Dinner with a friend the other night, grilled steaks in his fireplace, drank beer, relaxed. He's a new friend, I'm starting to prefer the people I met after I moved back home. They're easier, things are simpler, I selectively edit my life and we have a good time. I don't want sympathy, I don't want to talk to people who remember her, or what I was like before I lost them. Don't need people to tell me I'm different now, that things have changed. Of course things have changed, of course I've changed. Everything fell spectacularly to pieces, one day I had a family, a home, a job, friends, a place. The next day everything was gone, some of it taken and the rest I thrust away from me, too painful. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, didn't want to live at all never mind live and work in the same house, walk the same streets, drowning there, surrounded by her things with the ghosts of her laugh torturing me daily.
Old friends ask how I am. No really, how are you? Won't accept fine for an answer, want to know everything, are sympathetic, they miss her too, they've found some photos, would I like them? No. No, I don't need any more memories. I need...something. Fresh air, change, a way out of this cocoon of misery, this stasis, this hot, heavy air choked with ghosts. I need it all to be over, no more calls from lawyers and accountants and companies asking to speak to my wife. No more long silent pauses on the phone as it hits me all over again, no more voicemail messages from her Mother telling me I don't have to go through this alone, no more of this grief.
New friends do not know. New friends see what I tell them, the director's cut of my life. No wife, no daughter, time spent overseas was nice, just wanted to come home. Missed the cold, the grey, the rain. They laugh, I laugh, all is well. No ghosts. Of course I still remember things, of course I still walk with friends and catch a glimpse of her in a crowd. Of course I still have their pictures in my wallet. But it's nice, just for a while, to pretend that I'm all right, that this terrible thing never happened, that she never walked into that coffee shop, that I never wrote my number on her hand, that she never called, that we never laughed together, never fought, never moved to London, to Paris, to Thailand, to Cambodia, never scrambled across a beach in the pouring rain, never got married, never lived in that tiny, cramped little house, never went swimming in the river, never had a daughter.
I enjoy the pretence. The weight doesn't lift, but maybe it shifts a bit. It's good, for a little while. But later, guilt. As though the pretending is tantamount to forgetting, denying, wishing it never happened. Which is not true. I don't regret it. They were worth all this.
Old friends ask how I am. No really, how are you? Won't accept fine for an answer, want to know everything, are sympathetic, they miss her too, they've found some photos, would I like them? No. No, I don't need any more memories. I need...something. Fresh air, change, a way out of this cocoon of misery, this stasis, this hot, heavy air choked with ghosts. I need it all to be over, no more calls from lawyers and accountants and companies asking to speak to my wife. No more long silent pauses on the phone as it hits me all over again, no more voicemail messages from her Mother telling me I don't have to go through this alone, no more of this grief.
New friends do not know. New friends see what I tell them, the director's cut of my life. No wife, no daughter, time spent overseas was nice, just wanted to come home. Missed the cold, the grey, the rain. They laugh, I laugh, all is well. No ghosts. Of course I still remember things, of course I still walk with friends and catch a glimpse of her in a crowd. Of course I still have their pictures in my wallet. But it's nice, just for a while, to pretend that I'm all right, that this terrible thing never happened, that she never walked into that coffee shop, that I never wrote my number on her hand, that she never called, that we never laughed together, never fought, never moved to London, to Paris, to Thailand, to Cambodia, never scrambled across a beach in the pouring rain, never got married, never lived in that tiny, cramped little house, never went swimming in the river, never had a daughter.
I enjoy the pretence. The weight doesn't lift, but maybe it shifts a bit. It's good, for a little while. But later, guilt. As though the pretending is tantamount to forgetting, denying, wishing it never happened. Which is not true. I don't regret it. They were worth all this.
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