My husband has sunk beneath the waves. What now?

We met in elementary school. I was a shy, awkward bookworm, totally obsessed with my grades and determined to succeed. I don’t know what made me look at him. Kids made fun of him, adults made fun of him, I know that I did. He was a little overweight, extremely lazy, a very quiet and awkward boy who seemed to struggle with even the most basic concepts, socially and academically. <br><br>I remember catching him staring at a picture of me in his notebook. It was a news article about me spelling bee winning streak. I was scratching my head during recess because I had gotten a head lice infestation and couldn’t concentrate long enough to finish my math worksheet. I was passing by the table where he sat. He looked at me, then quickly scribbled something in his notebook and hid it. I told myself I was imagining things, but I couldn’t help but think of that moment whenever I took my seat next to him on the bus. <br><br>Around the same time, I discovered that he truly did have a crush on me. He had doodled hundreds of pictures of me, including many pictures of the two of us holding hands, embracing, and kissing. I didn’t know what to make of this. No one had ever been so smitten with me. Mostly I had been a target for bullying at school. <br><br>My classmates bullied me, not because I was clumsy or awkward or overweight like he was. No, they bullied me because I was pretty, smart, and charismatic. I was truly one of a kind. No one was ever like me. The other kids in the school were split amongst cliques, athletic and academic, popular and unpopular. But when the popular kids were doofy jocks and the academic kids were goofy nerds, I was always the smart and popular kid. I didn’t have any friends until high school. And the few friends I had then hardly counted as friends. They only used me to help them with their schoolwork. <br><br>So when I saw that notebook of his, I felt something I’d never felt before. Affection, I suppose. Or at least the idea of it. <br><br>I think this was when it started. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I truly don’t know. All I know is that I felt this obsessive connection to him. I started looking forward to seeing him everyday, if only to imagine what it would be like if things were different. <br><br>I didn’t talk to him again until we were adults. I went to college and he didn’t. I came home after graduating. I was looking for a job in a nearby city but I stayed with my parents for a few months as I figured things out. He worked at a grocery store. I ran into him while I was shopping for groceries. He recognized me, I could tell. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything at first. I watched from afar, feeling butterflies in my stomach as I realized that my infatuation with him was still there, a totally foreign feeling that I’d never experienced. <br><br>Eventually I approached him and asked him if he’d like to go out with me. He did. Our first date was a dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. He wore the best clothes that he had, ratty jeans and a wrinkled button down shirt. I wore the best sundress that I had. My classmates used to say that I was pretty, but when I compared myself to them I never believed it. Compared to my classmates I thought of myself as a weird, slightly ugly person. But now I was the pretty one, because he wasn’t like them. He wasn’t like anyone. They were all so boring and shallow. <br><br>We went on many more dates after that. I never realized how much I loved him until he left. I don’t know why we broke up in the first place. I think that I was embarrassed that my parents saw him. I was truly ashamed. I wanted them to see how much I’d accomplished, and I wanted them to see me with an impressive man by my side. And to my parents, he was anything but impressive. They saw us when I was picking him up from the house where he lived.<br><br>The house where he lived was a falling down, moldy shack on the outskirts of town. It tilted backwards, as if it were sinking into the hill behind it. He lived with his grandmother, who was a slobby old woman with very few teeth. I would pick him up for our dates. I’d park on the curb and walk to the front door, which would swing open before I could even knock. He’d smile and take my hand and we’d walk back to my car. <br><br>I never went inside that house. I never wanted to. And that house was the reason I broke up with him. Just a rumor, a cruel lie, something I told myself to feel better. I didn’t break up with him because of his house, I told myself. No, it was because of something that happened there. I was ashamed to tell him myself, so I told him through a text message. I deserve to be ashamed. <br><br>I got a text message from him several months later. He told me that his grandmother had died and that he’d truly sunk without her. I think that was the exact wording. I didn’t know what to make of that, but I asked him if I was the only one who’d been invited to the funeral. No, he said, I was the only one who would show up. I gave him my condolences and he thanked me. I didn’t know what else to say. The message chain died. <br><br>And now he’s sunk. I woke up to a knock at the door. It was him. He was frantic, panicking, gasping for air. He told me that he’d sunk. He said he never recovered after his grandmother passed away, that he’d sunk beneath the waves of life and was struggling to find help. He said he’d truly sunk beneath the waves, hundreds of feet underwater. He was truly sunk. <br><br>I didn’t know what to make of that, but I could see the pain in his eyes. He was truly suffering. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I had to help him. I told him that I still loved him. That I made a mistake when I broke up with him. I told him that I was ashamed, that I was a bad person. I told him that he was a good person, the only good person in the world. I told him that I would do anything to help him. <br><br>He told me that I should’ve told him earlier. He said that because of me, he’d sunk beneath the waves. He was being serious. He meant literal waves. He was talking about the ocean. He said he walked to the ocean, to the beach where we’d gone on a date once, to think about us. He’d been stuck in the past, he told me, with nothing but my pictures to keep him company. He said he was sad, and sunk beneath the waves. <br><br>He was serious. I could tell. He was gasping as if he were underwater, a totally genuine expression of suffering. He said that he would have to work hard to get back to the surface. He asked if I’d be his surface, the thing he’d work towards. I told him that of course I would be. That I would do anything to help him. I’d truly do anything. <br><br>He smiled when I said that, and I fell in love with him all over again. I knew, right then, that I’d do anything to help him. Anything. I’d truly do anything.