In the Dark

         I could barely see her as she pretended to sleep. By the dim light coming in through the window, I watched her body rise and fall with each tortured breath. I always tried to synchronize my breathing with hers. I always failed.

         “Are you awake, love?”

         Her eyes opened. She smiled and said, “Maybe. What’s it to you?”

         I smiled to match hers as she stretched and groaned. She could be so cute sometimes. “I love you, you know,” I said.

         “What’s that?” she pretended not to hear me.

         I’m oblivious to these things, “I said I love you.”

         I could see that beautiful smile creep across her face as she said, “I love you, too.” Sometimes I could tell she didn't really mean it.

         This was not one of those times.

         She buried her face in my chest, one of the few things she could do to avoid having to look at me. And with my arms encircling her, there in her bedroom, I was happy.

         Unfortunately, the nature of happiness requires that it be inherently short-lived and largely erroneous in its premise. The foundation upon which happiness is constructed is so fragile, so easily destroyed. When you don’t realize that, you become a danger to yourself.

         “I can’t sleep,” I always like to share my problems.

         “Me either,” but I knew she didn’t care.

         “Let’s go smoke a cigarette.” I’m so full of ideas.

         “I don’t want to get up.”

         “Ok, we’ll stay.” I tried to appease her the best I could.

         The day could not have been more boring. Lunch, a nap, guitar, and a pack of cigarettes, and now here we were in bed together like I had always hoped we’d be. No sex, no romance. We didn’t always have to be doing something. In fact, it was during these times—the boring, dead times when we did nothing, said nothing—it was these times I felt I loved her the most.

         “What do you think of my singing?”

         She kept her face against my chest and mumbled something. I smiled again with a tenderness I hadn’t felt in years and said, “You know I can’t understand you when you talk into my breasts.” A joke between supposed lovers. It is a joke that will now create only sadness and emptiness.

         She giggled half-heartedly and turned her gaze upward to see if I had noticed how strained it sounded. “I said I love your singing.” That always made me feel good. “It’s sexy.” That made me feel better. It didn’t matter that I knew she only meant half of what she said to me. Nobody could make me feel as good about myself as she did. Coming from her, words of encouragement were Scripture to me.

         But this is what happens when you give of yourself completely without first examining the risks:

         When your heart is ripped from your chest, you are able to see it beating for a few seconds before your brain dies, the cells starving for oxygen yet receiving none. In those few moments, between destruction and death, you retain hope. You still foolishly leave room for a miracle to occur. You clutch uselessly at the hole in your chest, trying to somehow make the blood keep flowing through your dying body, trying feebly to find a new source of oxygen. Of course, you will fail. You will become, in a matter of seconds, that quivering mass of death you feared for so long. You do not feel when you are dead. You do not think, you do not sing, you do not eat or shit or sleep. You cannot see, or hear, or taste, or love. You are only a pile of repulsive decaying organic matter, ready to be cremated and put in a vase. At least you smell better as ashes. This is what happens when you don’t rely on yourself. I know this because I am the death that comes of ignorance and naïveté.

         She had buried her face in my chest again. I knew she couldn’t fall asleep like that, so I held her there for a while as I tried to slow my pulse to match hers. But laying there, in the dark, my growing anxiety would not allow me to relax.

         I began bouncing my feet on the bed, as I knew it would bother her and she would say something to break the crippling silence.

         “Stop that,” she said, and put her foot on top of mine. This made me smile again. I could have fallen in love with her all over again, just with those two words.

         “I love you,” I could not say it enough.

         “I love you, too.” This time, I could tell she didn’t mean it, smiling that obsequious smile.

         “Do you?”

         “That’s what I said.” I am so weak when she says these things to me.

         I kissed her, an awkward kiss, and she turned over so that her back was facing me.

         Silly me, I thought nothing of this. Love clouds your mind. I pressed my body up against hers and put my arms around her.

