This morning A [the fiancee] was on the phone, talking in Persian in his headset, and he brought in some boxes from his car and I followed him up to the guest room which is kind of his little man-cave/prayer room. He unfolded a box and started putting stuff in it. He was packing up.
"I put some things to take to new house this week," he whispered and covered his headpiece.
It hit me like right in the chest. This move is real. Everything I know is going to be taken. He filled the box with some DVDs and books and little odds and ends then he folded the top and left the room, still on his phone. He gave me a little pet on the chest and kissed my cheek and left. I looked at the pile of folded boxes and got really upset.
I took a box and went to our bedroom and started putting our pictures in it. They're the ones on top of the chest of drawers, one of them is digital and swipes through the pictures he loaded into it. I put in some lighter things, a few towels and some sheets I don't like. I filled the box and then I went to our closet and got some hanging clothes. I put those on top of the box and went downstairs.
He was pacing around, talking in Persian and laughing until he saw me. A stopped and looked at me like I was crazy. I went past him and went to get his car keys and he followed me out to the garage. He kept reaching to help me with what I was carrying and made mouth motions like "What? Emri? What?" I kept jerking away from him and struggling with the stuff and his keys.
First I dropped the keys, and then when I was reaching for them the box slipped and landed on the garage floor. I hugged the hanging shirts, backed against the garage wall, slid down to my knees and started crying. My sinuses are still recovering so I unintentionally used one of my new shirts as a tissue. He quickly hung up the phone and knelt in front of me.
It felt like a really bad panic attack, like someone was pressing the air out of me. He looked totally confused and tried to comfort me. In between sobs I told him I can't do this. I told him he can't take everything I know and just rip me out of it. He understood.
A [fiancee] took the hanging clothes from me and set them on the box. He helped me to my feet and hugged me. I put my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder and he lifted me up to wrap my legs around him. He carried me back into the living room and sat in his big chair with me kneeling, straddling his lap.
He kept telling me, "Whatever you want, baby. I don't care what takes, whatever you want," until I calmed down. Then we talked it out while he held me. I love how safe I feel in his arms. I told him I know we have to go, that it's good for his business and the life he wants for us.
He told me he just wants a home for us where things are safer and quieter than they can be in Los Angeles. He told me he gets so excited thinking about coming home to me in a nice house with my father and our little children there. He says he dreams about driving in from a rough day at work and finding a good meal waiting and little kids wanting his attention. He wants to hear about our day spent going to the park and working on homework and practicing soccer and whatever else people do in gated cities.
He told me he wants us to be financially safe and never have to worry and raise our kids and have a place where we can spend 30 or 40 years getting old together before we go retire somewhere. He said he wants good schools and clean streets and things Los Angeles can't offer. He doesn't want our kids growing up here and passing homeless people screaming or popping their bike tires on broken glass or worrying about getting carjacked on Reseda Blvd.
He said, "I want so much for us, baby. I get so excited about this and I forget that this makes you anxiety." He acknowledged that he doesn't always stop to think about the fact that this little area is what I've always known, all I've always known.
He said he felt so much sadness his first year here when he left Iran. Even though he had friends and friends of his family living here it wasn't the same. He said he got so lonely and did so many bad things with a lot of guys to make himself feel better. He said he didn't feel truly at home until the day he moved me in here to our townhouse.
He said it was the happiest day of his life and he finally felt like a grown up, like a daddy, like someone with a family to protect and bills to pay and an alarm to figure out and a boy to take care of. He said it made him feel like he could really do this and achieve his dream here. He said that it made him think about the future and raising a family with me and getting to a community he felt would be better for us. We can't afford the nice communities up in the hills, but we can afford something nicer in Orange County and his business can grow much bigger down there closer to the growing parts of California (inland).
He asked me if I wanted this, if I shared his dream for us. He said to really think about it.
He'd never asked me that before. I told him he'd never asked me that before. He looked confused and then sad. He said he was sorry for that, sorry that he still hasn't learned to include me in decisions.
I said that I did want the dream. I said that I can't imagine a life without him. I said I knew this was coming, knew that it was a good decision, knew that it would be good for me and us and my dad and our future... but it still hurts to leave everything I know behind.
He said he wanted me to see it, the new house. He hasn't taken me down inside it since he bought it because they're fixing it up, but he thought it would help me to go and look and see the dream.
So we drove down. We got stuck in traffic and stopped to pee and get Jamba juice. He put my hand on the shifter knob and covered it with his and we played stupid pop songs with the sunroof open while we inched along and sipped our drinks.
The place is beautiful. It's not a huge house and inside it's kinda gutted, but the outside is pretty and he showed me on his phone what things will look like.
We got the box that I'd packed and the clothes (minus the shirt I'd sneezed into) We put our pictures up on a built-in bookshelf that was finished. We hung up the clothes in the closet of one of the small bedrooms that is just waiting to be painted (the master bedroom is totally undone). We had some... couple's time on the carpet even though the windows still need blinds put up, but the fence shielded that window from the neighbors. It's really a nice place.
We walked around the neighborhood and then went to lunch in the little shopping center close-by. It's an area that has a lot of families and kids. It has a lot of Chinese and Persian and Indian and White people. It's pretty diverse even though the stereotype for Orange County is not. It looks more like LA, the nicer parts.
We were heading back and he decided we should stop at a furniture place. We sat on couches and he asked me to show him the kind of stuff I like and want for our house. He took pictures and made friends with a salesman.
When we got this townhouse he had a friend decorate it for us so I didn't get to pick out anything. He said he wants me to make more decisions with the house and we can get new stuff. He promised to include me more in the decision-making process with things. I felt better. I felt like a grown-up. I felt like more than just the protected little boy who tags along with him on his business trips. I felt like his partner.
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