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We would have to see the world through his eyes—the potential poisons, the sharp objects, the inventiveness with which he could finish the job that damned motorcyclist had started.
“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
“Potential. Yes. Potential. And I cannot for the life of me see how you can be content to live this tiny life. This life that will take place almost entirely within a five-mile radius and contain nobody who will ever surprise you or push you or show you things that will leave your head spinning and unable to sleep at night.”
The great irony of all this was that I didn’t even sleep well at Patrick’s flat. I don’t know what it was, but I came to work from there feeling like I was speaking through a glass jar, and looking like I had been punched in both eyes. I began painting concealer on my dark shadows with slapdash abandon.
POISONOUS MAN AIR!!!!
“Some mistakes . . . just have greater consequences than others. But you don’t have to let that night be the thing that defines you.”
had to make sure that I didn’t lose sight of the rest of me.
“Nearly seven years we’ve been together. And you’ve known this man, had this job, for five months. Five months. If you go with him now, you’re telling me something about our relationship. About how you feel about us.”
my sadness was never the crippling thing I should have expected. I didn’t feel desolate, or overwhelmed, or any of the things you should feel when you split apart a love of several years. I felt quite calm, and a bit sad, and perhaps a little guilty—both at my part in the split and at the fact that I didn’t feel the things I probably should.
!!
To my shame, I hardly thought of Patrick at all.
Why is this not enough for you? Why am I not enough for you? Why could you not have confided in me? If we’d had more time, would this have been different?
Perhaps, I found myself thinking, he deserved someone better than me. Someone cleverer. Someone
I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself.
I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him.
and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to live.
