29

“I can’t do this anymore,” Ian said to the computer screen. I stood in the kitchen, five feet away, washing dishes. We’d been having our Epic Fight. Our electricity was about to be turned off. He didn’t care. I did.

“I’m leaving,” I said. It slipped out of my mouth, and my feet followed. I walked out of our apartment onto Curson Street in the pissing rain and drove around the block three times. No going back now—a horrible, yet strangely arousing feeling. I sat in the parking lot of Von’s grocery store trying to figure out where to go when the phone rang. A friend needed a cat sitter while she did yoga for two weeks in Hawaii.

I asked if I could move some boxes into her apartment, and she said yes. I packed up another U-Haul, filled it with my remaining stuff and Ian’s cat, Screech. We both wailed all the way to Silver Lake. Screech took a shit on the rug every time I left for work. It always made me chuckle, a little cat shit seemed a small price to pay for the gift he’d given me. A couple weeks later, she called to tell me she decided to move in with her yoga girlfriend and grandfathered me into the lease. No matter how much I loved someone, I always had to pick up and leave. I have started over a hundred times. Sometimes, that’s the most loving act there is.