Leaving the Bridge Behind
Brief post-wedding reflections on love, and some changes
TW: Mentions of suicide, emotional abuse
My first serious boyfriend told me he wanted me to “birth his children” six months into our relationship. A few months later, on the phone, he told me that he would drive off a bridge and kill himself if I didn’t come talk to him before I broke it off. When I asked where he was so we could talk, he replied, “outside your house.”
He was 21. I was 16.
My next serious boyfriend cheated on me ten times and lied at least ten times more. When I confronted him about a particularly bad instance of cheating, he gaslit me - not in the overused Gen-Z way, but in a very serious, pathological way that led to years of damage. His attempts at winning me back often involved suddenly bringing up marriage - something I had never wanted and would never want with him.
At the end of one fight, when I was halfway out the door, he abruptly asked me if I knew the Bow Bridge in Central Park, a place with absolutely no significance to either of us. Before I could respond, he told me he had been planning to propose to me there.
I was repulsed by the thought of it. I took him back anyway. It would be another year before I would walk out for good.
There’s a saying out there in the ether, bastardized by time and ubiquity, about how we only accept the love we’ve been taught to receive. For a plethora of reasons, I spent most of my life assuming love went hand in hand with fear and control. And in my drive for confirmation bias, I sought love that affirmed my assumptions. If it didn’t, it wasn’t real love. It couldn’t have been.
When I first fell in love with the man I married this summer, part of my brain tried to reject it for a surprising length of time. There was so little anxiety and so much ease between us that deep down, I assumed something was profoundly wrong. It was uncomfortable to not be in a back-and-forth fight for the upper hand - even more uncomfortable to realize he wanted there to be no upper hand at all. Until I met my husband, I didn’t know love was supposed to be a safe place. I thought my safety had to come at the expense of someone else’s, or theirs at the expense of mine, or some painful teeter-totter of the two. I manufactured fears and problems, but as much as I tried to make them stick, they didn’t. I was, for the first time, completely and utterly defeated - defeated because, as it turned out, there was nothing to win. I waited months for the fabled other shoe to drop before I could allow myself to understand that there was no other shoe.
The point is this: a great love knocked on the door of my life, and I almost didn’t let it in. My own ideas about what I deserved (less), what I could accept (less), and what love was supposed to feel like (worse) almost kept the entrance bolted. When all you know is conflict, peace feels like the biggest risk of all. I’m endlessly glad I took it anyway.
A month ago, a few days after our wedding, I walked across the Bow Bridge in Central Park holding hands with my husband. The air was sticky, hot, and oppressive, the water a slow and slimy green. We met a golden retriever who licked our feet, and we veered out of the way of tourists taking pictures. I wondered, absently, if we’d see a proposal. I kept walking. Hand in hand with my own happiness, I left the bridge behind.
A Housekeeping Note to You: Settling into life post wedding, I’m thinking deeply about what I want for this next stretch of my small existence. I want to write, but genuinely and from my soul - nothing else will do. With that said, writing every two weeks like clockwork doesn’t feel genuine to me right now (as I’m sure you’ve noticed.) Early Riser will continue, but not at a forced biweekly pace. All letters to you for the foreseeable future will be free - of course, paid subscriptions are incredibly appreciated, but they are no longer necessary here unless you truly want to give. I will see you down the line and I look forward to chatting when the next time comes.
What to Eat: Before it became clear that Brat summer ruled the land, I declared to a handful of friends that it was “big fish summer.” I’m happy to bow reverently to Charli, but I would recommend a nice big fish before the summer is over. I firmly believe that most perfectly cooked fish need little to no embellishment. Pan roast a salmon with lemon and a sprig of dill. Baste a swordfish steak or some scallops in lemon butter. Grill a bluefish. But most importantly, go find the freshest fish you can. Walk out of the grocery store and seek out a fish market (or a body of water) if you can find one. Lounge outside on a warm evening and taste the difference.
On Repeat: Oh, so much. What a summer for music releases. My summer has been almost exclusively soundtracked by new albums and EPs: Omar Apollo, Billie Eilish, Lucky Daye, Gracie Abrams, Ravyn Lenae, Saint Levant, Clairo, and of course, Brat. But at this moment, the top spot has to go to Moses Sumney, who is finally back with his first album since 2020. Technically, it’s an EP, but it packs all the punch of an album and has brought us some more of his legendary live performances.