Quest and Tillie

Chapter 11: Quest Doesn't Complain

For two months I'd been seeing a therapist once a week.

For two months I hadn't seen Quest, except for his truck parked on the road outside my parents' home every night.

For two months, there had been a single flower on the hood of my car every morning -- roses, carnations, sunflowers, daisies, all of my favorites -- with a simple note tied to the stem.

I love you, Tillie ~ Quest

Tillie, thinking of you ~ Quest

For you, Tillie ~ Quest

Tillie, you're beautiful ~ Quest

It always made me smile, thinking of those thick, massive fingers attempting to tie a tiny bow with the delicate ribbon. The notes were pure Quest. He was not a man given to flowery speeches or written poetry. Just short and sweet, straight to the point.

Sometimes, there was a bag of peanut M&Ms with the flower or some dark chocolate Doves, once the weather got cooler. But every morning, there was some small offering.

"We've been talking about Quest every single session," Monica told me, interrupting my thoughts and bringing me back to our present therapy session.

That was true. Although we did talk about other things -- who was I without Quest, how to take steps to stand on my own two feet, who I was alone, things like that -- every session, I inevitably ended up talking about Quest. 

And what he'd done, how it hurt, how it had devastated me and changed me. 

But Monica also had steered me to the days and years before the Mary-Lou betrayal and blow up, asking me about our relationship, how we fell in love, our dating life, our marriage. We went over all of that, in unbelievable detail, and I could see how I depended too much on others, as if I was afraid to have an opinion of my own.

I had parents who coddled me.

I had a brother who protected me.

I had friends who guarded me.

I had...well, I had had...a husband who made me his queen and took care of everything for me.

Until he took care of Mary-Lou.

"Tell me, Tillie, without thinking about the answer, just respond right away, how do you feel about Quest?"

"I love him."

Then I clapped my hands over my mouth, because there went two months of hard work. All my steps forward, all my progress -- and I still loved the man who had betrayed me.

"You were honest. That's good. No wrong or right answer. I just wanted you to say it out loud, so you could hear it. Part of all of the work we're doing here is learning to not have your feelings labeled as wrong or right. You think you have to give the right answer all the time to please people. But no more, Tillie, and you've been working hard on that. You own what you feel. They're your feelings and no one has any right to tell you that you can or can't feel a certain way or to make you feel less because you don't think the way they do. It's OK to feel the things you do. If you love Quest, that's perfectly natural. Being hurt doesn't wipe out love or end it right away. We'd all be in trouble if that were true."

"I just feel like I shouldn't love him after he betrayed me."

"There's that word should again. You should feel this way or you shouldn't feel that way. We confuse ourselves with all the shoulds in our lives instead of dealing with and accepting what is  and working with that as a starting point."