Mallory,
I feel like I'm watching my life happen before my eyes, not actually partaking in any of it. Sometimes I'll lose time, one moment I'm in the kitchen eating dinner, the next I'm sitting in front of the t.v. staring at the moving shapes and images gliding across the screen. I know I'm sad, but I don't feel sad. If that makes any sense. I just feel a kind of emptiness, but I'm not sure how anyone can feel emptiness, you know? It's like right where my emotions should be there's a hollow space and I just stare at that space and pretend to have emotions anyway because that's what I'm supposed to do, to function as a human being right?
Nathan doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. He just stares at me with his big puppy dog eyes the way he always does, like I could do no wrong. It makes me feel terrible to think he worships me the way he does, even though I am so undeserving of that kind of love and respect. I smile at him and it feels like crumpling up an essay you worked really hard on, satisfying to not give a fuck anymore, but sad and frustrating because you put a lot of work into it. I can tell he gets glimpses of how I'm really feeling and he gets worried, but despite his attentiveness and loving nature, Nathan is still a man and men are easily reassured.
The other day we were laying in bed and he pulled me in closer to kiss him, and he started to caress me and touch me, but I wasn't in the mood. It is not often that I'm not in the mood, so he knew something was wrong when I wasn't responding to his touch. What's wrong, he asked me. I looked at him and I truly wanted to tell him that I loved him so much, and he was so amazing but what he was doing wasn't enough. I wanted to tell him how I loved making love to him, but sometimes I wanted to fuck, sometimes I wanted him to pull me into an alleyway on the way home so we could have a quickie and sometimes I wanted to fuck in the bathroom at a party or a family event. I wanted to tell him how much I loved the way he looked at me but how much pressure that made me feel about being the perfect wife for him. How that pressure was sometimes unbearable and it left me lost and worried he wasn't happy and he'd try to find someone better. But I didn't tell him any of those things, I just laid there beside him smiled and whispered, nothing.
YOU ARE READING
The Tinted Sky
Roman d'amourWhen Nathan's wife Mara is killed in a mugging downtown, Nathan plunges into a dark place. As he goes between the flashes of his life and the flashes of his wife, Nathan loses touch of what is real and what is now a part of a long gone past.
