When The Leaves Fall
Isabella is a marketer by day and a multifaceted being by night. She lives in central Pennsylvania with her fiance and cat.
I met him as the leaves fell, bones of 101 loves that never came to be crunching beneath my feet. We waded through shadows, parting the dark like curtains in a slow, hypnotic march, and I knew I had to come to grips with my mind.
Trauma, they told me: CPTSD. Dissociation. Anxiety. Panic disorder. But here was this man, walking before me, sheltering me through the shadows, pulling my feet from the mud, covering me in blankets and love and romance like I might just give him something to keep afloat. Like our future was a show he'd seen on repeat.
Me? A mess. I drove people away with hurricane force, even as I sank my nails in to pull them closer. My love came with teeth, more bite than whisper. But he didn't like, or deserve, to be bitten with fangs I'd honed to serve as the weapon that kept me alive through a childhood of threat and dread.
Well over 30, I didn't even know I should've been over it. I didn't even know I had experienced more trauma than love.
My ex husband once told me I changed like the weather, if the weather could, and wanted to, destroy everything you owned. I worry he's right to this day, that I bring nothing but hail and fire to those who love me.
But that's not why we're here. This is a love story.
Him. He smiled and laughed. He held my hand and did my laundry. He nursed me through chronic illness flares. He loved me visibly, physically, and I could only give what I knew of my heart, which at the time was a beating time bomb.
He persisted. He took me on dates, he even listened to what I had to say. He told me he loved me every day once we committed and I moved in.
I was wildfire, fear and anger burning a path behind me, so I had to start slowly. It started when I promised to stop threatening to break up if we argued. Now, I feel sick to my stomach knowing he wholeheartedly agreed to be with someone so undeserving.
It continued, though. He cared for me. He saw me as human. I tried to be nicer, attempted to let him navigate me through the shadows without losing my temper, without punishing him for others' crimes. Maybe, if I could get close enough to the end by treading along in his wake, I'd come out better, stronger, kinder, like him.
He asked me to marry him. He drove me to doctors' appointments. He washed the dishes and said "yep," when I said "you'd give me whatever I want right now," post argument. And when I slipped the ring on my finger and said yes, I still wasn't ready for the kind of love I would have to be able to show myself in order to let this man love me.
Sometimes the shadows were deep, dense, screaming ghosts, and I feared it would tear his heart out to love me.
And then, all at once, everything was a little less opaque. The meds were working. The work was working. I was maybe beginning to become something worth cherishing. I could see an end to the pain and feel my heart taking shape. The haze that had been fogging up my every thought and interaction cleared up a little.
And he still cared for me, still treated me as he always had, as something worth time and attention. We were engaged. We were buying a house. I was actively trying to be the very best version of me, knowing it still may not feel like enough, knowing that was okay.
Here we are 8 years later, and I am finally ready for the kind of love this man can give me. I had always wanted to be, but it was never easy for me to see him through the panic, the pain, and the fear. We are getting married this year, when the leaves start falling.
