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28/9/03 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloI was supposed to be doing my psych coursework and phys homework today. Got about 3/4 of he psych done, and have given up now. I got distracted when it started raining and wrote a bit of origfic instead, and after that I was (a) too distracted bythe music and (b) too melancholy from the story to finish the psych discussion. So I'm sticking the story up here and at somethingwhispers and plying with the layout for fleursdelamort.
Epilogue
It’s raining outside and I can feel the tea winding a hot streak through my chest. The light is on and the outside world looks bleak and grey compared to this warm room. I hold the mug in both hands, handle pointing away from me, trying to restore some heat to my stiff fingers that went numb hours ago. Not enough movement, I suppose, or simply too cold. Love/hate songs from the eighties play in the background, passion and emotion overflowing from the speakers, girls screaming in confusion and conflict.
There’s nothing on television, not just now, and I can’t muster the concentration required to read a book. Instead I stare at the rain and let my mind wander, thoughts following no coherent pattern. The music flavours each reflection, and the weather adds a shade of distance from what were once painful memories.
He was beautiful. Boyish, solemn, lithe, with dark curls framing an innocent face. Huge dark eyes, usually hidden behind square glasses that he wore partly to keep from squinting and partly to look studious. Appearance is half the act, he would say. If you look how they think you ought to look, they’ll assume you’re doing what they think you ought to be doing.
He said that more than once, but I always pictured him in the soft polo neck jumper he wore when I met him in our English class, navy blue wool, and a pair of dark trousers. He didn’t wear jeans, not unless he thought he was going to get messy, and he didn’t like getting messy. I still have that polo neck. It doesn’t smell of him any more, but it did then.
I never needed anyone to tell me I was doing it for the wrong reasons. The problem was I feared the right reasons would never come along, I suppose. He knew, though. He knew the old cliché was true for us: it’s not you, it’s me. He was satisfied with what we had, in a sad sort of way. I think he was pleased that I simply tolerated him. It was the best either of us could do, though no one else ever saw it that way. They were all waiting for us to snap out of it and realise we could do better.
For better or worse. We smiled when we said it, because we knew there would be no better or worse. There was nothing to get better or worse. We simply were. We existed. We never had the passion these conflicted children on the CDs wail about, begging for some kind of closure. It suited us, though other people looked on in disdain at our detached togetherness.
If we had been brought up to believe in arranged marriages, we would have been the epitome of perfection. The only difference is we arranged it all ourselves, a compromise beneficial to both parties. We liked each other. We had a lot in common. We could talk for hours about nothing, laughing and smiling, but when all was said and done we had nothing but ourselves for company. It was like marrying a friend, and not even your best friend. Someone to have a good time with, someone to talk to, someone to depend on. Not someone to love and make love to.
I never liked him reading what I wrote. It scared me that these figments of my imagination had more emotion than me, they loved and lost and fought and fucked and I couldn’t give my husband any of that. I wondered what was wrong, why I could write these things so well and never feel them. I tried, once, not writing, to see if perhaps these feelings would swell inside me instead, but nothing happened.
I wonder now if I loved him. It’s funny, but in retrospect I think I did. It wasn’t the love you’re supposed to feel for your husband, but it was love, or the closest I’ll ever get. “I’ve grown accustomed to you face” Henry Higgins tells Eliza. We grew accustomed to each other. Being apart was so strange and foreign that we hastened back together. I feel so foreign now I’m an alien in my own home, because it was once our home.
I wasn’t surprised when he told me about the young man from his amateur dramatics society. He never tried to hide it. He would come on Saturdays and tell me all about the blond man with the neatly clipped beard and shining blue eyes. When he confessed, nervously but without shame, what had happened between them I gave him my blessing. He sat at my feet that night as I read, and when we went to bed he told me he loved me. I loved him then. There was no passion, but I loved him.
He was beautiful. I’ve said it before, but it bears saying again. He was at his most beautiful when he was sad, like some tragic figure in romantic poetry. I took him to cliff tops and churchyards and wild rivers and took photographs of him, looking sad and lost. Some turned into covers for my books. They had the same black haired, blue eyes, tragic aristocrat. I had married my own protagonist, and I knew how the story would end because I had already written it, but in the real world there was no magic to save him.
I always expected him to just leave. To come downstairs and find an apologetic letter, telling me he loved me but he needed more. I thought he would take his lover and fly. Instead he left his lover and fell.
I never asked why they broke up. He just came home one afternoon and climbed into bed, golden sun glowing through the curtains as it set. I took him a cup of tea, but said nothing. I didn’t want to know who left who. I knew it would be my fault, either way. Perhaps I should have left him.
I don’t know how long you’re supposed to mourn the end of a relationship. Is it like mourning a person? I never knew how long I should do that either. Everyone thought I was so cold and callous, when I didn’t shed a tear, when I didn’t breath a word of my guilt, so I mourned those fools instead and withdrew from them. I never needed anyone. Well, anyone except him.
