While I was away, Lou, Henry and Jim decided to part ways.
The funding for the public company was still hung up after more than seven months of active waiting, and it was clear that the company was never going to launch the way they all expected it would. So Henry and Jim decided to take the company in a new direction, and Lou didn’t see a fit.
It was OK and everyone felt like it was for the best. This time, there was no rejection, no miserable ending, and no jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Just clarity and some mutual closure, I suppose.
When Lou told me this news, he seemed happy — or, maybe he was just relieved… However, I know he also felt a sense of disappointment because he wanted to do great work for Henry and Jim. But the fight wasn’t worth it anymore. It was just time to call it. They had done all they could. And in that, I know Lou found some permission to walk away with his head up.
As they had been from the start, Henry and Jim were beyond generous. They created the perfect exit package for Lou, and Lou had already started creating a strategy for his next endeavor.
There was a group in LA that was interested in involving Lou in their projects, and while I was in England, Lou had already started consulting the company. I remember thinking Lou finally seemed more engaged when he was unfolding his news. He was starting to look healthy and beautiful again, and there was a tiny glimmer of his natural optimism lightly hovering around him when he spoke.
It felt good to see him.
I don’t mean that it was good to see him after being apart for a month; I mean it was good to recognize the real Lou that I had hoped was still in there somewhere. It was like my inspiring and kind husband had been hibernating inside of himself. He wasn’t angry or aggressive with me anymore — even though I know he was still in the fight for his life. But the strong man that I recognized and always believed in was in the process of a slow, and very deliberate awakening.
I realize now that Lou and I were both on personal journeys back then.
We had both lost our way…
It wasn’t until we got back to our super depressing condo that Lou asked his first question about “us.” I remember wanting to have the right words or the answers I think we both hoped I could gather up about myself while I was away, but I remained shallow and broken inside. Not because of Lou, but because I just was. The only thing I could say with any certainty was that I needed Lou to be patient with me.
I recall telling him to remember who I’ve been in the past. I’m the girl who won’t stop trying to figure something out. I’m a fighter, too. And, I don’t give up on things that I love. So I knew I could make him one clear and certain promise: I would keep working on me if he could give me the space I still needed for a little while longer.
I also told Lou that I knew I needed to get out of Utah. There was something about living in Salt Lake City that was sucking the life out of me, and I knew that for a fact. Lou agreed. He’d had enough of living in Utah, too, and while I was away, he realized that part of his emotional strain was due to not being connected to anything spiritual and clear in his life either.
We could never find a church that fit us very well — even though we tried quite a few. But the Mormon faith is the dominant religion, and we both knew we couldn’t compromise in our beliefs and join the Mormon Church just for the sake of belonging…
Lou and I spoke so openly and honestly about the endings and beginnings we needed to face — some of which we would need to do together, and some of which we had to do on our own. But I think we were inching our way toward a sense of closure on the messiest detour in our collective journey. We needed to end the madness that we had created, and strive toward the reinvention of our marriage using all of the most painful lessons we had each just started to recognize were in the mix.
We both had a lot of things to unpack about how we got ourselves into such a bad place — even though it would be so easy for us to just blame our circumstances or the mess I had made with Sam. But while we were broken and raw, we decided to look at the bedrock layers of our relationship, and try to do a lot of things differently as we moved forward.
