9/25/2010

She comes in over an hour late and doesn't kiss me as though our lips are the only thing that can anchor her to the firmament. I thought before this something was wrong. As I will tell her later, she has broken up with me twenty times already today, all in my head.

I had called Clio earlier because I was a bundle of nerves. Knowing Melanie as well as I do, I read much into things others would ignore. The fact that she doesn't reply to a sexy letter I sent, that she signs off an instant messaging conversation with "ttfn" rather than "I love you." Before, I tried to credit her distance with the fact that her phone was broken, but I can't ignore these hints. Clio assures me that I have nothing about which to worry, that Melanie just had a bad day and was irked about her phone. I try to believe this too, if just so I can function for the rest of the day until Melanie gets to me. I tell Clio that I went grocery shopping to make my angst productive and that, had I not spoken to her, I would have cleaned my whole apartment. After we hang up, I rearrange my living room.

I guide Melanie to the bed, thankful to have had cause to put on pants prior to her arrival. What is about to happen is too naked as it is.

She begins crying, or resumes crying. She had been crying much on the drive down to me, mostly after having seen obliterated deer viscera and finding a spider in her car. She says she has something she needs to talk to me about and then halts as all the words try to find their way out at once. She stares off into the middle distance. That halting is the worst thing she could do. If the executioner's ax is about to find my neck, I would rather it do so in a decisive blow.

She details the issues; that she is young, that she is curious for the taste of other women, that she needs to be adventurous, that she wishes she had found me later in her life. She wants not to feel beholden to anyone, she wants to make stupid mistakes (her words), she wants to have meaningless one-night stands (she clarifies that she has no one in mind and finds no one attractive in the least, such that she was shocked at our passion the weekend prior). After all that, in a year, she has no doubt that I am the person with whom she wants to spend the rest of her life.

I, as calmly as I am capable, explain that - aside from the one-night stands, which I am certain would not be worth it - I don't hold her back but rather encourage her. She concedes that this is true. But, I state, if she leaves me, I can't imagine letting her back in. If she leaves me to have sex with strangers, expecting that I will wait, she is going to be horribly disappointed. If she left me, I wouldn't be able to stand the sight of her, the sound of her voice, for a very long time because all my love for would have become sharp and toxic to me. If she wants to force me into a world without her, it can't be halfway.

The last two weekends between us have been brief, what I had previously referred to as "booty-call length". She came down on Friday night, after eight, she was gone before lunch the next day. She said it was because she had schoolwork, and that was part of it. The rest was that she realized this was her senior year and that she is just now interested in the college experience, one that has nothing to do with love or stability. The whole conversation echoes and I wonder if maybe I have had this breakup three times before so I wouldn't have to have it this time. All of the l'esprit d'escalier I had thought of once those women had walked away, all the things I wish I had said just to have them in the air, appears politely before me should I feel the need.

She asks for some of the ways she broke up with me in my imaginings. I tell her that one involved her having an affair with some woman, that this was what I worried had happened when she sat down. Melanie recoils and says she isn't Emily.

I try to advise her on some point, but I feel the sentences too slippery in my mind. I begin to speak and then interrupt, "I'm sorry, I am trying not to dissociate." I can't remember what I am saying because this moment is too intense. This amnesia is my brain's way of coping, but it is nothing I can allow to happen.

She looks mildly irritated. "Is that even a real thing?"

I sigh, equally irritated. "Yes, it absolutely is and I hate it as much as you do right now." Then I remember what I meant to say and explain that she is letting her expectations for what her senior year should entail dictate how she feels and reacts. It is a shaky time of one's life, standing on the precipice of a new life, which is why her psychosocial crisis renewed with such vigor.

We hold hands and touch through the proceedings. She tells me that I am like some benevolent god, as I am being sweet and sympathetic instead of throwing crockery. I point out that her worship is wonderful, and that she isn't breaking up with me. I talked the jumper that is our relationship off of the ledge, so it is just a matter of helping her air her grievances and assuring her that I can handle those. In fact, I had made promises to several previous iterations of Melanie never to let her leave me and I intend to keep any oath that so vastly benefits me. "Plus, I am selfish. Throwing things and screaming isn't going to get me what I want, which is you, so I will be composed and discuss this."

