Are You Sure This Is Where You Want To Be?

Once, we got in a fight because I didn’t want to go to his “favorite grocery store”

It was a Saturday in June. A sunny and gorgeous day. A day to be outside. To buy whatever groceries you needed at the farmers market.

His store was an hour and a half drive from the city in bumper-to-bumper traffic on always-under-construction, bungalow-cluttered roads. It smelled like rotten fruit and was always mobbed. There was no charm or reward for the trip there. He liked it because it was “so cheap.”

I told him to go by himself. I tried to project lightness and cheer as I fantasized about how I’d spend the afternoon if it could be just mine:

Wandering the farmers market without him asking why are you looking at that if you’re not going to buy it?

Riding my bike along the lake to Evanston. Taking a book with me.

Getting a pedicure.

Sitting outside with spiked lemonade and my laptop.

Shopping the stretch of overpriced boutiques that made him uncomfortable because “we’re always like the only people in there. I feel like the salespeople are looking at us. It’s embarrassing.”

Meanwhile, he was pissed off. He ALWAYS went places I wanted to go. (Then don’t, I said, easily. Still thinking about my list of ways to spend an afternoon on my own.)

“Oh. Yeah. Don’t be ridiculous Jessica. I’m supposed to sit home while you go places? I’m supposed to sit and wait for you.”
(Uh. No. you could go to your cheap ass grocery store.)

And this was one of our more memorable fights around the same theme: he didn’t believe in what I called spaces in our togetherness. He never liked it when I made plans with girlfriends or took too long getting home from the gym. He didn’t like my idea that he sign up for soccer on Sundays. He said he’d only do it if I came to the games, the practices.

Still screaming about the grocery store:
“What don’t you understand? I don’t ask for much. I let you do what you want 95% of the time. I’m asking you to fake it. pretend you like it because you know I do. what’s so hard about that?”

And he made me think he was right, reasonable. I was being selfish. Why couldn’t I pretend a simple, harmless thing to make him happy? He’d do it for me.

So we went to the store. Traffic was extra thick because of an outdoor festival. I sat there hoping he couldn’t tell what I was thinking: look at all those people OUTSIDE.

We went out for dinner that night after I put the groceries away. He took my hand and said “See, my bratty little girl. It’s not so hard to make me happy is it?”

I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. He loved that.

A week later, I filled a garbage bag with the mushy grapes, fuzzy strawberries and deli salads he’d bought because they were so much cheaper than everything at the farmers market.