February 10, 2008
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“Describe it to me.”
“It’s like…. I’m wearing a heavy locket, and it’s made of something hard, warm, resting right here,” she said, tapping on her sternum with rigid fingers.
“What else?”
“My face….. it feels hot inside my skin but it’s cold when I touch it with my fingers. And my fingers…. they feel like they’re covered in tissue paper – you know, the kind you wrap shirts in before you put them in the box….”
“I’m going to give you a mirror and I want you to really look at your face, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Now, looking at this piece of paper, can you point to the figure that looks like what your face looks like?”
She points to a caricature and the therapist slides a slot below it to reveal a word.
“That’s sadness you’re feeling. It’s called ‘being sad’”
“………Oh……”
“It’s all right to feel that way sometimes.”
“But……. it feels Bad.”
“I know.”“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid of something, and I’m scared you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Everything is stupid at some point.”
The girl let her gaze fall to the doctor’s shoes and chewed her lip then exhaled “What if I don’t know how to love?”
The doctor waited for the girl to continue.
“I mean, what if….. I don’t think I know how it’s supposed to feel. I mean, I hear people say it to each other all the time, but it doesn’t make sense to me because what they do to each other….. is that really what you do to people you Love?”
“What do you think you’re supposed to do or feel?”
“I think…. I think you’re supposed to want to be with each other all the time, but it’s ok when you’re not. And I think that…. that you respect what they do and say and the choices they make even if you don’t agree. I think that you want them to be the best they can be and they’d want the same for you. I think that being with the other person – it should bring you joy, and comfort.”
“That sounds a lot like – “
“Being friends. But it should feel like ….. like if you lost that person, you’re whole world would be destroyed.”
“A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“Can anything less be called Love?”“I’m going to miss this,” he said.
“What?”
“This,” and the muscles in his wiry arms worked under her fingers as he gestured to take in the room. She leaned up from where she was laying to look at his expression, her dark hair a fragrant curtain around both their faces. He turned his head slightly to avoid her gaze but she could see his lips twitching downward in a serious frown. Smoothing the blond strands from his forehead, she marveled at the play of light and dark that composed the union of their bodies; her black-brown locks cascading over the smooth paleness of his cheeks and the fine spun-gold featheriness of his hair between her sun-kissed fingers.
Impulsively, she kissed the edge of his mouth to gently soothe the frown.
“You’re going to miss sex?” she asked with an impish grin.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
He tensed, and she thought it was an indecision between pushing her off and pulling her closer that made him quiver underneath her. He brought a hand to her bare chest, the skin still raw and tingling from earlier exertions, and she moved unconsciously towards his touch, but he brought his palm to rest between her breasts.
“Did you ever really give me this?” he asked, more rhetorical than questioning from the wistful way he whispered it.
A dozen glib responses fluttered through her brain but never quite made it to her lips that lifted in a sad smile. She stared into that precious and maddening face, overcome by grief at things that could have been but would never be.
“I could tell you that it was yours before we even met,” she finally said. “And I could tell you it’s yours forever. I could tell you that of all the loves I’ve loved, I Love you the most. ….. I could say that when I leave, that wherever I go, I’ll never be complete again. But I won’t.” She grasped the hand he held to her chest, squeezing the fingers tightly against her own. “I’ll never tell you those things.”
He brought his other hand to her face and brushed his thumb against her lips then over her cheek, trying to memorize the feel of her sweat-damp skin and the contours of a visage he would have gladly woken up to every morning for the rest of his life. Cupping the back of her head, he brought her down for a sweet and tender press of goodbye to the tremulous smile that shattered the silence in the echoing emptiness where his heart had been.
When the stillness of the moment passed, he whispered to her “Then I’ll never tell you that you’ve destroyed me. That others will come and go, but I will Love you forever. And I’ll never tell you that I wish we’d never met because I don’t know how I’ll survive this, and I’ll never forgive you for bringing me to life and killing me a thousand times over.”
