The Ugly Parts

On being loved before I knew how to believe it...

Before Patrick, I was a person in survival mode pretending that was just who I was.

I was funny. Capable. Messy. Sharp in the ways people sometimes mistake for confidence. I could hold a room together, read people quickly, and make myself useful almost anywhere. I could also be immature, dishonest, reactive, and full of more shame than I understood at the time. I did not think of myself as someone a steady person would choose. I thought love was something you kept earning, kept managing, kept trying not to lose.

When Patrick came along, I had no idea he was serious. He did. Partly because we had tried to have a relationship once, maybe twice before, and it didn’t work out. Mainly because we were both seeing other people simultaneously and didn’t take it very seriously. So I didn’t think this time would be any different than the others. That is one of the things that still gets me. I was still treating the whole thing like maybe, maybe not, maybe this is fun, maybe this is temporary, and he was already standing in it with both feet.

He had moved back into the downstairs apartment at his parents’ house, the same in-between basement apartment where I had briefly lived. I started staying there. I took temp jobs closer to his house than mine. Eventually I moved in and paid his mother rent again.

I also took money from his wallet. Not once in some cute, impulsive way. Enough that I still feel ashamed writing it. Enough that it still makes me cry when I think about it too hard. He kept his wallet on the dresser, and sometimes I took money from it like the damaged little shithead version of myself believed that was somehow survivable behavior.

I do not write that proudly. I write it because it is true.

He knew. Of course he knew. I was not nearly as slick as I probably imagined. He also knew I had borrowed Meg’s clothes without permission. Or stolen them, depending on how honest we’re being.

Back when I had lived in that basement apartment the first time, Meg and I were not close, even though we had been once. Her mother had offered me the space because Patrick had moved out with his then-fiancée. I was still in the cult then, walking around with borrowed certainty and terrible judgment, and Meg’s life did not fit inside the approved little box I thought everyone was supposed to live in. She was still married and seeing someone else, and because I was in the cult, this was not acceptable behavior for me to be around.

Apparently, though, it was acceptable for me to help myself to her closet. When no one was home, I would go into her room, take her clothes, wear them, and sneak them back like a dry cleaner in reverse. At some point, Meg noticed. One day there was a padlock on her bedroom door, which is a fairly elegant way of saying, “I know what you’re doing, you lunatic.”

A normal person might have apologized. A normal person might have confessed. I pretended nothing had happened.

Patrick did not live there then, but he knew. He knew plenty. He saw much more than I gave him credit for. And he loved me anyway. Not in a blind way. Not in a pathetic way. Not because he did not notice. Because he did.

Because he saw a person who was still acting out of damage and immaturity and survival, and he chose not to punish me for being exactly as messy as I was. He did not shame me. He did not use it against me later. He did not turn my worst behavior into leverage. He just kept loving me. I still do not fully understand that.

Part of me wonders whether taking money from his wallet was some unconscious attempt to ruin it before it got real. To scare him off. To force the ending early so I would not have to wait for the moment he figured out I was not worth the trouble. There is a particular kind of person who does not trust love at all once it becomes steady. I was that person. Chaos made sense to me. Anxiety made sense to me. Waiting for someone to turn on me made sense to me. Patrick’s steadiness did not.

That was the terrifying part. He thought I was a prize. I kept thinking, Why the hell does he want to be with me? That was the mismatch from the beginning. He saw something valuable. I saw someone who had not yet gotten enough information.

Eventually I could not stand living in his parents’ basement apartment anymore. I wanted to be a grown-up with my own shower and my own kitchen. Patrick was not interested in leaving, so I moved out on my own. This was after months of asking and asking, and him saying no.

Apparently, he was so upset that his mother, who was not exactly my biggest fan, told him to go get me. So he did. He sold his Harley and bought me a ring. He asked me to marry him. We moved to Jersey City near Uncle Paul.

Then his mother had a stroke and died before our wedding. She did not make it to the wedding.

Even that part feels important somehow. The woman who was not my biggest fan was still the one who told him to go get me. Life is strange like that. People are rarely just one thing. Love stories are rarely clean.

What I understand now, and what I absolutely did not understand then, is that real love is not loving the polished version of someone. It is loving the unflattering version too. The broke version. The ashamed version. The immature version. The version that borrows clothes. Lies. Takes money. And still cannot believe anyone decent would stay.

Patrick loved that girl. Not because she was easy to love. Because he loved her. That still undoes me a little. Like my mother jumping in front of a rolling car to save my life. Not because I deserved it. Because she loved me.

It also makes me think of Meg. She did a version of the same thing, though she had a lot more to forgive.

Years before that, the night before Meg’s wedding, I was her terrible maid of honor. She told me she was seeing someone else. She told me she did not want to get married. She said the wedding was too far along, as if a wedding were a machine that could no longer be stopped once people had chosen between chicken francaise and filet mignon.

Now, I would say, “Eff this.” Now, I would throw her in the car, take her somewhere safe, and tell everyone else to eat the deposit. But then I was still in the cult. I did not know how to process a friend handing me the truth and saying, everything is wrong. So I judged what I did not know how to help.

Then later, because apparently hypocrisy was also available in my size, I stole her clothes.

Meg knew all of it. The wedding. The judging. The clothes. The lying. The padlock I pretended was a normal decorating choice. She knew I had behaved like the shittiest friend ever. And she still forgave me. She still wanted to be my friend. I do not even know if I properly asked for that forgiveness. Maybe she gave it before I knew how to deserve it.

That is grace too, though I did not have that word for it then.

Before Patrick, I thought love was something that disappeared the minute someone saw the ugly parts. Patrick saw them and stayed. And because I was who I was, that was both heartbreaking and terrifying.