The Before, the After, and the Spaces In Between
by Madalyn Whitaker
Illustration by Kate Snyder
Kate Snyder for Fools Magazine
The fastest route from Iowa City to Laguna Beach, California is 1,806 miles. This is the trip you made 11 days after we started dating. To my dismay, you never came back. So it was my turn to make that trip. I went back and forth from home to you 12 times over 12 months before you decided to break things off between us. Not break off completely, just leave our relationship dangling in between a before and after.
I was four, sitting outside the house I grew up in for the first eight years of my life. My best friend and I sat hesitantly underneath the pink canopy of the large magnolia tree in my front yard. My mom stood in front of us, her first digital camera pointed at the two of us. My friend and I sat an arm’s-length apart, waiting for my mom to snap the photo so we could go back to playing with our dolls. Scootch together, my mom ordered, waving a hand to signal what we were supposed to do. My friend and I were scared of the bee buzzing between us. We shifted a few centimeters closer to each other, tight smiles on our faces, our eyes shifting back and forth from the bee to my mother’s camera lens. She finally dropped her hand, giving up on closing the distance between us, and took the photo. I haven’t seen the picture since that day.
The first time I visited you in California I woke up in the middle of the night to your fingers running circles down my spine. The front yard light of the Airbnb we stayed in shone through the blinds right into my tired eyes. The slivers of yellow light fell over our bodies. Yours was curled to the shape of mine, but the only part of us that touched were your fingers on my back that closed the gap between us.
Distance does not make anything grow fonder. It turns late nights into arguments over a cracked reception, a cracked voice, a crack splitting down the screen of my phone just to pull it from my face and see red. The silence that followed the fights were worse. It fills a room, a pair of lungs. I hate you, would feel better than an unanswered call.
The Top of the World is only 300 meters above sea level. The only thing I could see from here was you and the pollution that hung over the million dollar homes. You told me the pollution dissipates when it rains. It rained the next day and every time after that weekend that I came to visit you. It became a joke between the two of us. We never said if it held any meaning.
The median value for a home in Laguna Beach is $2,141,100. You found your new home during our break. The apartment was 250 square feet, built in 1925, and tucked behind all of the million dollar homes that stayed vacant until the summer. You sent me a text in your 65 degree winter about how happy you were where you were. I texted back, I’m happy for you, too, my fingers shaking as I typed the words because my radiator couldn’t keep up with the subzero temperatures outside my window. You said no you aren’t. Read: You want me to suffer. Part of me did. Part of me wanted you to know how an empty inbox feels, but the part of me that actually spoke left you alone.
But gaps are only gaps because there is something before it and after it and you came back and it was good to feel wanted again. You needed me back because your future was too vague without me in it. During our break, the unknown of how your life would unfold without me loomed over you. It’s the same way a bee bothers us. We never know if it will sting or fly away. Sometimes you have to be the one to decide your own fate.
My childhood friend and I never closed that gap. We stayed the same distance apart until we were twenty years old. We were close enough friends to have someone to laugh with on the weekends, but we never became each other’s shoulder to cry on. I found out about her heartbreak through other friends and she found out about my mental illness through the same means. We never addressed these issues. We were comfortable in the space we were in, we were too scared of what might happen if we shared any words that would change the friendship. We were too scared of the unknown. Too scared to touch the bee.
Kate Snyder for Fools Magazine
We stood on an empty picnic table at the Top of The World and looked toward the sun setting in the west. It hung over the ocean that was burning between a gap in the mountains. My eyes watered looking at the crystals of light forcing themselves into my sight. Looking at that gap hurt. It brought tears to my eyes. Eventually, I had to look away.
These gaps that I have often found so comfortable never really were that great. There was always something pushing me to move forward. A bee waiting for my next move. My friend and I tried to enjoy the space between us, but that space couldn’t last forever. There were two options, grow closer or lose each other. We ended up falling into the latter.
Now when you and I stand at the Top of the World after our break and after our coming back together it is spring. The vibrant green grass around us whips in the wind that comes off the Pacific and makes its way up to us. It carries the fragrance of the bright pink flowers that are meticulously planted throughout the beach city. You have to pee so you walk down an unoccupied path that sits 294 meters above sea level. When a biker tries to go down the same path as you I tell him it’s closed because of the rain from earlier in the day and he bikes away in the other direction. You come back up to meet me at 300 meters and placed a kiss on my cheek that made me forget it rains every single time I come to visit you in Laguna Beach.
You and I, we are constantly planning our future because neither one of us can stand the past and the future is thrilling to focus on. To settle in the space between the before and after is much too boring and once we are in that space it is already being stored as a memory to become a new before. Settling in between the gaps never really is an option.