I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love
Actions matter so much more than words, though I admit I wasn’t getting much of either in my last weeks in Portugal. It’s hard to indulge in late-night calls when late-night happens at different times. California is a long state, hundreds of miles between San Diego and Berkeley, but at least it’s one time-zone. We’d never been so out of sync before.
The only time I can recall the Work Bestie being angry at me was when my car died. I mean, permanently dead, not go get a can of gas dead. Living in the Mojave Desert without a car can be challenging. The Work Bestie had told me to call him in the morning, so he could pick me up and take me to work. This was many years ago, long before we were a couple. I appreciated his generosity, but it was only five miles. Besides, on foot I could take probably find a more direct route, so it could be even less than five miles.
My first attempt at a shortcut led me to a deep, dry wash, with vertical walls six to eight feet high, and no access point in sight. The sand at the bottom of the wash seemed soft and deep. Jumping down into the wash would probably be fine, but as far as I surveyed, I could see no likely way to climb out again. My “shortcut” had added significant time and distance to my journey as I trudged back towards civilization and sidewalks.
I was on my second attempt at a shortcut through the open desert, which was panning out better than the previous one, when another colleague called me. We largely make our own hours, but it was getting late for me to not be on campus yet for a day when I had said I would be there.
She wanted to know where I was. I wasn’t sure. This was not the answer she was expecting. She insisted on staying on the line until I found a car accessible landmark, and then she came and picked me up. I really wasn’t far from work at that point, but I was very sunburned.
When we returned to campus, she rubbed aloe vera into my ripe tomato-colored skin, and she and the Work Bestie each took a turn chastising me. He had told me he would give me a ride and instead of calling him when I was ready to go, I had wandered through the open desert, turning myself into walking chicharrones. Whatevs, I had it handled, more or less.
After that, I was commanded to take custody of the company truck until I replaced my car, and I knew that when the Work Bestie offered to help me, he wasn’t just being nice. He had every intention of helping me. When I moved into my first place of my own after leaving my ex-husband’s house, he was my one-man moving crew.
Shortly after I’d settled into that house, there was a period of some months when I was caring for my formerly estranged stepfather, also known as my dad. His health had improved when he first moved in with me. Then it declined sharply to just as bad, and then to worse than it was when he arrived.
When it got bad enough that he couldn’t physically stop us, a friend and I forcibly kidnapped him to the hospital despite his protests. I didn’t know it was possible to have blood pressure that high. He was admitted almost immediately. After that, he bounced around from one institution to another.
The hospital sent him to a local rehab, until the rehab sent him back to the hospital a few days later. Then, the hospital couldn’t find a vacancy at any local nursing home and sent him to one in San Diego. That nursing home then sent him to a hospital in San Diego. All the while, I was the next of kin, constantly answering intake questions by phone, often going in person to sign forms. The Work Bestie was my rock during all of this.
Easter is my favorite holiday. When I was born, I came home from the hospital on Easter Sunday wearing a teeny-tiny bunny suit. Easter is my holiday. I spent the first half of Easter 2017 sitting in my dad’s hospital room. It was mostly silent except for the machines that were breathing for him. It had been weeks since he was truly conscious.
During the decade my mother and I had lived with him, he spent an increasing amount of time high, which no doubt contributed to their divorce. Though I saw far less of him after that, his behavior at family gatherings showed no signs of pending sobriety. The substances changed over the years, but not his disdain for unfiltered reality. I hope that this time, sedated in hospitals, was like a really good high for him. Whatever he’d been trying to escape from for all those years, it surely couldn’t have followed him there.
At one point during this Easter weekend deathbed visit, he woke up and we made eye contact like he was fully lucid, which he hadn’t been in a very long time. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t with the ventilator. He gave up and slipped back into unconsciousness so quickly that I wished there was someone else there to witness that it had really happened.
Eventually, all my homework was done, and I was weary and hungry, so I said my goodbyes, telling my dad I loved him. Then I met with the Work Bestie. We went out for pho, and he helped turn one of the worst Easters into one of my most precious.
Sometimes, I just need a little human connection. I didn’t want anyone to save me, or fix my problems. It’s just that being responsible for my dying father had been heavy and I’d felt so alone in bearing the weight of it. The Work Bestie wasn’t there to fix it, or carry any of it. He was just there being my friend. Sometimes not feeling alone is all that I need though.
I don’t know how I would have gotten through the long train ride home if I hadn’t had a friend to lift my spirits. Early the next morning, the hospital called to let me know my dad had just died. I’m grateful that I’d been able to say goodbye, and that I’d had a friend willing to drop everything and be there for me when I needed him.
The Work Bestie dealt with me stressing about moving my dad in, trying to get a social worker, and my disappointment that Adult Protective Services had no resources when I was emphatic that he needed care I couldn’t give. From the time I moved my father in with me all the way through collecting his ashes, I was always feeling guilty because I wasn’t doing justice to work or school, or guilty because I wasn’t visiting my dad enough, or because I wasn’t spending that time with my kids when I did visit him, or work, or study. It was a lot. I don’t know how I would have made it through it all without my Work Bestie in my corner.
Every relationship has a hidden account, where action or inaction can increase or decrease the balance. Sometimes, when the Work Bestie is too distant or too silent for too long, it can make a big withdrawal, but the years of solid friendship had already put a lot into that account. When we first got together, a few months after my father’s death, the account was overflowing.
In the summer of 2021, that account was almost empty. Summer is a very busy time for the Work Bestie at his day job. This leads to a lack of communication, easy miscommunication, and hurt feelings without any good time to work through it.
I had been so close to calling the whole thing off. Honestly, if he hadn’t been my date for my cousin’s wedding I would have. If there’s anything more depressing than being single at a wedding, it’s being freshly broken up at wedding. I was tired of his running hot and cold, here and gone, but I just wanted to put a pin in it until after the wedding.
Honestly, I expected him to flake on the wedding too. I would make polite excuses for him to the family members who had been eager to meet him, and then quietly break up with him after all of the out of town relatives had gone. Then he showed up after all. When he shows up he’s perfect. I got to introduce him to the rest of my family. As frustrating as long distance is, the Work Bestie could always make it up to me. Whatever I was upset about, he could get me over it too easily.
The relatives who were just meeting him liked him. My kids who already knew him well were happy to spend more time with him. He fit with my family. That’s important. On the dance floor together, me with the Work Bestie, my mom dancing with her sisters, it struck me that I could happily spend a lifetime like this.
There are no shortcuts to a great relationship. Things are always rosy in the beginning, but if you’re lucky, and willing to put in the effort, over time you can build something really wonderful. Maybe the slow burn was gonna work out for us after all.
No, he wasn’t making any grand romantic gestures. He didn’t put any labels on it, or make me any pretty promises. But he showed up. Every time I really needed him, he showed up. I would rather have a good relationship without a label than someone who made a bunch of noise about being my boyfriend and wasn’t there when it mattered. Being apart for another summer was hard, but I took comfort in knowing we’d reconnect in the fall.
‘Cause when I look around
I think this, this is good enough
And I try to laugh
At whatever life brings
Cause when I look down
I just miss all the good stuff
And when I look up
I just trip over things
And I got no illusions about you
Guess what
Ani DiFranco
I never did
When I say
When I say I’ll take it
I mean
I mean as is
As Is
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