I try to find the elixir in your venom,
And the hero in your villain.
I look for the moon in your dark sky
And the compliments in your insults.
But the more venom and villain
And darkness and insults I swallow,
The more it all begins to swallow me.
Day 327
Pain.
All I feel is pain.
I sleep to hide from the pain.
The emotional agony hits me seconds after the physical ache does.
Because I forget. I forget it all until I’m conscious and the betrayal deep inside me makes itself known. In the form of the twisting discomfort as it releases the possibilities from my body.
Not a viable pregnancy.
I reach for my phone to message Gavin. I look for comfort in anything I can. Even from him, a world away from me.
Me: I need to shower but Sabrina is running errands. Can you call me?
I hadn’t even been able to use the bathroom alone, sobbing every time I was forced to pull my pants down.
I drop the phone beside me, careful not to move or disrupt the rest of my body. When my phone vibrates, I grab it slowly, wincing at the dull ache the action causes.
Gavin: I’m out with my friends at a show. Give me a minute?
From the pain, a deep anger and resentment is borne.
He can go to shows. He can be perfectly fine.
My life has stopped. His continues. As if none of this ever happened.
Me: I’ll just call Sabrina.
I ignore the tears as I start to brace myself to rise and get my things together for a shower.
I’m already crying. From the ache, from the idea of having no control over my life, from the fact that Gavin is perfectly fine.
My phone vibrates, and I ignore it, grabbing a towel from my closet.
It vibrates again, this time with a call.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hey.” Just that one word, coupled with the sound of people having a good time around him pushes me further into my anger. “What’s up?”
He sounds so fucking happy. Maybe even a little intoxicated.
“I’ll just call Sabrina. It’s fine.”
I don’t want to be the sad one, a cloud covering his sunny skies. And I don’t want to feel like I have to pull him to the trenches with me. Because I will.
He sucks his teeth.
“Stop it. I needed a minute to say goodbye. I’m not going to just get up and leave. That’s rude, Denise.”
Rude.
He’s been drinking, and he sounds so . . . bothered by me.
I know my body is attempting to sort out its hormones and I went through something that I can hardly make sense of, but I boil over.
“I don’t give a shit about your friends.”
I’ve placed my phone down with him on speaker and started pulling my clothes off, ready to get this shower over with.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he shouts through the phone.
“Don’t make me feel like your friends are more important than I am! Ask me how I’m feeling! Talk to me!”
The only good thing to come of being on the phone, arguing with him, is that I’m too angry to focus on how my body feels and what it’s doing. But my nakedness makes me feel vulnerable, still, as I shout and tremble.
I haven’t been alone with myself, truly alone with my own body, in days. I feel like it doesn’t belong to me anymore; that I don’t know what it’s capable of anymore.
I turn the shower on. Once I’m under the spray, I can’t do much to stop my body from shaking. The temperature change is a bit of a shock, but my emotions are getting the best of me.
“I fucking left them to call you!”
“Just stop it,” I say, my voice quieter, pleading, remembering a time when he was my peace.
My hands cover my face as I sob into them.
Still, he continues until I beg him to hang up the phone.
“Please, hang up,” I cry out again, the water washing away my tears.
The line is silent, and I wonder if he finally has. I cry into the showerhead’s stream, my shoulders shaking in my grief.
“Are you still in the shower?” he asks, causing me to jerk and silence my sobs.
“Yes,” I say. It’s near a whisper but I suppose he hears it because he doesn’t ask again.
When I shut the water off after a quick scrub, my teeth chatter.
Gavin is quiet on the line, but I can hear him moving around, making small noises that remind me he’s there. And I almost wish I hadn’t bothered him at all.
Between his frustration with me and my own disgust with myself and the entire universe, this wasn’t something either of us could navigate peacefully.
I reach for the towel, still shivering.
“You okay?”
His tone is softer, kinder.
I don’t know how to react to it, so I tell him I am.
He stays on the line while I pull my clothes on as quickly as I can, trying to avoid more time being so utterly exposed.
Like maybe if I cover my body, I can forget that it didn’t feel like it was mine anymore. All while I struggle to dress as quickly as possible, I’m silent.
My lips don’t know how to form the words, even as they’re lodged in my throat.
Why are we like this?
I walk slowly to my bed and Gavin asks what I’m doing now.
“Going to lie down.”
It’s his turn to be silent.
Maybe he has words that he can’t find it in him to say, either.
Maybe they’re too heavy and he’s worried I’ll sink right along with them.
Maybe he’s trying to spare me the heartache.
I sigh and settle into my bed.
The only thing I’m certain of is this silence between us. And remembering a time when the silence didn’t feel like such a bad thing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
And I don’t tell him it’s okay. I don’t offer a forgiveness to anyone else when I can’t find it in me to forgive myself.