Quest and Tillie

Chapter 20: I Like The Changes

I'd never been so happy to be going on a hike in my life. I'd always enjoyed hiking, but this one was special.

After last week's date that had been going well until the end, I was sure Tillie would just throw in the towel. I dreaded hearing those words from her: It's just not worth all this pain, Quest.

But she hadn't. She'd let me hold her while she told me everything that was on her mind, every emotion she was feeling. Then Til cried, then she told me some more about the path her thoughts had taken after I kissed her forehead. Then came the anger, and I didn't say a word so she could get it all out. Tillie had every right to feel the way she did, and I literally swallowed the bile back down my throat as I realized there was nothing I could say to help her through this. 

Tillie's pain made me feel sick to my stomach that I'd put her in this situation, but my need to throw up had to take a back seat so Tillie could vent her raw emotions to me. As Ellis had said, this was part of reconciliation. It would be ugly at times, and extremely painful, but it was something we couldn't go around. We had to go through it and navigate the broken glass and barbed wire of emotions we'd run into.

My mother always said that, as a mother watching her child hurt, she'd have been willing to take on my pain so I wouldn't have to suffer. I felt the same for Tillie. If there'd been some way to take Tillie's hurt away from her, I would have gladly done it because I had caused it. Instead, all I could do was hold her as we both were rocked by her pain.

After an hour or so, when our tears had stopped, I smoothed Tillie's hair from her face. "I'm going to call Ellis tonight and leave a message, see if she can fit us in tomorrow for an extra session after you're done with work. No classes tomorrow, right?"

"Right. No classes."

"OK, when she gets back to me, I'll text you to let you know what she says."

"Thanks. I'm going to head in now."

I nodded, then once she had the door open, I called her name and she looked back at me. "If this is too much...if you need to call an end to it, I'd understand. I've done this to us and I hate that you're paying the price."

"I'm finding I'm a lot stronger than I thought," she declared. "And I'm not ready to quit."

We'd had our emergency session with Ellis, who reassured us more than anything. We were basically on a road with hairpin turns, but after time and a lot of work, if all went well, the road would begin to straighten out and there'd be fewer sharp turns.

"But, I need to warn you that even if the road looks straight, Quest's betrayal is always going to linger in some way in your lives, and you may find yourselves facing a sharp right turn suddenly. You could go months or years, and then something could still trigger you. So don't be surprised, especially at this stage in your reconciliation, that there are setbacks and triggers galore."

"We found that out after our date," Tillie said. "And I was surprised because it really had been a good evening. A really nice night after all of this time."

"And that perfectly illustrates my point to you two. You can be clicking along just fine and then, seemingly out of nowhere, something sparks a strong response. I'm encouraged that you didn't keep it to yourself, Tillie, and just escape inside to your apartment, ignoring what you were feeling. You were honest with Quest, even if that meant a bad end to what had been a great date, a positive evening. And Quest listened and didn't try to diminish what you were feeling. A lot of couples run into that. The person who cheated wants to gloss over the ugly parts of reconciliation and can get frustrated. So you both did what you should have."