Just as I am starting to feel as comforted this week as I felt abandoned last week, I realize I have shut down completely. I don’t feel most anything; even anger just sits there: stillborn, voiceless, disconnected from passion, in the pit of my soul. I have not laughed in 24 hours. I could cry if it didn’t feel fraudulent and hollow.
This is what I wanted, I tell myself, to feel nothing when I realized I was in this alone. Now that I am not alone, I recoil from embraces, hesitate on the precipice of kisses, screen my phone calls, ignore well wishers. Most of all D. seems a burden, someone I must tolerate because we had something I wanted before I stopped wanting anything. Today V. suggested I take another candlelit bath, force the tears, scream to Ani DiFranco at the top of my lungs. But my skin is parched from too much soaking in waters that bring no clarity, the tears refuse summoning, and I sold my Ani CDs some time ago to pay my rent.
I am reminded of Sharon Olds — “once you lose someone it is never exactly the same person who comes back” — and wonder how it is one we reconnect after loss. Even more: How can I return to the person I was ten days, two weeks, a month ago? After the pain, the abandonment, the quick and fearful realization — maybe I’ve lost him for good this time — how is it possible that a familiar embrace, the scent of our bodies, gentle kisses and hesitant touches, or anything intimate could possibly bring us back to a time when we couldn’t possibly imagine the point at which love would be painful?
I am reeling from the not-losing, wondering when I’ll recognize myself again.
