The party you were going to skip

Halloween is Saturday. If there's an invitation in your phone you haven't answered, I already know the reason you've been giving yourself.

It doesn't feel right to be out laughing while he is wherever he is. It feels like a betrayal of the connection, or at least like proof you've stopped caring.

I call that feeling The Loyalty Tax. It's the guilt you pay every time you enjoy a day that doesn't include him.

Nobody sends you the bill. You just quietly stop saying yes, one dinner and one weekend at a time, until your calendar looks exactly like your waiting.

I paid it for fourteen months. The spring I turned down the job in Savannah, I also stopped saying yes to anything that might be happening on the night Danny finally called.

He didn't call. I did lose a year of Saturdays.

The Loyalty Tax costs more than evenings. It costs friendships that get tired of hearing no. It costs the version of you who used to be the one who planned the trip.

My friend Rosalind was the one who finally said it out loud: "He's not coming, honey, and frankly you've gotten boring." I didn't speak to Rosalind for a month. Right on both counts, and the second one stung worse.

Here's the part almost nobody talks about. There's a corner of this industry that sells joy back to you as a technique. Raise your vibration, they say, and he'll feel it.

Notice the trick. In that version, your joy only counts if it's working on him.

Joy with a job isn't joy. It's homework, and it comes with a coaching package.

Guess who benefits when you stay home on Saturday? Not him, because he doesn't know. Not you.

The only thing that grows on a Saturday spent waiting is the habit of waiting. Habits are the one part of this story you fully control.

"But what if he sees me out and thinks I've moved on?"

Then he'll have learned a true fact about you: you have a life. If that is enough to change his mind, his mind was never the steady thing you needed.

Am I telling you to fake a good time? No. Some nights you'll go, it'll be flat, and you'll be home by ten.

That counts too. Showing up is the practice, and the fun is optional. I've left plenty of parties early, and I have never once regretted going.

Joy isn't a betrayal of the connection. It's evidence of a life. It's the life you would bring to any relationship worth having, and the life you'll need if he never returns.

Both retrogrades are still running until November 13. Neither of them has an opinion about whether you go to a party.

That's what this season is asking of you. Not to stop believing, and not to stop missing him. Just to stop paying a tax nobody asked you to pay.

Here in Charleston, I'll be on my porch on Saturday with a bowl of candy and Judge, who considers every child in a costume a personal friend and a possible source of dropped candy.

It isn't a grand gesture. It's two hours of being someone who answers the door. Some weeks, that's what becoming looks like.

Savannah is about two hours down the road from my porch. I've driven it a few times since that spring, for no reason except that I could. Joy doesn't need a reason either.

It can be small: a matinee by yourself, tacos with the coworker who keeps asking, the dance class you quit when the waiting got loud.

If guilt shows up anyway, let it. You don't have to argue with it. You just don't have to obey it.

P.S. Judge has never once waited by the door for someone who didn't come back. He goes and finds the sunniest spot on the porch. I'm still learning from that dog.