Faking Your Own Death

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this from him. I think this is number 12 or 13, a smattering across the last 5 years and never when I expect them. I’ve usually forgotten about him to some comfortable extent before he re-appears. Always like this. An unexpected text, an unexpected test.

“I can’t stop thinking about you either.”

I fail every time. I wish I could say it was a lie, but he rolls around in my head on a daily basis. Like a sore I can’t seem to let heal over enough to even scar. It’s embarrassing the amount of time I’ve let him have given he’s given me none whatsoever. He opens the door to my soul and I fall to my psychological knees.

We dance around this idea that we were meant for each other, simply bad timing amongst other losses and schedules and career paths. We’ve known each other for centuries and we settle in each others bones. I’ve lived a million lifetimes with him in my mind, from the pathway of our courtship to a beautiful engagement, pushing the stroller through the park and growing glamorously old together. Sometimes I’m a doctor, sometimes he’s a teacher, sometimes we’re on another part of the planet living our days out blissfully wedded.

We remind each other we’re happy now, with our people and partners. Are we happy now? Something about the way he describes her makes me think he’s not so happy, but I suppose that makes me an outlet until they’ve made nice and can return to their lives. Wasn’t this how we met? A break-up gone wrong and a need for connection? I want to fix him. Doesn’t he want to be fixed?

I feel that I’ve grown tired of this back and forth, this pushing and pulling away and toward each other with no true ending. Not even a coffee date that comes to fruition. God knows he’s too much of a chicken to show up after spending weeks making the plans. This wound is starting to drain the rest of me. Taking me away from the parts of my life he has never come to know, and that I’d be pleased to leave him out of. Rooted in a new happy, wholesome and nutritious.

Of course this time there is nothing of our dance. As always. I don’t even get disappointed like I used to. I let myself decide this is the last time, and that I must kill this old me in order to move on. She’s desperate and she’s hurt and she’s weak. She weighs me down.

The house is full of candle smoke as I visualize leaving him behind. The old me folds in two, all muscle aches and heart-wrenching screams. We can’t keep doing this. We’ve grown too old for broken promises like these, this repetition. I can’t keep doing this.

I fill my schedule and my coffee cup. I spend my nights reading and listening to my love’s heartbeat, building our life together in a way that is intentional and responsible. Bringing out the best in each other, as you say. Slowly, he fades into a faint ring in my ears, heard only if it gets too quiet or the right song comes on the radio. I clean out my devices and my networks and scrub until there’s no trace that we ever connected, not even once. The ache is less and less, an old knee that knows when the weather changes. I swear love is no longer served for him at this table, while putting leftovers in containers just in case.

I starve her too, even when she begs for me to reach out; just type it, just call him, just write it. It couldn’t possibly be so bad. It might not even matter if he doesn’t reply. She begs, and I pity her. She goes hungry for his love and my attention.

And another year passes, and the trees are green again, and the closure is almost complete. Like sadist clockwork, the unexpected comes again. A wound set to re-open.

“I’m sorry it’s been a while. How have you been?”

Every fibre of my being wants him to know he’s looking for a dead girl. Buried and resting with her unrequited love.

But she’s breathing, and she lives in my chest.

I don’t answer this time.