Wednesday, at the peak of my spring break, I took care of a very sad girl. It was the kind of day where playing video games was an accomplishment. I believe this was my schedule:
9:00 AM: Wake Up
10:00 AM: Get out of bed, figure out of I’m going out or not
11:00 AM: Eat something, realize I’m not going anywhere
12:00 PM: Video Games
2:00 PM: Cry & nap
4:00 PM: Wake up & cry
4:30 PM: Rumination time–fight, give in, fight, give in…
5:00 PM: Snack, cry, sit with an open book on my lap that I don’t read while I play Solitaire on my phone
6:00 PM: Get ready for a date with my husband
Throughout the day, I had a deep fear of this kind of unsustainable, debilitating sorrow. “I can’t love like this anymore,” I admitted. “It hurts too much. I get too vulnerable. I can’t sacrifice days like this to just feeling. I have things to do. I can’t be a pathetic lug like I was in my twenties before I went on meds. Monogamy is safer. You don’t have days like this in monogamy. Where does the pain actually end? I can’t even wrap my mind around the immensity of it.”
And in that concerto of self-doubt, regret, and melancholy, the only voice of comfort was the knowledge that it would end soon.
I don’t like that the only comfort is temporality, because I don’t like temporality. I want to believe in everlasting existence, in life-after-death, in eternal love, in “we’ll last forever.” The very source of my anguish was that I missed my long-distance boyfriend who had just left for home–the temporality of our visits, our moments together. To say, “don’t worry…this will pass,” is like saying, “don’t worry, you’ll die someday.”
There was another voice too. Not so much a comfort as a law of emotional physics. It was the symmetry of “I can’t keep loving like this.”
This is the other side of love.
This is the antithesis to “my heart is so full that I can’t contain all of this joy.” It is the other side of the looking glass–a shadow to every beam of light. Waking up and wanting the day to be over instead of at its beginning. The immobilizing weight of nothing, of isolation, of the off-switch.
How does oblivion cohabitate right next to connection and exuberance? It’s just a few hormonal shifts down the hall from it. They’re fucking neighbors, which seems to negate the very foundation of what oblivion is, or why we fear it. How can death be final…but oblivion be temporal?
Whatever it is, it’s not a comfort; it’s a law.
Admittedly, I do find something grounding about laws.
Maybe all I’m realizing is how small I am. Joy and grief are both bigger than me, but they’re a package deal. If I make room in my calendar for one, I better make room for the other. Because she’ll just let herself in regardless.
Keep your video games handy, my friends.