"You are just too perfect," she says, rubbing my hand.

I smile. "Yeah, well, sorry I can't be so perfect that I could handle the idea of you sleeping around."

"There is a fine line between perfect and utterly stupid," she says. "You are nowhere near that line."

She concedes that this probably wasn't going to end badly given that she couldn't imagine an outcome that didn't involve our hugging and kissing.

"I don't want to be flaky, though," she says when I suggest that she can have occasional weekends to herself if she needs.

"Given that the other option seems to be possibly leaving me at some point, I can do with your flaking. I do have other friends and quite a lot to do, but I love you."

I kiss her on the forehead, but we note that it is best that I not kiss her on the lips. "There will be time for kissing," she assures me.

If anything, she says, she is the one tying me down, wanting me to follow her wherever she gets into grad school next year. She is the one dictating the terms of our relationship. I tell her that I had actually gone through my own traumatic reevaluation of our union - one in which I had not deigned to involve her - based on the idea of following her and decided that the idea was terrifying but that she was the one person for whom I gladly would leave my comfort.

I tell her that she is a rare person and we have a unique relationship, something worth fighting to preserve. She self-deprecates that it is probably best for the world that there is only one of her, but that it could use more of me. I tell her that I am glad I get to have the one of her.

She looks up at me, eyes rimmed red, and says, "Can we get to the kissing part now?" It is a kiss I will remember, the reprieve from execution. I don't want it to end, even as it surpasses minutes.

Soon after, our clothes come off, but not for sex. We sit, talk, and kiss for an hour more, reunited. I then make her eggs because she is famished from the day, week, from the eternity of thinking all these things through and the hunger has found her again now that it can get a word in edgewise. I mention facetiously that I am glad she didn't leave me, because I would have to give her the engraved Christmas presents I have already squirreled away for her. She asks for one now, then retracts that I probably won't allow this. I tell her there is pretty much nothing I wouldn't do in this moment and produce a set of chopsticks engraved with our names on one stick and our pet names on the other. She proceeds to eat the omelet I have made for her using these, with some difficulty. She feeds me squares of egg with delight.

In relief of the weight lifted off her, she is double affectionate, making full use of the couch I have rearranged into a cuddlier configuration in preparation for tomorrow night. She reiterates "I love you" as though saying the amen to her prayers.

The next day, I am nevertheless tentative, having been faced with losing her, mentally reenacting the aftermath from my last breakup. I try to keep my nervousness silent - I decide she needs me composed - as we move through the chore of the day, getting her phone fixed at my brother's shop. It had been weeks since it worked properly and several days since it worked at all, meaning her fears and desperation fomented while she could not hear my voice. I couldn't coo love to her before going to sleep, falling back on daily emails I assumed she was simply too busy to respond to. Worse, she was parted from the only bit of technology she relies upon to keep her connected to the world.

After giving Dan the phone, after he admonishes her that she ought to go straight to him next time, we play and grow quickly bored of the Playstation games he has to entertain his brood while they are at the shop. We get Rita's, rarely leaving the other's side as we try flavor after flavor to the contained frustration of the girl behind the counter. Though the phone cannot be fixed until I order a new part, Dan gives her a loaner from home, reconnecting her to an avenue of daily sanity.

That night, I had scheduled the Horrid Movie Double Feature of The Room and Troll 2 and invited several people. Had I any inkling of what this weekend was going to hold, I would have sacrificed seeing friends for having time alone with Melanie, especially as I promised them lasagna that I had to make at the last minute.

Suzanne, her friend, and Daniel come over, the former two bearing cookies. Melanie goes out of her way to be cuddled up with me, despite the presence of other people, through the first movie. We mock The Room with relish, playing good hosts when required. When Troll 2 comes on, she disappears into the bathroom. I think nothing of it until I hear the "psst" of spray bottles. I exchange looks with our guests and shrug.

I pop my head into the bathroom and see her scrubbing my sink. "Hi."

