I Miss Him

It frustrates me they call it "a lump in the throat" because that is not what it feels like.  A single deep curve.  A brass-colored, metallic flat tongue, weaving an ugly tang down through the depth of the esophagus.  Yellow, fetid and bitter.  The very essense of resistance, a physical response, almost a movement - it isn't a lump.  It's the body's expression:  frustration.

This isn't something I express to my family, who cannot like him, nor my friends, who have heard it now for years.  It isn't new, it is the result of my choice, it simply is - what it is.

I miss him.

Mr. X is the one man who's ever known everything one person could know about another, and still wanted to know more.  He's the one person with whom complete openness is possible - and with whom that could not exhaust our interest.  There has always been, between us, something new to talk about, some new question either to share or ask one another.

Whatever it is in X that has brought me to where I am, challenges me - it isn't his doing nor volition.  There are times the responsibility he feels toward me is outright damaging between us.  Four thousand miles don't make a relationship easy.

Still, they cannot seem to kill it.  I look.  I do.  I'm open, to varying degrees, to the idea of finding someone else.

Nobody else has ever made me look twice.


***


Tonight, I wanted to go out.  I thought about what to wear, I painted my nails.

Going out - getting dressed up for a Saturday night - these are things so indelibly associated, now, with X, that sometimes it happens I try to start, and in the middle of a bath or when I sit down to my beautiful antique vanity to primp, something flags, I go limp, and just can't finish and do it.  I have a closet full of clothes I know he would, or does, like - some bought and literally un-worn.

I've never admitted that before.

The idea of going out still appeals to me.  But the absence of the man I have the most fun with compromises it.

I get frustrated.

That metallic quirk, that physical resistance, that curving thing that is a powerful spring, a recoil - not a lump, not anything so inert nor still - sits in the back of my throat, and I all but weep.

Though not alone in the sense of having no love, I am alone in a way profound enough the prospect of anyone else I know enduring this state makes me physically ill.


I can do alone.  I've done it about half my life now - after living at home, before I got married, and after.  Even just counting that last, it's nineteen years now I have been the Strong, Smart Woman making it on my own.

Strong is easy.  I've gone over that before.

The things that compromise you, though, go right by strength.  The moment you are alone with a sprained back, or ankle, and ... *anything* needs to be done.  The instant's shift, when you are excited to go out and see friends, be surrounded by loud music, laughter, and dancing - and then, suddenly, can desire nothing so much as sitting alone on the couch, clean and baby-powder scented in ugly pants and clean socks.  When a storm goes by, and once again you have to love it, and watch it, by yourself.

When you realize you never watch comedy, because laughter is a team sport.

When the storm comes, and you bless it as an *excuse* to give up.  Again.

I miss him.  If he were here, we would go play.  If he were here, Siddy's would not be the only other heartbeat in this house.  If he were here - life would have twists and turns, be unpredictable.  It would be so much harder.

It would be so much more interesting.