I did 26 in the hole. The world had stopped moving and I stopped breathing. It was as if I was submerged. I kept having dreams that I was swimming under water, beneath current, sucking in great heaving breaths. My eyes went dark and I watched myself as a specter through my mind. There I was, driving to work, sobbing incoherently. Here I was again, having drinks with my gf, lost not only to myself.
I made a very pragmatic decision, based on arithmetic. Who would support me? Who would produce the most successful life? Who shared my goals and ambitions? There were charts and graphs and more than one Pros and Cons list. I agonized over the decision, though really there was never any question. I would stay with her. Lonely, ignored, unappreciated – it made the most fiscal sense. There were cats to raise and a pile of shared debt and rent to pay and oh, yeah – I had already invested in her education. That’s OUR degree baby.
There is so much I am sorry for, so much I wish I could change. Every death is his death. Every loss is my loss again, magnified. And still no one knows. And after all these years, who would even care?
Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made. I made a choice to berate and begot and beg all the days of my life because unconditional seemed a moot point. He never asked for anything in return. He never stopped listening. He never gave up on me. Until he did.
I did 26 in the hole. The hole of my loss and his death and our undoing. I stopped moving and stopped breathing and wished with every fiber of my being to be taken down to the soil with him. I wished to lie under the earth in that cold, hard place where we return to ash because he wouldn't be with me any other way.
