Mourning the future

My heart was so heavy last night.

I never said to A, hey, last year, B broke up with me. [If there is a date of death for B, it would be August 27, 2008. I came to this decision yesterday.

B is dead. That is the date I truly accepted that the person I fell in love with no longer inhabited that body.]

But we know the universe unfolds itself before us in oh-so-mysterious ways.

For whatever reason last night, A started asking me about B's illness. I think I had jokingly said something about how you would never believe my life if it was a movie, and A said, "Oh, I bet I could make it into a believable screenplay."

(In case I've not mentioned it, he writes screenplays.)

I started telling him some details. He was getting bored with parts of it, but I can't just cut to the juicy parts. To appreciate the experience, to get the full intensity of what I lived through in the summer of 2006, you have to have the slow, horrible build-up. You can't just climax. I started in July of 2006, when we "fled" Seattle. B fled, I followed, not knowing what else to do. We'll go to Portland for a few days. Things will be fine.

But he couldn't relax in Portland. Being with him made the city feel oppressive. He made references to scientists long dead. A man on the beach came and told us about the old Oregon highway system--that man, to B, was Tesla. It was obvious, wasn't it?

A wanted me to skip ahead. Fine, I said. I had to cover all the mirrors, he was friends with the Fates, thank God they keep a Bible in hotel rooms so I could prove to him that Redmond is not once mentioned in the Book of Revelations. Halogen lamps signify the end of the world, and I must never let him get close to a halogen lamp.

I told A about waking up at 5:20 am one day. B was wide-awake on the other bed in the hotel room watching with a disturbing fascination an informerical on knives. He started talking about how violent and disturbing the world was, all the evil the knives represented. I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. "Go to sleep." I said.

Before I knew it, B was lunging towards me for the remote. Only I didn't consider that he was reaching for the remote, I only knew he was moving suddenly towards my belly. I was four months pregnant, four and a half.

I bit his hand.

I told A all of this. It's not a believable screenplay. He says it is, one with a happy ending.

I honestly don't believe that it could have a happy ending, I said. I mean, aside from my meeting you and we live happily ever after.

No, he said, with Charis being born.

I didn't have the strength to say, no, that wasn't the happy ending. It should have been, but it wasn't.

More and more everyday, I am beginning to appreciate and respect Aristotle's idea that a person's life cannot be evaluated (and thus judged good or bad, just or unjust, etc) until that person has completed life (i.e., died).

How can there be a happy ending if we continue to live?

Nothing is over. We can be happy, but there's no ending just yet.

Last night, I lay in bed with my family...C and A. I was quietly sobbing. This love, I thought, is not going to last. Nothing ever lasts. Everything changes. This is a fact, and I was simply accepting that at some point, our love might die. A may fall out of love with me. He might die. I might die. We don't know, but love...it isn't permanent. It is, but it isn't.

Love is a paradox.

(D'uh.)

So I lay in bed, grateful for what I have now, mourning the past, and mourning the future.

God, how migraines and being quarantined with a 2.5 year old mess with your mind...