Page 12 of Not Our First Rodeo
She pushes back from me, her hands holding my shoulders tight. Her face is stern as she looks into my eyes. “You are the strongest person I know, do you hear me? You may not feel it, but you are. You danced on blistered feet and twisted ankles for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.”
“I was different then,” I say, voicing the fears that have been bouncing around inside my head for the last year. “I knew who I was then. I was a dancer. I don’t know who I am anymore, Jade.”
My whole life, I’d been chasing one thing. Dancing. Professional ballet. And when I got it, it was ripped away from me. And I looked at my life and realized I didn’t know who I was without it. I realized I wasn’t much of anything.
Since then, I’ve been floundering, trying to figure out who I am and what I want.
And now, I’m bringing another human being into this world when I don’t even know where I fit into it.
Jade’s face softens, and her hands move from my shoulders down my arms, squeezing along the way. “You’re still strong, Els, even if you can’t see that.”
The other fear I’ve been harboring comes out before I can rein it in. “I don’t know how to tell Beau.”
She looks momentarily confused, her perfect, freckled nose wrinkling. “Beau will be ecstatic.”
“I know that,” I sigh, rubbing my forehead, trying to quell the ache forming there. “But I’m just starting to work on myself, and I’m not ready for him to come home yet. If we lose this one too, it might ruin me, and I’ll ruin us. And I can’t do that to him, Jade. I can’t do it again.”
I almost broke us when I collapsed in on myself the last time. I pushed him away and I knew it was killing him, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong, how he could fix it. So I sent him away, told him I needed space and time to figure things out.
I know he thinks I meant us, but I really meantme. I needed to figure myself out. Figure out how to be okay in this new reality. Then he could come back and I would be better for him.
But now…
I let go of her and grip the bathroom counter, the stone cutting into my fingers. A welcome, grounding sort of pain. “He’s going to want to come home.”
Terror grips me as I say it. I’m still too messed up, too confused, too broken. I can’t be who he needs me to be, not yet, and I can’t let him know that. He’s been so patient, but it can only stretch so far.
Jade nods like she expected this. “Yeah, but you don’t have to say yes.”
My eyes snap to hers, the bubble of anxiety in my stomach popping at the words. “I don’t?”
She leans back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, Els. You don’t have to if you don’t want him to yet.”
My head starts bobbing, reassuring myself. “Okay, okay. We could…”
“You could date again,” she supplies.
I try to focus on what she’s saying. Try to make sense of it, of how that would help. I haven’t told even Jade why I asked Beau to leave, not the real reason, not that I think I’m too broken for him. I know she would try to tell me all the reasons I’m not, but she doesn’t know what it’s been like. HowgoodBeau has been, and how uneven things have become between us. How I was once a functioning member of society and an equal part of our marriage and how I became a shell of who I once was.
She thinks we were having issues, and that’s part of the truth. She doesn’t know that they were all caused by me.
“Date?”
“You’re married, but that doesn’t mean you have to start living like it right away. You could ease into it.”
The idea takes shape in my mind, and I latch on to it like a lifeline, an inflatable being thrown out into the raging sea that is my life. Maybe I could date Beau while I try to figure this out. Try to figure myself out. Try to figure out how to bring another person into this world.
I can let Beau in just a little, and I can hide the parts of myself I still don’t want him to see. I can have a piece of him and give him a piece of me. Just for now. I have nine months to get my shit together.
Surely that will be enough time. I’ll be better then. I can be better for him. For our baby.
I just need time, and then I’ll be better.
There’snothinglikethebone-deep exhaustion of calving season on a cattle ranch. Between performing prenatal vaccinations, hourly monitoring rotations, and the actual birthing of calves, we’re never not busy. My focus is usually horse training, but during calving season, it’s all hands on deck.
But I’m grateful for it. When Elsie asked me to leave in November, there wasn’t nearly as much to do to keep my mind busy. But after the night we spent together three weeks ago, I’ve hardly had any time alone. And when I do, it’s only to shower and pass out in bed for a couple hours of sleep. It’s infinitely better than the days I spent riding through the pastures alone, mending fences and building extra feeders to prepare for calving season.
I’m just stumbling into my cabin to catch a few hours of sleep when a familiar truck pulls into my drive, making fresh tracks in the falling snow. For a minute, I think I’m so exhausted that I’m imagining it. Imaginingher.
