The phone call that should have told me everything
|
We were still just dating that weekend. New enough that I didn't have a name yet for the feeling I had afterward. My debit card had been compromised, and USAA canceled it right away, the way they're supposed to. But USAA isn't a brick and mortar bank. There was no branch to walk into. No teller to hand me twenty dollars while a new card got sorted out. For a few days, I just didn't have easy access to my own cash. It was inconvenient. That's all it was, to me. Eddie didn't see it that way. He got on the phone with USAA himself, and he was ugly to the woman on the other end. Not firm. Not advocating for me. Ugly. He couldn't believe a bank would do this. He couldn't believe I'd put my money somewhere I couldn't physically walk into and demand it back. I remember sitting there listening to him, and something in me went quiet and a little cold. I didn't have words for it that day. If I'm honest, I told myself it was sweet. He cares this much about me already. Look how seriously he takes this. I want to be honest with you about what that feeling actually was, because I think some of you have felt it too and called it something kinder than what it was. It wasn't sweetness. It was the first time I saw how much he needed to control something that had nothing to do with him. My bank. My money. My weekend inconvenience that I would have solved on my own, the way I always had before. He told me, before that phone call ended, that I needed to move my money to a brick and mortar bank. Somewhere he could understand. Somewhere, I'd realize much later, that worked better for what he eventually wanted from me. I didn't argue. I filed the whole afternoon under intense, and I moved on. That's the part I keep coming back to now. Not that he was over the top on the phone with a stranger. People have bad days. People overreact to small things. It's that I felt the wrongness of it in real time, and I talked myself out of trusting that feeling before the day was even over. I didn't know yet that I'd spend years getting better at talking myself out of that feeling. That weekend was just the first time. Jaycee wasn't part of my life yet that weekend. But she is the one who taught me, much later, what it feels like when something is actually safe. Steady. No performance to it. She just is what she is, every single day, and I never have to wonder. Until next Sunday, |
The Jane & Jaycee Project
A weekly letter for woman starting over.
Panama City Beach is supposed to be the good kind of memory. Sand, sun, families laughing their way through a week off. For most people, it's the vacation they dream about all year. When I think of it, my stomach still turns. We were renting a house there. A house that was never really mine, in a place that was never really ours, and I was sitting in the living room writing a letter I didn't choose to write. He stood over me while I wrote it. The letter was to my brothers. It was cruel. It...
I told you last week I'd tell you what going along with it actually cost me. I've been sitting with how to say this for days. Here's where I'll start. It was my house before he was ever part of my life. I bought it years before I ever knew his name. I had a mortgage on it, the way most people do. I made the payments myself, every month, long before he came into the picture. It wasn't paid off. But it was mine to carry, mine to decide about, mine in every way that mattered. Eddie convinced me...
It started with questions. How much do you have in investments. Why isn't more of it in the bank. What if something happened tomorrow, would you be able to get to your money fast enough. Eddie asked them gently at first, the way you'd ask someone who clearly hadn't thought it through. Not pushing. Just curious. Just looking out for me. But the questions didn't stay questions for long. Get it out of there, he told me. Put it where you can actually use it. He said it the way you'd say something...