Poetry at the End of the World

At the risk of sounding hysterical, I have always found an inextricable link between love and death. The woman I love will be the hand I hold at the end of the world. And losing that hand, well, that feels like death in and of itself. 

I will never ever forget the moment I left her apartment for the final time. I had sat there, saying goodbye to the person who meant more to me than anyone before, and I had imagined the future where I moved in, and we started the next chapter. I never did a good job of holding back my full thoughts, but that was one I managed to keep inside. And when I walked into the street, well, that felt like death. 

***

I don’t know the best advice I’ve gotten on getting through the agonizing dissolution of the most significant non-familial relationship of my life. Most people call it a break-up. I can’t. I can’t say “ex” either. It feels too trivial to call that person my “ex.” For one, she’s not mine anymore. For another, I’ll only ever know her by the name I gave her when I fell in love with her. She’s my [REDACTED]. When I think of her, I hear the version of my voice that only ever really existed for her. Is it too hysterical to pronounce that voice dead?

No, I don’t know the best advice I’ve gotten but I think I know the worst. Something along the lines of “now you’re free.” Receiving that advice, unironically, was such a bleak moment it made me cry for the first time since last week. Freedom was those four years. Now, all I see are tethers to what never will be again.

I know my fatal flaw. I know the thing that will likely kill me before anything else. I’m an obsessive. My brain is chemically imbalanced, and I will be fighting it all my life. I was fighting it before I fell in love, I fought it during, and I’m fighting it now and will to the bitter end. When I knew it was over, I made every possible preparation. I lined up therapy, medication, family, friends, plans, challenges, everything to keep the OCD away. I underestimated how bad things would get; how bad they could get. More than that, I underestimated the power of the places we’d been.

When I first asked her out many years ago, I was truly stunned how enthusiastically she said yes. I tried to play it off as cool, but internally I was flabbergasted. That moment arose, again, out of death. I used to fear flying, and I found myself stuck in an airport awaiting a big flight. The voice in my head was telling me this flight could be my ending, and that is where I finally found the courage to ask that woman out. If I close my eyes, I can go back to O’Hare and feel the excitement and the fear of sending that text.

If I close my eyes, I can go anywhere, feel anything. I can go back to the disgusting couch where we first said we loved each other in my friends’ college house. I can remember all our best dates. I feel the ice underneath my skate as I try to impress her. I walk around the Common, and I see our footsteps in the snow. Our footsteps trample over each other, back and forth, as we take turns picking the direction to go. I can feel the rock underneath my skin as we sit there before a big test feeling the Providence fall air. At school, I can see myself texting her in every class. I see myself calling her before anyone else when I got my job offer. I can sit in her apartment and feel her futon creak under my weight. Her pillow is slightly harder than mine. I feel my desire to do her dishes. I feel my fear for her safety when she stands on her wobbly stools. I’m watching her straighten pillows. I’m trying to remember where they go, so I can do it next time. I’m seeing her snuggled into the furthest row of the movie theater, as I return with popcorn and a red slushy. I can tap into every emotion, and I feel so many of them so fondly. 

Those moments are poetic. Those are the memories of two people in Shakespearean love with one another, and they are the moments I should miss most. And I miss them desperately, but I don’t miss them the most. Because the truth is I’m not all that into poetry.

Here is the thing I miss most about my [REDACTED]:

My [REDACTED] and I were very similar. We thought the same way. We had the same way of looking at the world. We had the same fire, and we clashed often. We always fought respectfully, but we fought, nevertheless. It was challenging on both of us. We were undoubtedly compatible but bouncing off of one another every single day could be exhausting. Maybe one of us needed to learn to relent, not that it matters anymore.

The thing I’ll miss most is that passion. The truth is, for better or worse, I would have fought with her in that cramped apartment forever.

I felt like the fight was so necessary and so beautiful because it allowed the space for her to be her. And that is what I miss most. I miss walking home while she rehearses a mock trial argument. I miss hearing her go in on a bad book. I miss watching her rant about something I barely understand. There was an electricity to watching her be herself that I was addicted to. I miss watching her study. I miss reading forty-five texts in a row in all caps. I miss the accent that creeps out when she’s passionate. I miss seeing the full human being in front of me with all her layers and dimensions. That woman is humanity, the real thing, the whole shebang, all of it. And those moments when I felt all of that were a drug, and I’m still feeling the withdrawal. 

I loved to just look at her. I loved to just listen to her. I loved to feel her energy. I loved to reach out and touch the crackling, sizzling electricity between our beings. I fucking loved it. I think she knew that. I hope so.

***

So, no, I’m not “free.” The memories stalk me like a ghost. Our love is hanging on my wall. It’s the case to my Airpods, it’s my favorite gift, it’s on my door, it’s carrying my books, it’s on my feet, it’s the clothes I wear to look nice, it’s the clothes I wear to bed; they’re all the ghost of a relationship which ceased to exist and took so much of me to the grave with it.

If I’ve ever been “free” it was at times during those four years when love became procedure, when our shared rhythm yielded clarity. The volume of the voices in my head turned as low as they’ve ever been. Life has been harder for me than I like to admit; I feel a lot of shame in my (a healthy, white, upper middle-class, intelligent, straight man’s) struggle to make it through the days. Now, with grief running rampant through me like a virus, those voices are louder than ever. I never left the prison of my disability but now the bars are reinforced in steel.

I’ve feared that this grief might kill me. I have made the best choices I can make. I have done the very best I can do, but this is the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. I will do anything to not feel it again. Any. Thing. Smart people will tell you it’s good to feel the grief because it means you truly did love your partner. I never really doubted that, though. I was committed, head-over-heels, mind, body, and soul. Even letting her go was only something I accepted because I thought it was the best choice for her. I would do anything for her. Any. Thing.

Except now I guess that I know there’s one thing I wouldn’t do. If I could go back, I wouldn’t let the relationship pass on. I wouldn’t do the best thing for her because, knowing what I know now, I would make the selfish choice. I would run and hide from the grief. And I think that’s sad. I hope she’s “free” now, like that guy said I should be. 

I suppose it’s good I can’t go back in time and make the selfish choice because I would do it and not even hesitate. I would be greedy. I’d inject it straight into my veins. I would feel the potent electricity of us, of me and her, of her and I, until it killed us both. Put another way, I would hold on to her hand until the end of the world.

***

I never expected to be back in the town she moved to, but on Christmas Eve I was there by accident to once again confront death. We were driving home, and I was sitting in the seat that was her’s more than anyone else’s when we suddenly were hit and spun. When the spinning stopped, I locked eyes with my brother, and we braced for an impact that never came. In that moment as we realized neither of us were injured and that traffic was safely moving past us, we both knew with bracing clarity that we had dodged the bullet. The story of the accident would become a joke, as we tend to do, but he and I will always know, even if we never discuss it, that we experienced a moment of true and undiluted mortality. When I got out of the car to dial 911, I looked for a sign of where we were. The nearest sign welcomed me to the town/jurisdiction where it all ended just five months ago. 

I’ll never forget the last time I was there, the last time I kissed her. And now, I’ll never forget the time I nearly died there.

Damn, if I can’t deny that poetry. And yet it’s like I said: I’m not all that into poetry. Poems don’t hold your hand at the end of the world. People do.