Monday, May 5, 2008

Day Nine:


Grief fills the room up…
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me

(King John)


I am mad with grief. I am past caring if I give away my power by telling too much, past caring if I am stupid, enabling, whining, boring, needing to get a life. If I am to believe everything that came before, then what came before was such that I would now have the right to ask, to want, to need.

He says “I can’t hurt her.” The unspoken conclusion, so instead, I will hurt you.

One bad – no, one empty day—

Because when I am working from dawn until past midnight, when the job demands more than I have to give, I can be here now. I do not have to be here now. But in that moment of calm – hiding for lunch in a storage closet where no-one can ask me One More Thing, slipping into a borrowed bed at 6AM after one last load of laundry, Power Girl already unconscious beside me, then it crashes in on me.

I’d rather hurt you.

Husband is sweeter, more kind, more supportive than ever. But I cannot tell him this. I should leave him, because I can’t tell him, and it is not enough.

I have done the texting-because-you-can’t-talk-right-now.

I have done friends.

I have done use me as a badge of your virtue, congratulate yourself every time you look into my face and do not kiss me, every time you hold me in the night and do not fuck me, make another tick under “I was strong and good!”

I am an object. I am “look, I can so be faithful.”

She is an object. She is “really, I can be faithful if I want to.”

She has taken to sending anonymous emails to Husband, phoning me late at night, snarking about my company to her friends. Perhaps he is, after all, hurting her.

For me, the line between here and gone, present and absent, is growing thinner as the icy Dread licks up the beach. The barriers left? I have an event…an appointment…something needs doing. I don’t want to make a mess. Too strong a swimmer, too queasy to cut.

(There were only five pills in Hairline Boy’s cabinet. Not enough to do the trick, just enough to fuck up my day. So I didn’t today.)

4 comments:

James said...

I don't know where you are going with this, I guess you don't either. I want you to remember this mantra- This too shall pass. In time you will forget this heartbreak.

That's the long term solution. As for a short term solution, I would recommend a change in life style.

G said...

You don't forget heartbreak - ever. You carry it for the rest of your life and feel it less acutely as the years pass.

Only time remedies.

James said...

No, you never forget heartbreak, nor really should you want too. That's part of life, part of my life and I don't want to forget any of that.
but time takes the pain away, and gives you understanding and perspective.

Mandy said...

I'm waiting...