Anywhere With You

by Ellie Palmer

Now that he’s leaving me, I can finally take issue with the way he refuses to use his allergy medication and then complains about every symptom as though he’s being personally victimized by the planet without recourse.

“We had something good. It’s hard to leave it behind for the possibility of something great. But I can’t make you happy, and trying to is making me miserable.”

Because in a world of leavers and stayers, anyone is capable of becoming a leaver.

We didn’t challenge each other. We couldn’t hurt each other. I remember lying in bed with him thinking: I could be happy like this so long as I don’t think about happiness too much.

“Colorado is the breakup bangs of states. No one in an emotionally stable place has ever up and moved to Denver.”

“All we have is connection, right? All we are is how well we’re loved by the people we care about and how well we love them back. Nothing else can be more important than that.

“You’re the worst patient,” I admonish him. “You’re worse,” he argues. “I’m a perfect patient. I want to be left alone. I’m like a dog that hides under the porch and waits to die.”

There’s a sad sort of beauty in the way grief goes liquid and takes different shapes to fill the body it’s in. The emptier someone leaves you, the more your insides swim with their loss. Some endings are about mourning what’s gone and some are about accepting what you never even had. The perfect husband. The perfect life. But perfect isn’t the same as right. Perfect things can be all wrong. Losing something that was so imperfect in all the loveliest ways hurts infinitely worse.

“There’s more than enough of my love to go around for you and Peter because love isn’t finite. It isn’t a thing you have. It’s something you do. Love is a verb, babe.”