         We lay there in silence for an hour or more. By this point, I had realized that once again, I would not be sleeping tonight. I lay there and I thought about her.

         She always had a way of making me feel completely comfortable. Nobody else had even come close. I have always had a reputation for being cold, distant, and a little crazy. She filled me with her warmth, the warmth of the inner child. We could be children together and still remain adults, living and breathing in an adult world. So many things bothered me about the world we lived in, but she could make me forget them all by staring into my eyes. All I wanted was to hold her near to me and be the person I had always wanted to be. I loved her so much that I overlooked many things. Too many things.

         I still had anxiety.

         “I've got something to say, love. I want to tell you how I feel, and I would love for you to listen.” Jesus, I'm so weak.

         She grunted, and I continued.

         “I think, at this point in my life, it would be advisable to examine all the factors contributing to my state of being so that I can figure out who I am and where I’m going.”

         She said nothing. I took a deep breath.

         “I’ll start with fear. Fear is the basic primal instinct of man. Through fear, you learn how to survive, how to triumph. If someone pulls a gun on you, it’s fear that kicks in and tells you to put two fingers into his jugular vein. Fear will often let you do and say what you want—that’s the beauty of it.

         “Now, what do I fear? All my life, I have feared only two things above all else: failure and loneliness. I am so afraid that I will fail in life, just like the billions of other useless fucks on this planet. I’m afraid that when I look back at my life in fifty years, all I’ll remember are my feelings of inadequacy and subsequent depression. I’m afraid I’ll never be good enough, for you or for myself. I’m afraid you’ll leave me when you realize this. I’m afraid I’ll be left to face the world alone, utterly alone. I’m terrified of not having anyone. For the most part, I am content with myself and my abilities. But I quickly tire of my own company. I need someone to remind me that I exist. I need to mean something to someone. And I’m so afraid that you don’t really love me. I’m so afraid that I will never mean anything to anyone. I’m so scared, so fragile, so weak.

         “However, fear’s closest companion happens to be anger. It’s fear that causes you to sink into depression. It’s anger that causes you to slit your wrists. Every day, the amount of hostility I feel toward anything and everything is simply overwhelming. At the end of the day, it’s difficult to smile after you’ve exhausted yourself by getting angry about every trivial injustice this shithole world has to offer. It makes me angry that my life is not in my own hands.”

         I sighed heavily and glanced over at her. She did not have a response.

         “But if I were to go on about all the things that make me angry, I’d be talking for far too long, and you’d just laugh at me and tell me these stupid things don’t matter. And you’re right. God, you’re always right. That’s what I love about you. You’re so free, so strong, and I wish I could be there with you. But my petty insecurities keep me from getting there. Let me tell you something though: each moment I’m with you, every time I look into your eyes and wait for that sparkle, my insecurities fade a little further.”

         I was growing impatient with myself. I had not yet said what I really wanted to say. With timid resolve, I put forth the words that lay silent on the tip of my tongue.

         “What I’m trying to say is, I know who I am. I’m the guy that loves you. I really love you. More than anything, even myself. If keeping you meant I had to give up everything else that meant anything to me, there would be no other consideration. You are the embodiment of my happiness. And I truly love you. I love you. I LOVE YOU.”

         I held my breath and listened to her breathe for a gut-wrenching moment, waiting for her to tear my dreams apart. She said nothing. I exhaled sharply. I would have to wait for a little while longer.

         “Are you awake, love?” I placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

         She slowly rolled over and opened her eyes, blinking a few times to work through the muddled confusion of returning to reality. “What is it?”

         My heart sank. “I love you, you know.”

         She didn’t even smile this time. “I love you, too.” She turned her back on me again.

         I lay on my stomach, trying to ignore the pain in my chest. Eventually, I would fall asleep.

         And there, in the dark, with the dim light casting a pale glow over our naked bodies, her eyes would never sparkle the way I wanted them to.