By Tymoteusz Buhl
Part One
Only 15 minutes have left until Terry brings Frank back home. After everything that has happened, I’m glad that little Frankie got to spend his 5th birthday with his father. It was my idea. Terry didn’t want to do that at the beginning. He said he’s busy or something, I don’t know. I didn’t listen. We had an entire fight about this.
I know I should be happy that he finally agreed, but now, as I was waiting alone in a big apartment, I didn’t know how to act or what to feel. This whole thing is crazy. I’ve decided to pour myself a little bit of wine. Just to relax. A few years ago I would just smoke a cigarette. But I stopped when I got pregnant and I don’t want to come back to that.
I’m glad that Frank is coming back today. I was lonely without him this weekend. I sometimes wonder whether Terry feels the same way when he leaves our son here. Does he ever feel lonely? I also wonder whether he thinks that we didn’t do the right thing by not moving in together when Frank was born. I mean, obviously we did the right thing. We were never in love. We never wanted to live together. We are completely different. Just because we happen to have a child together, it doesn’t mean that we should give up the possibility to live our lives. That’s what we both agreed on.
The reason why I’m feeling so weird right now is because I had a dream about Terry last night. We were on a date as if we were just a regular couple who wanted to get to know each other. I looked beautiful, he was all handsome. He was telling jokes, I was laughing. And at the end of that imaginary date, he walked me home and kissed me goodbye. That was the moment when I woke up. More confused than ever. Not because we kissed but because it actually felt nice? For the first time since Frank was born, I felt like I should reconsider moving in together with Terry. For the first time, I got anxious as I was thinking about all the girls he might be possibly dating right now. Is that jealousy? I have no idea. I also don’t know whether I should tell him anything. About the dream and my newly-discovered feelings towards him. I feel like I’m back in high school and I had a sex dream about one of my friends. I have the same anxiety that it’s gonna be weird between us from now on. But I’m not in high school anymore. For God’s sake, I have a child, an apartment and a full set of kitchen equipment. I’m a full-time grown-up. I shouldn’t be feeling like this.
Suddenly, I heard a ringtone. Someone’s calling. I picked it up. It’s somebody from an unknown company trying to get me interested in some unknown thing that they are currently selling. I kindly declined. Now it’s not the time. Have you ever turned on a sad song just because you really wanted to cry and you knew that this song would make you do that? Sometimes you even replay it just because it didn’t hit you hard enough the first time? That’s what I’ve been doing right now. The difference is that I didn’t listen to anything. I was repeating the same thoughts in my head over and over again. These confusing thoughts concerning my feelings towards the father of my child were equivalent to a sad song.
I’ve decided to check whether Frank’s room is ready for his owner. The walls are painted blue because Terry was one of those people who considered only two colours for a child’s room: blue for a boy and pink for a girl. I wouldn’t agree for pink as I would hate to raise a typical sweet, pink girl. I didn’t want the blue either. I wanted all the walls in my apartment to be white. But I’ve agreed to the blue. That’s called a compromise. That’s what adult people do.
I sat on Frank’s bed. His favourite teddy bear was sitting on a nightstand. The bear’s name is James. Frank picked that name. I have to say, I still have no idea why. I find it to be a very old-fashioned name for a teddy bear. Maybe my son is old-fashioned, who knows. I remember the day when we bought James. It was Frank’s first birthday. Terry and I went to a local Toys R Us. It was his idea to buy a bear. He said that getting a bear for the first birthday is some sort of tradition in his family. As much as I don’t agree with many traditions, I found that idea quite cute. It reminded me why I liked him in the first place. He was never ashamed to care or to be vulnerable in front of me. You might be surprised how rare that can be in the modern world. We spent a lot of time in that store then. It was one of the first times when we’ve left Frank with Terry’s parents for the entire day. We were walking around, looking at bears and talking about the toys we had when we were kids. We both had a weird feeling that we are still kids.
I always thought that in order to be a parent, you have to be the most adult ever. You have to have a stable life and you have to know absolutely everything about everything. I thought that there’s no room for uncertainty or emotional breakdown in the life of a parent. And now I am a parent. I may seem to have a stable life. But I have no idea what I’m doing. I remember being terrified when I got pregnant. The amount of responsibility I’ve suddenly taken was overwhelming. But somehow I’m managing. And now I know that this is what all the other parents do. They manage. Frank is an amazing person too. He was always very understanding. Even when he couldn’t speak, I felt like his eyes were telling me that everything was okay. That I’m doing great.
I got up from bed to look at the photo of me, Terry and Frank, hanging on the wall. I’ve always found the idea of genes extremely amusing. It’s extraordinary how we get some parts of look, posture, voice or behaviour from our parents. Even if we really try not to laugh like our father or talk like our mother, it’s impossible. It’ll always come up at some point. Frank’s got many things from us. He’s got Terry’s charming smile, his thick, dark hair and his natural calmness. He’s also got my sense of inquisitiveness and, unfortunately, my nose. It’s like me and Terry were made of Lego blocks and one day we decided to create another person from the blocks of our individual sets.
Suddenly I heard the doors opening. It was Terry and Frank. I went to the hallway to greet them. Frank runs up to hug me and says that he’s missed me. He did that in such a heartwarming manner, just like he knew that this was exactly what I needed.
