Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Every morning when I wake up I forget for a fraction of a second that you are gone and I reach for you. All I ever find is the cold side of the bed. My eyes settle on the picture of us in Paris, on the bedside table, and I am overjoyed that even though the time was brief I loved you and you loved me.

“That is lazy of you, but you’re my wife and I love you and I want you to have what you want.”

I look at my face and I think that I had someone who loved this face. And now he’s gone. And now no one loves my face anymore.

What’s the point of a promise anyway? How can we expect people to stick to their word about anything when the world around us is so arbitrary, unreliable, and senseless?

“How would you even know that?” “Because I pay attention.”

“You are a friend that I could never…” I choke on the words, unable to look her in the eye. “No one deserves a friend as wonderful as you,” I say. “Except maybe you.”

“He’s never coming back. Whether you go or you don’t go. So get in the car, because this is the last thing you can do with him.”

But the short amount of time that I was his wife,” I say, “was the defining part of my life.

“I guess I just want you all to know that at the end of his life, he had someone who loved him deeply and purely. He had someone who believed in him. I took good care of him, I promise you I did. And I can tell you, as the last person to see him alive, I can tell you, he was happy. He had found a happy life for himself. He was happy.”

Whatever happens happens. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. We are in this together and we will be fine.”

I was wrong. I do have triggers.

“Just remember that if you wade too long in the misery of it, you’ll wake up one day and find that your entire life is built around a ghost.

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.

Things happen in your life that you can’t possibly imagine. But time goes on and time changes you and the times change and the next thing you know, you’re smack in the middle of a life you never saw coming.”

I’m just trying to tell you that your life will be very long with zigzags you can’t imagine. You won’t realize just how young you are until you aren’t that young anymore.

So, she doesn’t know how to talk to you because she doesn’t understand you.”

We knew each other’s wants. We knew each other’s needs.

But attachment and love are two different things.

“Drunk words are sober thoughts,”

And what I want is to be with the kind of man that wants to marry me so bad, nothing will stop him. I want to be loved by someone who loves me so much he can’t think straight. I want you to love me in a way that makes you stupid and impractical.

I wanted to belong to something, belong to someone,

That is what true love is. True love is saying to someone “Forget about us. We will be okay,” when it might not even be true, when the last thing you want is to be forgotten.

I will one day wake up and see the sun shining and think, What a nice day.

You are everything I have ever wanted in another person. You are my best friend, my lover, my partner. And I promise that I will spend the rest of my life taking care of you, the way you deserve to be taken care of. My whole life I was never looking for something bigger than myself, and then I met you and I want to dedicate every day of my life to you. You are it for me. You are why I am here. Without you, I am nothing. So thank you, Elsie, for being who you are, and for spending your life with me.”

No matter how strong you are, no matter how smart you are or tough you can be, the world will find a way to break you. And when it does, the only thing you can do is hold on.