She's sleeping on the sofa again. Her strawberry hair frosts her forehead. Strands of hair, like frayed ribbons, cover her brown eyes that seem to have grown darker with age. Tracks of mascara spread across her blotchy pale skin like the branches of a tree in winter. She snores lightly, reminding me of the time I told her she sounded like E.T. when she sleeps.
I want to leave her.
When we first started fighting, the yelling was dramatic, the words vicious. But it pained us to hurt one another. We always made up the same day, both of us apologizing for hurting the other. Over the last year, the frequency of our fights did not increase, but the climax changed. After each fight we would separate, each of us finding our own space, allowing time to calm the situation. But that was the end of it. There were no apologies, no make-up sex. We walked through life waiting for the other person to apologize, to say I love you. It got to the point that when she did say I love you, it shocked me, like cold water splashed on my face, and I could never repeat the words back to her.
The fighting faded, as we grew tired of blaming one another. We realized the love had died months ago and it was simply our emotions reacting, surprised to be finding out so late in the game. We tried therapy twice a week. Some weeks felt as if we were falling in love again. But it was a lie. We were waiting for something to change, knowing that something did change. We just weren't ready to accept the truth of that change.
Eight months ago, I started packing. The decision to leave was hard, but it was what we needed. As I watch her sleep, the half-packed boxes littering the living room of our apartment remind me each day of my failures. My failure to leave. My failure to make things work between us. My failure in her.
She rolls over and her snores fade to a whisper. The anti-depressants stifle her breathing along with her zest for living, for loving me. I feel regret. Regret that I don't love her anymore. But more so, regret that one day the waiting will end. Because there is comfort in the waiting. As I watch her chest slowly rise, I understand how long I have put my life on hold, waiting for her to change. While I hit the pause button on life, an uncaring world kept on moving.
Friends and family shuttle in and out of my life wanting to know when the waiting will end. The cute girl at the front desk with the bubbly laugh and warm greetings, smiles when I come into the office.
She wants to know if I have started my new life. Her smile teases me with thoughts of moving on, of joining the world again, maybe her world. I fall in love with her a little each day.
But she's waiting. But not for me. She wants her fiancée to set the date. So, she waits for him. The secretary who sits next to her is waiting for retirement. My son is waiting to learn how to drive. My friends and family spend their lives waiting for promotions, babies, football season. They are all waiting for something or someone to give them purpose, to make them, to make me, feel like life matters.
I watch her curl her legs and bring her knees into her chest, her arm flops and dangles from the sofa. Her sleep is never peaceful. The scars on her wrist scream at me of failures past. Troubling thoughts arise when I look at the red lines. Some of the lines are light having faded with time, like ghosts waking from a nightmare. The fresh cut, a deep red grin surrounded by inflamed skin as if the skin were yelling at me, speaks of time wasted waiting for her to get better, to be able to let me go. The cut dark and horrid, striking through the tattoo of infinity she talked herself into getting six months ago when things were going to be different. I can't help her, but I am responsible for her. Without me, she would succeed and she would take my desire to live with her.
There are days, after a Scotch or two, I think she may be right. I think about joining her, end the waiting. Would it be better to acquiesce and follow her down her crimson path into darkness and what lies beyond? Maybe death is the solution and not the enemy. With death, the waiting would be over, the pain lost below the green grass of the graveyard.
When these thoughts overwhelm me, I focus on the cute girl's smile and it draws me back. I see escape in that smile. Even though I know her smile is for another, I see hope in her face and I want to find that peace again because in it is a chance to become whole. I desire to be whole again. I want a smile of my own.
That is worth the wait.