"Who told you?"
"They told me this is what you do when you loose someone you love. They said you come to therapy. They said you would be sad. They said you will wait to hear his voice. Or see his call light up your phone. But it will never happen. They said it will be crushing, and I will want to go. But I will get past that stage. That after a while, I will become scared of forgetting; what he sounded like, the melody of his laughter, the character of his existence. They told me I will be scared that it will all slip away. That at some point I will only have faint actual memories but very real emotions. I will remember how it felt but not what it looked like. They gave me the map and told me where to walk. I think I am in the part where I should want to go. The part that I cry or hold back tears and wait for my phone to ring."
"Who is this 'they'"?
"But that is not why I am here, the reason I am here is because I heard yesterday, that I was cold. He said; 'who made you this cold?'"
"Who is he?"
"My ex-boyfriend, it was in high school. I ran into him yesterday. He didn't know I had just lost him. So he didn't have that pity in his eyes that everyone has now, kind of like the look you had in your eyes before I started to speak."
"I do not pity you, I am here..."
"Do I seem cold to you?"
"I do not..."
"Because he said it and... I remembered what I was like with him. It was easy. I was "in love" with him, and it was easy. It was the kind of love that these 'mature' fools say 'what do they know about love?' to. Because it was easy and they did not believe nor understand how love could be happy or easy or light. They did not believe that a word built on a feeling of utter joy should be easy. Why? Why would you discredit my love because it is not as corrosive as yours?"
"..."
"But I do not love him. I feel like I do not love anyone. I feel like a vacant house, like someone came in and turned all my lights off. I feel like darkness. Have you ever felt like darkness? It is a feeling that makes you not want to see the sun in the morning. Is that what they meant by I will want to go? Because I do not want to go anywhere, I do not want to die. I just do not want to see the sun. My sadness is boring. I do not have nightmares. I do not wake up panting or looking for someone to call. A friend or pastor maybe? I do not. I am just... bland, and I want to sleep or be unconscious all the time. Because it is familiar, like going back home for some hours."
"..."
"You are nodding your head. Are there no words in your mouth? Or have you realised that I did not come here for therapy, I just came to talk. Or maybe that is the therapy, paying someone to listen to you, because you feel like a child suffocating on the side of the road and no one can hear you scream. Is that why people come here?"
"People have diff..."
"I am sorry, I haven't spoken this much in a very long time. Not since he was alive, which was about 7 months ago."
"What happened?"
"Hm, the short story is that he was 6 and I was 5. Not in age, in everything else. He would get the first notice, I was an after thought. A piece of an already completed puzzle, not that I minded, he was a big piece that completed my puzzle.
But that day I got the call from the clinic. The day I had seen him earlier with someone else, there was no feeling. There was no shattering. My heart, my world, my mind was excruciatingly silent. That was the day my lights were turned off
That moment that should have changed everything.
In that moment that this man I had taken to the presence of God, the one I had vowed to my creator to spend the rest of my life with, was now right in front of my car, kissing another woman in the middle of the a sidewalk. He was obviously not aware that I was watching or did not care?
Anyways, if there was ever a moment, that was the one. That was the moment I should have erupted, for someone who had erupted about much smaller things. For someone who had been refereed to as a ticking grenade. That was the time to explode.
But there was something about this.
This kind of pain, or shame?
There was something muting about it.
So I did not say a thing.
I did not move, my face felt like it was made of steel.
I did not wipe the tears welling up in my eyes. I just kept driving towards them. I do not know if it was on purpose or not but I drove home afterwards and got ready to confess to the police, or whoever it was that may have seen me. That was when I wanted to go, not now.
So when the clinic called, the phone ringing loudly from the kitchen.
I sat on a chair next to the dinning table, my face as still as before, watching a picture from my wedding day that hung on the wall above the TV.
Everything, every feeling with this man, every smile, intimacy, laughter, every moment. It was all a kind of mockery now."
"They said I am cold. But I do not know if I would rather be cold than have the burden of emotion.
Because I have learned that erotic love is like a catapult. There is only so far it can stretch before it comes back with a sting that turns all your lights... off."
Because I have learned that erotic love is like a catapult. There is only so far it can stretch before it comes back with a sting that turns all your lights... off."
