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“Um… hey. So I know this is a weird question but do you know a good divorce attorney? Did you like whoever you used?” was basically the Facebook message that I was sending a former friend’s, former boyfriend.
I say “former friend,” because life had been drifting us apart until new babies and new jobs had widened the gap far enough, that although on good terms, we hadn’t spoken in several years. And I say former boyfriend because he was her ex.
He was also the only divorced person I knew at the time, and my ex had just left.
Messaging me back only a few minutes later to ask what was going on, I was fairly brief but blunt about my situation, and what came next was what I can only describe as “overwhelmingly helpful.”
Within an hour he had set up consultations with several local attorneys, given me instructions on how to freeze my bank account, and offered to come over and talk me through a plan.
At this point my parents were the only other people who knew that my ex had left a week prior, and they weren’t too keen on doing anything other than waiting around to see if he came back. But I knew that not only was this my chance to finally “escape," but that I couldn’t wait any longer after some things that I had found out shortly after my ex left… and everything he had done that had led us to this point.
I needed to be free, but I was completely falling apart, and a week after my ex had left, I still had absolutely no idea what my first steps should be.
But this guy, “the Helper” if you will, well he knew exactly how to take care of the situation, and he wasn’t shy about stepping in to “help.” Repeatedly asking me if he could come over, calling me every hour to see how I was doing, and messaging me more information than I knew how to handle, it left me feeling both smothered and relieved at the same time.
I didn’t trust myself to do anything right after I had spent so many years living life where every decision that I had made turned out to be wrong, and suddenly when I was the most lost that I had ever been, here was someone who seemed to know what he was doing, and was going to make sure that this time, I was going to do everything “right.”
Looking back, I can see exactly what was going on, but back then, I was just too unaware. So when the Helper kept asking me if he could come over so we could talk about this in person, I said no as many times as I could before he eventually wore me down and I said “yes.” And when he offered to take a few days off work to watch my kids so that I could get some appointments lined up with social services and handle things with the bank, I said “yes” again, because I had no other help.
Several months later and before I even knew what was happening, the Helper had become completely ingrained into every single aspect of my life. He would come to my house directly after work, and sometimes stay through the weekend. If I had something come up and needed a babysitter, he would take the day off work. If I was tired and the baby was fussy, he would run errands for me so that I didn’t need to go. If something in the house needed fixing, he made it a priority to work on it in his very next free second.
But even though I was drowning in life, I spent most of that time attempting to resist his insisting assistance, yet I always gave in at the end because I was too tired to fight every battle that life seemed to keep throwing at me, and in all honesty, I did need the help. And at night when the sun went down and the lights went out, he would fill the room with his promises for our future, and the reasons why no one else had ever deserved me like he did.
Yet I never wavered from the fact that I did not want to date him.
No, I had repeatedly told him that I was not ready to date so quickly after my husband's departure, and that I was only looking for a friendship. And while I remained firm on my end, I could tell that to him, we just weren’t there “yet.”
