There’s not another person I’ve experienced such a wide array of emotions with, and I hope there never is again.
We are bonded together a string of mixed memories and a son, and so I can never be rid of you. I used to hate that with every ounce of my being.
But I remember sitting through that awful horror flick so I had an excuse to be next to you while you talked about some other girl. And I remember camping on the beach years before we could admit we cared about each other. And I remember tearing my pathetic excuse of a life apart after a bottle of tequila between the mood swings I didn’t were depression that would try to assert its dominance over me for the rest of my goddamn life. I remember wishing how much I could take some things back. And I wish I knew back then that I never, ever could and that I should have stopped while I was ahead.
We learned.
Of course it was by doing everything the hard way, the only way we knew how.
We destroyed each other.
I didn’t understand addiction. Or depression. Or myself. How could I have possibly done anything differently?
I think of the things I said to you to try and give myself the space I needed and how even in the moment I hated doing it, but it felt like there was no other way.
The things you did to me are unspeakable. So we don’t. We speak in vague terms so we can both stay composed enough to be able to talk circles around what we’ve learned in the aftermath of war.
We got out.
It took me leaving in a cloud of resistance I didn’t even fully understand. But I knew I couldn’t stay another minute. There had been so many minutes there wasted already. But eventually, we both rebuilt our lives and ourselves from ground zero. I think it was good it happened that way.
Because now we can see each other again, albeit in a different way. But we’re stuck with each other until the other one keels over, right? So somehow, we forgive and become friends again, because even if there is nothing else between us, there will always be the night we had our son.
And somehow, that’s enough. It’s everything.
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Dusti Arab, Fractional CMO
And the founder of the reinvention co, a marketing consultancy specializing in working with personality-driven companies with small teams.
Intense, fun, and relentlessly practical, Dusti understands the lives of small business owners are deeply intertwined with their businesses, and if their marketing is going to be sustainable, it can't get in the way of why they do what they do. (And honestly? It should be fun so they actually want to do it.)
She is the host of Referral Worthy, a podcast for small business owners ready to go from "best kept secret" to the go-to name in their niche.