Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I could smell his breath. It smelled like cilantro and onions. It smelled sweet, somehow. My heart started beating faster.

I have to say I was leaning toward preserving the past. I loved holding books in my hands. I loved smelling their pages.

I grab the sticks, already knowing what they say, and then I drop to my knees. I am wrong. There is no child. No matter how many sticks I use, they keep saying the same thing. They keep telling me Ben is gone forever and that I am alone. I don’t move from the bathroom floor for hours. I don’t move until I feel it. I am bleeding. I know it’s a sign that my body is fully functioning, that I am physically fine. But it feels like a betrayal.

When you love someone so much that you’ve stuck around through all the interesting things that have happened to them and you have nothing left to say, when you know the course of their day before they even tell you, when you lie next to them and hold their hand even though they haven’t said one interesting thing in days, that’s a love I want. It’s the love I was on target for.

Love is love is love. When you lose it, it feels like the shittiest disaster in the world. Just like dog shit.”

I want so badly to take all of her words and fit them like the pieces of a puzzle into the hole in my heart. I want to write those words down on little pieces of paper and swallow them, consume them, make them a part of me. Maybe then I could believe them.

I liked being needed by him. I liked making his food for him, running his baths for him, massaging his muscles. I liked caring for him, taking care of him. It made me feel like I had a real purpose. It felt so good to make him feel even the littlest bit better.

because I loved him in a way I’d never thought possible. I knew that if I lost him, if I had to live without him, it would crush me. I needed him and I didn’t just need him now, I needed him in the future. I needed him always. I wanted him always. I wanted him to be the father of my children. It’s such a silly statement now; people say it all the time, they throw it around like it’s nothing. And some people treat it like it is nothing, but it wasn’t nothing to me. I wanted to have children with him someday. I wanted to be a parent with him. I wanted to have a child that was half him and half me. I wanted to commit to him and sacrifice for him. I wanted to lose part of myself in order to gain some of him. I wanted to marry him.