It was so dark that I didn’t have to close my eyes in order to pretend I was sleeping. I just needed to lay still, so still that my back began to ache from the shallow breathing. Both of our mouths hung open, I could tell from the way his breath hit the back of my neck but neither of us could find the words to breathe life back into what we were losing. If you would have walked into that bedroom on this night you would have sworn we’d been dead for weeks: still, stiff, distant, as though we both had left our respective bodies a long, long time ago. But even in this room of nothing, even as I struggled against my own nerves to feign lifelessness, there was absolutely nothing I could do about my thudding heart.
“Are you sleeping?”
No. I let the room tone respond on my behalf. He listened then rolled far enough away so that nothing that belonged to me touched anything of his.
There has been many nights like this over the past months: siblings not twins. Some nights we would end up asleep on different ends of our shared 400 square feet and others we’d fall asleep wondering what the other was doing. But tonight where we knew the answer to that question there were so many others we just needn’t bother with, anymore.
The way I see it, there are two ways to lose a loved one: tragic and fast or devastatingly slow. Who would you rather be: the mother who loses their teenage child in a car accident or the newlywed who learns their partner has a terminal illness after your honeymoon? I am sure if you ask anyone who has experience with either they may secretly wish they had it the other way around but you don’t get that choice in real life. Except… sometimes you don’t lose a loved one, sometimes you lose your love and then you do have a say in the matter.
We had been dying over the past couple of months, losing the love like blood through a papercut. The agony of living out the long days of the inevitable could have destroyed me long before us. Except, I found a way to make the pain stop. I discovered a fix to keep myself from breaking. I found him.
There was this one night, in the most cliché forms I honestly can’t recall what we fought about but I do remember he fell asleep on the couch with all of his clothes on. I had begged him, clawed at him, cried on him – he pushed me, rejected me, hid from me.
“Get away from me.”
And I planned to take that literal. I waited keeping as absolutely still as I could until his breathing became heavy, then deep and finally loud enough to drown out the sounds of the drawers opening and closing. I packed three bags, secretly wishing while partially praying he wouldn’t wake. I took them one by one to the frontdoor, the last was so heavy I couldn’t bear its weight. I slid to the ground and knew I had been here many times before. Not being dramatic, just pragmatic; in a small apartment with big problems the chances that your tears had fallen over every square inch, are good. I closed my eyes and waited to cry but I didn’t not because I didn’t care but because I knew where to find someone who would. Ironic that thing many would define as cheating is quite possibly the one thing in this whole world that gives me the strength to stay here.
Laptop bag in hand I crept into the bathroom, closed the door and shoved a towel in the crack that spoiled my hiding spot. I pressed the on button, loaded the program, slid in my ear piece then lay flat and still.
“Hello?”
“You don’t sound good, are you hurting?”
“God, how do you see me when you can’t even see me. Make the pain stop. I almost left, I swear I did.. Am I bad person? Could you stand me? Stand with me?”
There was a long pause on the other end but I did not panic, I didn’t need to. This isn’t like regular relationships, the ones where you are always half terrified half expecting the other person will leave when shit gets too heavy. I don’t have to wonder when we are together I just know.
