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.

I want to tell them to go home and be happy somewhere else because I don’t need to see it. I don’t remember what it feels like to be them. I don’t even remember how it feels to be myself before this happened.

My heart didn’t skip a beat. I had no idea he was “it”; it was “he.” He was the man I’d dreamed about as a child, wondering what my husband would look like. I was seeing this face I had wondered about my whole life and it was right here in front of me and I didn’t recognize it.

I get back in bed, overwhelmed by everything I need to do before I meet with her. I’ll need to shower, to get dressed, to get in the car, to drive, to park. It’s too much.

Don’t call it the body, you asshole. That’s my husband. That’s the body that held me when I cried, the body that grabbed my left hand as it drove us to the movies. That’s the body that made me feel alive, made me feel crazy, made me cry and shake with joy. It’s lifeless now, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on it.

“We love you,” he says, and I say, “I love you too,” out of social convention rather than feeling.

“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.”

Maybe my life with Ben isn’t over. Maybe Ben is here. Ben could be living inside me. Maybe our relationship isn’t a ghost. What if my relationship with Ben is a tangible piece of the world? What if Ben is soon to be living and breathing again?

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 am lying to them. I have not bounced back nicely. I’ve just learned to impersonate the living.

Propriety says not to discuss such intense matters in public, but whom does that serve? This man is bored and I am broken. Maybe I’ll be a little less broken in telling him about it. Maybe he’ll be a little less bored.

Why me and not them? Why couldn’t that guy have died? Why am I not here right now with Ben looking at a sad woman pacing on the street, on the edge of a nervous breakdown? What right do they have to be happy? Why does everyone in the world have to be happy in front of me?

We’d all meet at a formal dinner. I would have to wear a nice outfit and go to a nice restaurant. I’d probably bring a sweater but forget it in the car. I’d be cold the whole time but never say anything. I’d want to go to the bathroom, but I’d be too nervous to even excuse myself. I’d smile so fake and huge that I’d start to feel a little dizzy from all the oxygen. Ben would sit in between the two of us at a round table.

He was pathetic about the pain and acted like a huge baby. He would groan and complain as if he had flesh-eating bacteria every time I asked him how he was doing.

And just like that, I am there for someone. I am not the one in pain. I am not suffering. I am helping. My life without Ben felt like it was nothing, but here I am, doing something with it.

We have to find little ways to smile. 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.