She doesn't look up. "Hi. Do you have a sponge I could use?"

I lead her into the kitchen where, using my powers of relative tallness to get to the cabinet over the sink, I give her a new sponge. "Why did you decide to clean?"

"Your bathroom needs it."

I look around, seeing that it is already brighter. "Granted, but why not hang out with us and watch the movie?"

"I've seen it before. I'd rather clean." After having watched the whole of the movie, I can't fault this logic. Bad movies that are trying to be bad are soul-dirtying.

I return to the living room and assure them that Melanie is fine. In whispers, I tell them about Melanie cleaning the bathroom of The Muddy Cup coffeehouse the first time she met Jacki.

"Are you telling them about our first date?" she shouts from the bathroom.

"No, you didn't clean a bathroom then."

"Did so!"

I pause. "Okay, fine, but there were extenuating circumstances," I tell the guests. "I had just gotten out of a relationship and wanted every reason to not rush to bring Melanie home."

"Are you blaming your disgusting bathroom on me?" she asks between spraying.

"No, you are wonderful." I turn back to Suzie. "On that first date, during some heavy kissing, I asked her what it would take for her to love me. She said I would have to let her wash my dishes. She's a keeper."

After the guests leave and we are nestled in bed, we end up in a conversation where she can't promise she won't have another breakdown next weekend. When she is with me, everything is lovely, but she isn't sure she can handle it once Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday roll around.

I make her clarify that she wasn't talking about asking to leave me again and she said this was so, but the rest of the conversation seemed to entail her wish to get away from the Symbol That I Now Represent. That she needs thrills, she needs to be free. She thinks she would end up missing me. She said she otherwise would have just taken a semester abroad, but it is her senior year and she can't.

I was at a training a few weeks ago and we had to do all sorts of silly group activities. One involved interviewing someone else as to their hopes and fears. I don't know why - there was really no benefit to being honest - but I told the woman I was interviewing that my greatest fear was that I wouldn't be with Melanie (there had previously been some hope-related mention of her). I could barely squeak it out, but it was the truth. It isn't in a codependent way, though I feel horribly codependent writing all this out, but because I know I have found a person with whom I could spend my whole life curious and in love. It has been over two and a half years and we are more in love than ever. We have a relationship that most people spend their entire lives seeking in vain.

I feel myself pulling inward to protect myself from the blow I subconsciously fear is coming and that is nothing I want to do. Prior to Melanie, I felt fictional, a character I happened to be playing. Events happened and I was witty and charming, but it wasn't really me so nothing could hurt. I don't want to start that again. I am naked and vulnerable because it is more difficult and painful, but real. That is among the reasons her leaving would obliterate me, because she has seen every bit of me, that I emerged for her and crushed the shell so there could be no retreat. But the biggest reason is that I truly love her in a way I didn't previously think possible. There is no one on Earth like her, brilliant and blasphemous, erotic and adorable. I don't have to fake a word with her. As I have told her a dozen times this weekend, I am even in love with her flaws. Any harshness in this entry is only because I don't ever want to be her ex-boyfriend and I know my mind is trying to build a new shell for that in case she decides to flit away. My hand is open, it has always been open, so there is nothing keeping her here but her wish to be touching me. Our finances aren't entangled, we don't have children or pets. Aside from a few connective strands (Clio, Daniel), our lives are separate.

But I would believe in soulmates if she could be mine. My greatest truth is that I love her so much I cannot stop saying it. Anything I have said that seems defensive or irritable comes from that core. I don't want her or need her, but I love her. She isn't comfortable. I am not scared of losing her because it would prove fodder for my abandonment issues, because I am scared of starting again, because I have tried to build a life with her. I am scared of losing her because I love her.

I write most of the above before waking her Sunday morning. I mean only to nudge her to consciousness and lead her toward a bowl of Special-K, to give her another morning in love. Instead, sleep deprived, I squeeze her and bawl as my walls crumble, sniffling out much of what I have been holding in, how scared this all made me. She cradles my head and kisses me, telling me that she will always love me and isn't going to leave ever. She may need weeks to herself, but she will always return to my arms in love. .

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.