The first time I called Scott by my ex's name, we were lying next to each other. The morning air was already heavy with the salty taste of Redondo Beach humidity. “It's okay,” Scott whispered with saintly understanding; Seemingly indifferent to my mistake, he suggested we get out of bed and save the day.
We had been together for six months and, as we became closer, met each other's families and became the couple known as “Scott and Cathleen”, I continued calling him Paul. In the supermarket, in front of friends and when we were alone. With a dramatic flick of his finger, he uttered, “You didn't just call me.” Pablo … again?” To which I would throw my hands up, like Scott was the culprit.
Why was I sabotaging my relationship with Scott, a man I loved so completely that I felt whole, by invoking the name of a man I once loved so poorly? I knew it was more than a cognitive problem. My broken eight-year relationship with Paul had meaning: he was supposed to have been the only I was going to marry him and start a family with him, and I found it impossible to let him go.
Paul and I met on a weekend trip to Palm Springs. She was smart and intelligent and had a way of saying my name that sounded like a song along with her shy smile. He had a good job and didn't look like any of the men she had dated.
He was the first to comfort and protect me. Falling in love with Paul was like having earned the respectability to be seen and feel worthy of someone's adoration. Our relationship became my gold standard and the word “Paul” It began to define love for me.
I quickly became the obedient girlfriend waiting for the ring I was sure I wanted and the husband my friends told me I deserved. I put aside my longing for a less structured lifestyle to pursue a traditional career located in a glass-walled building in downtown Los Angeles.
The first two years passed quietly. It was like I was trying on clothes without looking in the mirror. When I finally looked up, the suit I was wearing wasn't right.
Paul and I were good at parties but not at home. In public, he took my hand and kissed my forehead. Privately, he told me that he was stupid and I got angry because he was lazy. He criticized me for things I said, like calling the rain “spit,” and I repeatedly begged him to sleep with me, vulnerable in my prettiest underwear.
Our relationship lasted six years longer than it should have, allowing his name to become entrenched in my vernacular. The word “Paul” became my substitute for affectionate words. I had adopted her name and it encapsulated my longing for love.
During our last year together, my desire to leave was my dirtiest secret. Too embarrassed to admit my failure, I fantasized about cheating because I couldn't initiate the breakup on my own. The closest I came to being unfaithful was awkwardly flirting with a coworker on a ski trip to Big Bear.
“How was your weekend?” I asked as I walked through the door, my cheeks a golden tan from the glasses line down. “Dad's in the hospital,” Paul said, his jaw clenched with a pain we both knew he couldn't console.
One Sunday, after I had spent much of the day taking a solo bike ride through the hills of Malibu, my neighbor grandmother, Gail, greeted me on the sidewalk. “I realized they don't spend a lot of time together,” she said. she, nodding her head in the direction of Paul's white van parked in the driveway. With her age-stained hand, she brushed a strand of hair that had fallen across my cheek and then grabbed my chin between her thumb and her index finger. “It's okay to go,” she whispered.
His permission to give up ignited the intensity of my longing for a partner and the magnitude of my failure. Paul had become the great outcrop in the middle of a tangled landscape, the one I used to navigate back home when I strayed too far. “He it was my boyfriend” became “He He was my Paul” and It represented intense pain that I carried forward.
The end came with the help of a counselor who facilitated our goodbye. I kept our cats and moved into a 600 square foot apartment overlooking the Pacific.
There my life was as loose as water; her direction was influenced only by my indifference. I spent weekends riding the sandy bike path from Redondo Beach to Manhattan Beach and back, sampling expensive wines and getting lost in books about someone else's adventure. Little by little I rediscovered myself.
It was twelve months before I felt safe, and a parade of first, second, and third dates reconnected me with the world beyond my front door. I called these men by their first names, never making the mistake of incorrectly calling them Pablo. He knew they were not worthy.
When I joined a kayak trip a friend had organized, I was paired with Scott, a good-looking professional photographer with hair as long as mine. For 12 days we shared every moment and, surrounded by the kind of beauty that only a remote Pacific bay could offer, I felt something unravel in my chest. The real “Paul” had arrived.
The author is a freelance writer with a penchant for adventure. He now he lives in central Oregon. She is on Instagram: @CathleenCalkins
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