‘How was the weekend with your dad?’ I asked him.
‘Awesome! Dad gave me a new Lego set!’ he answered.
‘Wow! You’ve got to show it to me!’ I was genuinely excited for him. He run to the living room to unpack his bag. I stayed alone with Terry in the hallway.
‘And how are you?’ I asked to break the ice.
‘It was great,’ he said. ‘Can I use the bathroom quickly?’
‘Sure.’
I was still standing in the hallway, looking at my son connecting all the Lego blocks on our couch. He is such a great person. How can somebody, being a combination of our characteristics turn to be so amazing? I’ve spent the entire day wondering whether a relationship with Terry would work. Whether such strong characters like us wouldn’t kill each other after an hour. But Frank seems to be doing great. That was the moment when I got my answer. I want to try to live with Terry. I only have to check if he’s up for it. And I have to do it now. He’s coming out of the bathroom right now.
‘Okay, I’m gonna go,’ he says as he reaches for a door handle.
‘Terry,’ I suddenly say, a bit too loud. ‘Wait, I have to ask you something.’
‘Yes?’ he asks. Oh my God. That’s it. That’s the moment where I should ask him. I don’t say anything. Why am I not saying anything? It’s my time. Say something, stupid. Now.
Part Two
I hate when movies romanticise sleepless nights. When the main character struggles to sleep, it usually looks so adorable. They sigh once or twice, roll to the other side of the bed and eventually fall asleep in a second. It doesn’t look like that in real life. I think about that every time I can’t sleep. I’m a practical person. I have a job and a child. I simply need these six hours of sleep to survive the day. And I’m mad when I can’t.
That night I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about the conversation I had with Terry the day before. I kept repeating it in my head. The words I managed to say to him. The sentences he replied with. But mostly I was reminding myself of how awkward it was. How humiliating that moment of silence was. When I started saying something and then stopped. And when he was politely waiting for me to finish while holding the doorknob, ready to leave my apartment and return to his life. I don’t remember the entire conversation because I was so stressed that I might have been mentally unconscious for a part of it. I remember him saying something and then I said something. And that inability of remembering the whole thing was the most infuriating. At some point, I couldn’t even remind myself what we’ve agreed on at the end.
It was 5 AM already. I stopped counting on falling asleep. I could either start to cry again or try to calm myself and think about yesterday’s conversation once again. I’ve decided to do yoga to relax. It usually helps with my thoughts. I got up from the bed and looked for a short practice video on YouTube. There’s plenty of these videos online. After a quick scroll, I found one lasting only half an hour. I rolled out my mat, changed my clothes and played the video.
It started with the instructor telling me to sit and meditate for a moment.
‘Focus on your breath’ she said. ‘And think about the reason you’ve started your practice today’. I started my practice today because I can’t stop thinking irrationally about the very important and very adult conversation I had yesterday with the father of my child.
‘Think about things that irritated you or made you anxious’ she continued. Well, I already thought about that. But OK, I’m gonna do that again. He came to my apartment with Frank, used the bathroom and then I stopped him because I wanted to ask him to move in with me. But I couldn’t say anything, as I realised that it’s too much to ask for. I didn’t know what to say. The silence was terrifying. It probably lasted only 7 seconds, but it felt like 7 hours. I can already tell that the yoga is working because I’m able to acknowledge the fact that the silence wasn’t that long.
As I was doing the downward-facing dog pose, I started to recall what happened after the silence. It wasn’t me who broke it. It was Terry.
‘Actually,’ he started. ‘There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’ I was still annoyingly quiet. I just gratefully looked at him for not being as mad at me as I was.
I transformed myself into the upward-facing dog pose, as Terry’s words finally started coming to me. I remember him taking a deep breath and continuing.
‘Have you ever thought about us trying once again?’
‘What do you mean?’ I managed to say, remaining genuinely shocked that he asked me that.
‘You know… Maybe we could try to do something together one day?’
‘Like, going to a park with Frank?’ I asked, pretending to be unaware of what’s happening.
‘More like a date,’ he calmly answered. ‘Just us two’. Even though it was extremely stressful for me to participate in that conversation, I found him saying that very charming. Yes, he’s asked me out before. But this time, it was different. I could see his eyes smiling, reminding me about the memories we’ve had together with Frank. The way he looked at me somehow managed to reassure me that he knows me. He saw me in both the best and the worst times of my life.
‘Just think about it,’ he said and left the apartment. I didn’t say anything as we all know that I’m not good with saying words.
‘Now stand into a warrior position,’ the yoga instructor said, pulling me out of my thoughts. I completely forgot about her for a moment. I was too busy being able to enjoy the full conversation in my head. ‘Think about what you want to do after this practice,’ the instructor calmly asked. I know that she meant the poses I’m gonna do by myself after her video ends, but I started to think about something I haven’t got to think about yet. I started to think about what’s next. I was calmer now. I wasn’t anxious anymore. We haven’t made any decisions yet. We just agreed on going on a date to see if there’s a possibility of us being together. There’s no harm in that, right?
I turned off the video and went back to bed. Only fifteen minutes have left till my alarm rings. I didn’t get any sleep that night, but that’s OK. I’m calm. I know what I want. I’m ready for whatever the day brings.