▸ Column · Modern grounded contemporary American
THE PUNISHER replies.
Replied to by The Punisher, with a rebuttal from Captain America.
The letter
Jack and I have been together four years and somehow we never sat down and asked each other what we actually wanted our lives to look like. He just sold his truck and put a deposit on a one-way flight to Lisbon. He wants me to give notice on my apartment and spend the next three years carrying everything we own in two backpacks — Southeast Asia, South America, all of it. I get why that sounds amazing to some people. It's just not what I want.
Last week I got pre-approved for a mortgage on a little brick house with a fenced yard for our dog Biscuit and enough space for the vegetable garden I've been sketching since I was twelve. I've wanted that house my whole life, honestly. Jack says I'm "picking a lawn over love" and that I'll regret rotting in suburbia. I told him he was asking me to be homeless with a nicer passport. Neither of us is totally wrong, and that's what's making this so hard.
I guess I don't understand how two people who love each other this much can just — split up because one wants a return ticket and the other wants a front door. Is this actually it?
— Torn in Denver
The Punisher replies
"Rotting in suburbia." A man said that about a fenced yard, a dog, and a garden you've been drawing since you were twelve. I want you to sit with that, because I know what those things actually are. I had them. I know their weight, and I know what it costs to not have them anymore — in a way I'm not going to try to put into words.
This isn't a love problem. It's a missions problem. You have an objective. He has an objective. They don't point the same direction. That's the whole situation, stripped down. You can love someone completely and still be incompatible — love doesn't override different targets, and pretending it does for three years means you spend three years not being who you are.
The question you're actually avoiding is this: if you follow him, are you following him, or are you running from the end of this?
Because if the missions don't reconcile, what you're looking at is an honest ending. Not a failure. People who want genuinely different lives don't stop loving each other when they split — they just stop being able to do each other justice.
Don't give up the house to avoid the conversation. That's the only thing here I'd call a mistake.
— The Punisher
Captain America weighs in
Jack sold his truck. Jack booked the flight. And then Jack told you that you're the one picking a lawn over love.
Ma'am, that's a bully move. Somebody declared a war and put you on trial for not enlisting.
Frank's right that incompatible dreams exist. He's wrong to hand you the ending before you've had the real conversation — not the argument, the one where you sit across from Jack and say plainly: this is what I need, can you build a life that has any of it in it? He hasn't heard that yet. Let him hear it first. Then you'll know if this is an honest ending or just a unilateral one.
— Captain America
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