Imperfect

One of my own sketches, 2005

            Last night my boyfriend and I had a troubling conversation over Existentialism versus Nihilism. He with his stomach ache, me having forgotten my medicine, we circled each other like fighting dogs and got nowhere. I apologized for my annoyance and irritability. I have a tendency to lean towards Devil’s Advocate when I am unsure of what I really think, and I felt I had broken this bond we’ve been steadily building over the past few months. He replied in his usual kind generosity, “It’s alright. You don’t have to apologize. We both had a bad night.”

            But my heart has caved in.

            This morning I woke to a dysphoria that broke the bones of my jaw and the joints of my knees; today there is no speech or movement that isn’t painful. I keep very silent at times like these, agonizing over the small things that make life a deep suffering, but which are utterly meaningless. I bury my head in pillows and wish I was anywhere else but here: on Mars maybe, or in the deserts of Iraq where silly things like lives are ruined everyday. I would welcome a suicide bomber today. We would both get what we’ve wanted. Heaven, Heaven. 

My boyfriend hangs around like laundry. He is unsure what to do in the shifting wind of my illness. He moves this way and that, either trying to keep up or caught in an eddy – I can’t tell which. And I love him for his steadfast stewardship of my imperfect heart. I want to hold him tight right at this moment, but he is resting from the tightly strung air of left-over conversations, in the middle of the bed as usual.

So not all ground is level and even heaven has cracks in it.

He is still gentleness defined, and I am still broken and edged with sharp angles.

But it is life.

We are still breathing.