We sit across from each other at the metaphorical breakfast table not saying a word. If this were a Julia Roberts movie, I’d ask you to pass the cream and my words would have such a heavy meaning. Deep, sorrowful glances would be taken when the other is not looking as we reach the height of our conflict. Music would sway the heartstrings of all those watching as they wonder if this couple can overcome the obstacles they face.
But I am not Julia Roberts. You are not a handsome and debonair man who swept me off my feet with quirky charm and a British accent. We are simple two people who met when we were still trying to figure out the world.
We can’t be sitting across from each other at the breakfast table, the room filled with a tense silence because we don’t each breakfast together. In fact, it was only within the last year that we were even home at the same time. For some reason, after years and our entire marriage of me working nights and you working days, our relationship no longer works. Sleeping at nearly the same time seems to be something we are incapable of doing.
After all these months, I still struggle to be asleep before 3am. After all of these months, you still sleep on the couch most nights, favoring your computer and your smart phone games over meaningful conversation and evening snuggles.
No one talks.
We don’t talk.
It seems, I fear, that we made the same mistake so many make. It seems that when you are 23 years old, there is no mountain too high. There is no cloud in the sky threatening to rain in the near future. And so, as young newlyweds do, we assumed things would always be like they were. Young, in love, able to look at the hours apart as nothing more than a better reasons to love being together.
But we no longer have that spark. We no longer look at the quite kiss in the morning as I crawled into bed and you left for work as the moments we live for. Somewhere, at some point, it became too hard to get that kiss in for you. I no longer fall asleep with the lingering warmth of your lips on my forehead. To be honest, I don’t even know why. One morning you simply slid your work shoes one and left quietly, gently shutting the bedroom door behind you. And you never kissed my forehead again.
If I were Julia Roberts, I’d be crying and explaining how that simple act exemplifies our entire relationship. You would angrily listen before realizing in your heart that you want to kiss my forehead in the mornings. And now that I no longer work at night and sleep during the day, I might even be awake for that kiss.
But I am not Julia Roberts. And you didn’t have a change of heart when I cried. You clung to your routine with a feverish frenzy. You clung to your ways, unable to adapt to my being home.
I am not Julia Roberts. And you don’t kiss my forehead anymore. And we can’t find a meaningful glance over the breakfast table because we don’t have breakfast together and you much prefer to be alone; so I am alone too.
