Conversations

vi.

         "I've been meaning to ask you something, but I'm afraid of what your response will be. Can you promise me you won't get upset?"

         "I think it was just last week that you begged me to quick making promises that I had no intent to keep. So is this what you want or is that what you want? Should I make a new promise to not go back on promises that are only one week old or should I make another to promise not to make promises that go against you?"

         "You know what? Just forget it. If you would just stop for once, we'd actually be able to get a conversation going that progressed somewhere."

         "Stop what exactly?"

         "Stop trying to be something perplexing, like a one thousand piece puzzle that I will never solve, because all that's happening is that I'm tired of trying to figure you out. That's it. I don't want to be in love with a mystery anymore. Sure, it was exciting the first few months, but now it's only insufferable. I can't handle it anymore—I can't handle you anymore. For Christ sake, all I wanted to know in the first place was if the pills were helping or if you're happy yet, but you just have to go and turn it into this enormous game of twenty-one questions."

         "I don't know."

         "God, there you go again! What don't you know?"

         "If the pills are working."

         "Well, haven't you noticed any improvements? Don't you feel better?"

         "Yes, I've noticed things that are different, but not necessarily better. I feel different as well, but I don't feel better. But none of that, none of this, is an improvement. I was not broken before and I am not broken now."

         "Fine, are you still sad?"

         "I don't feel sad."

         "That's good, don't you see?"

         "I don't feel anything. I feel as if I want to be sad, as if I am sad at the core and always will be, but the pills simply repress my ability to access the sadness. It's still there, it just doesn't answer to me anymore. I miss it."

         "Don't you realize you're better off without it?"

         "No, you're better off without me having it. I'm worse off. I'll always be worse off. I have nothing to call my own anymore. I have realized in the absence of my sadness how lucky I was to have it keep me company all those years. It used to stay up with me, night after night, crooning poetry in the left of my chest. It was kind to me, and that is rare."

         "I'm kind to you."

         "It was kinder."