tethered (2012)

 “I’m right here,” I say again. It started out as a whisper, I’m sure of it, but as I listen to myself reiterate the words for a third time, I realize that I am shouting.

I am shouting, and then I'm screaming. I’m screaming and screaming and my throat starts to ache and all of a sudden I’m not making any noise at all, but there’s a heat in my eyes and it boils over onto my cheeks until I’m crying.

I’m crying. I have crumpled to the floor and all but drowned. All is silent but for my sniffling, and it pains me to hear the weakness in my tears. No one will look at me. “I’m right here,” I mutter, but no one hears.

It seems impossible to me how very close he is, and it is this very closeness that is killing me. I search his eyes; they look through me. But he looks through me as if he knows that it is I whom he looks through, and while I know this hope is nothing but a foolish fancy, it seems almost as if he can feel me there.

I take his hand and he pulls away, certain that what he felt was nothing – nothing at all, just his emotions playing tricks on a damaged psyche. And of course it was nothing, wasn’t it?

But he can’t ignore the chill that sweeps over his cheek as I brush a tear away, and he raises his hand to mine, bemused. I tell myself not to be stupid, that his hand is merely on his face, but no, it’s on mine. It’s filling the very same space as mine and so I will tell myself that he is holding my hand.

This is the third sleepless night I’ve sat through with him. I wish he would sleep; God, I wish he would sleep, but he is childish and desires the mourning that envelops him. He must, else he would go ahead and get on with his life.

I just want him to know that I’m here – that I’ve been here, right here with him, from the first moment I was able. I want to tell him that he deserves to be happy, that he deserves more than this. I want to tell him I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused him – for the tear stains on his pillow, for the relapse in his drinking, for the hole in his wall.

He doesn’t deserve this, and I’ve brought it on him. I’ve gone and ruined the rest of his life because I couldn’t stand the thought of living without him.

I thought holding on would be easier, but it isn’t. Letting go would’ve hurt, sure, but it would’ve been over quickly - a gunshot wound or a head-on collision, anything but the purgatory I've trapped myself in. It would’ve hurt and then it’d be over and I’d be lord-knows-where and he’d be lord-knows-here and I wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore.

But I am selfish. I am selfish and I couldn’t let him go, so I tethered him to me and held on tight instead of drifting away like nature intended. And now, here I am. Here we are. I say ‘we’ for convenience sake alone, for we are no longer us. We have been reduced to simply he and me, and both the me and the he are now entirely alone.

I am gone,

and he is here.

And I am here,

yet I am gone.