love?[sic]k?

After checking in with the emergency room receptionist, I took a seat and held my head in my hands. The worst pain I'd ever felt sliced through the space behind my eyes, leaving me in agony. Humiliatingly, I began to gag. In the middle of the crowded waiting room, I vomited until there was nothing left. I was empty. Ancient… Cleansed.

I felt my husband's hand on my back, an assurance that he could give me his presence, if nothing else. I could sense the tentativeness of it though. I'd left him long ago, but he was still here. It occurred to me then, as it does now, that we spend our lives with strangers. We can never let another person know all about us; it's impossible. In the beginning, we let people see what we want them to see. After that--usually if we come to love them--we show them only what they want to see.

So, that was how the man with whom I'd spent the past decade did not even know what had made me so sick. He had no idea this was happening because I'd spent the past months trying to capture the heart of a man who could never love me.

The task had consumed me and made me even crazier than him. In the waiting room that night, I thought I might die. I didn't want to. Even in my saddest states, I've always wanted to stick around to see what might happen. But at that moment, it felt like death would be a fitting punishment for all that I had done. It felt like I should calmly accept this as the poetic ending to my pitiful narrative.

The first night I met him, I knew right away that he was no good. But when he gave me pain, it didn't hurt. It seemed like I needed it, like for the first time I was feeling. I saw no emotion in his eyes though when I looked into them. That didn't stop me from diving deeper. I searched day in and day out, trying to get to the bottom of it, to find the soul I presumed to be there. But, all along, Bukowski's words echoed in my head like a warning...they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul...sometimes a soul…

When my search for that failed, I tried to create one. To give him part of mine. He didn't want it; I knew that all along. Still, I couldn't believe that someone would reject such a massive gift, but I see now that he had no interest in having a soul. What would he possibly do with that? He'd done just fine without one. What he wanted was to give someone pain. The more generous part of me wants to think that it was an attempt to unload his own. I'm not so sure about that. I think he was just sick. I shudder to think about what might have happened if he had accepted my offer. Now, I see that I am lucky. Maybe luckier than most.

It seems so crazy now. It seems like a fever dream. And I suppose it was.

But the fever has broken. I am alone, my soul mostly intact. I don't have love. I can no longer say, with any certainty at least, what that is. But I still have my soul.

I know this all had to happen in exactly this way. It was the inevitable conclusion to this story; in truth, I'd known that all along. The pain had to become so overwhelming that I could no longer stand it. I needed the fever to rise slowly, reach its highest pitch, and then, in a rush, break.

After a fever, we are always a little weak. But then, over time, we gain back our strength and get up. I'm not standing yet. But I will be. And I will be all that much stronger for having survived after being so sick.