness in my chest and I told myself this was fine. I gave him space. I gave him space so thoroughly and so deliberately that by the end of the first week I was the one not responding quickly. By the second week I'd built a rhythm without him that I wore like armour. I went about my days fully, made them full on purpose, and when he texted I'd reply eventually, in my own time, casual and unbothered. Two could play at breathing. What I didn't expect was for the space to sting. Not from missing him I'd prepared for that. But from the specific sting of watching him get what he asked for and not seeing any visible relief in him. He didn't seem lighter. He seemed, if anything, like someone standing in a room wondering where the furniture had gone. He came back first. "Why haven't you been responding?" he asked, and the fact that he had the audacity to sound slightly wounded about it would have been funny if I wasn't still managing my own feelings about the whole thing. "You said you needed space," I said pleasantly. "I gave you space." "I didn't mean" "You didn't mean what, exactly?"A pause. Then, with the specific energy of a man who realises he has walked directly into something: "You're mad." "I'm not mad." "You're doing the thing with your voice." "What thing." "The thing where you're very calm and very polite and that means you're actually furious." I was quiet for a moment. "I'm not furious," I said. "But?" "But," I said, "the next time you need something from me, you could try just saying the actual thing. Instead of making me guess." Silence. Long enough that I thought I'd gone too far. Then, quietly: "Yeah. You're right." I hadn't expected that either. The directness of it. The absence of defence. I exhaled. Let some of the armour down. "Are you okay?" I asked. Really asked. He was quiet for a moment. "I'm figuring some things out." "About us?" "About everything." A pause. "Not about us. We're fine." I wanted to ask what everything meant. I didn't. Some questions you have to wait for the person to be ready to answer."Okay," I said instead. "Okay," he said. We stayed on the call until late. And when he prayed that night, something in the words felt heavier than usual, like he was carrying something into the prayer that he hadn't put down yet. I held onto that. The fact that whatever he was carrying, he was still carrying it toward something. Still bringing it somewhere. It wasn't nothing.

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