After a week in which he would lie on the bed and drink tea I asked him if perhaps he’d like to get back to work. Perhaps he could put some of this into his work? Into his plays. Write the pain away, the way I wrote my emotions away. He looked so hurt then. How could he write plays for his drama group when he was there, how could he have other people pretend to know his pain? He couldn’t face them, or him, or anyone. Just me, because I was neutral. I had never been anything but.
We didn’t sleep in the same bed by that point. For a while, we had explored each other, but that had finished before we even married. It was nice, though, sharing a bed with someone. Like when you had nightmares as a kid and curled up between your parents. We both appreciated it. But when he started seeing his actor, I let him be. Sometimes they’d sleep together in the spare room; sometimes I’d take the spare room and let them have the bigger bed.
Perhaps I should have slept with him, then. Helped him get through the nightmare. Let him wrap his arms around me and leach some warmth and neutrality from me. I thought he’d rather be alone. I don’t know. I guess I never knew him that well. That kind of emotional second-guessing is reserved for those in love, not marriages of convenience like ours.
When I went in one morning, and couldn’t wake him, cold and stiff, I wasn’t surprised. I took more photographs of him. I brushed his hair. I cleaned up the rubbish from the pill packets and put the glass of water in the dishwasher. I kissed his dead mouth, and wondered when the last time I had kissed him was. Months, maybe even years ago. We had lost that level of connection a long time, which is why he sought it in others, and I let him. I didn’t need it, but I knew he did. Had done.
Separation was always painful to us. Even now, I’m waiting for him to come back. I invited his ex to the funeral, but he didn’t come. I suppose he thought it was cruel of me to even ask. Perhaps my husband had left him, because he loved me. I was his wife. There was never much passion between us, but he loved me. Was it egotistical to marry him to stroke my ego? I never understood how he could love me. He didn’t love me enough to die for me, though. Or so I thought.
This morning I started writing again. My publisher was making concerned noises, so I caved. And when I switched on the computer I found a file. A suicide note in bits and bytes. He’d attached my favourite photo of him, and my favourite song. He loved me, he knew me, he could second-guess me.
I won’t tell you what he said. It’s painful to think about it, to think about how I loved him, really, but not in a way that could satisfy him. It would be sacrilegious to paraphrase and rephrase and borrow phrases from that letter. Enough to say we loved each other, in different ways. A love no one else could comprehend. It was too different, too peaceful, too cold for them. I suppose you could say he froze to death, and that I am frozen. That letter thawed me, just a bit.
I want him back. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I want to do what I should have done. Things wouldn’t have changed, not outwardly, but appearance is half the act. We also appeared content. Everything else was attached by those who didn’t know us, seeing what they thought they ought to see. I saw what I thought I ought to see, and didn’t ask questions. And he let himself die. I want to go back and stop that from happening.
I can’t do that, but I married my protagonist, and I can rewrite the ending. I always was better at expressing my feelings through fictional characters. He did read those books, when he thought I wasn’t looking. I hope he reads this one, wherever he is. I hope he knows I loved him, even if it wasn’t enough to prevent his final chapter. I hope he enjoys the sequel.
Epilogue
It’s raining outside and I can feel the tea winding a hot streak through my chest. The light is on and the outside world looks bleak and grey compared to this warm room. I hold the mug in both hands, handle pointing away from me, trying to restore some heat to my stiff fingers that went numb hours ago. Not enough movement, I suppose, or simply too cold. Love/hate songs from the eighties play in the background, passion and emotion overflowing from the speakers, girls screaming in confusion and conflict.
There’s nothing on television, not just now, and I can’t muster the concentration required to read a book. Instead I stare at the rain and let my mind wander, thoughts following no coherent pattern. The music flavours each reflection, and the weather adds a shade of distance from what were once painful memories.
He was beautiful. Boyish, solemn, lithe, with dark curls framing an innocent face. Huge dark eyes, usually hidden behind square glasses that he wore partly to keep from squinting and partly to look studious. Appearance is half the act, he would say. If you look how they think you ought to look, they’ll assume you’re doing what they think you ought to be doing.
He said that more than once, but I always pictured him in the soft polo neck jumper he wore when I met him in our English class, navy blue wool, and a pair of dark trousers. He didn’t wear jeans, not unless he thought he was going to get messy, and he didn’t like getting messy. I still have that polo neck. It doesn’t smell of him any more, but it did then.
I never needed anyone to tell me I was doing it for the wrong reasons. The problem was I feared the right reasons would never come along, I suppose. He knew, though. He knew the old cliché was true for us: it’s not you, it’s me. He was satisfied with what we had, in a sad sort of way. I think he was pleased that I simply tolerated him. It was the best either of us could do, though no one else ever saw it that way. They were all waiting for us to snap out of it and realise we could do better.
For better or worse. We smiled when we said it, because we knew there would be no better or worse. There was nothing to get better or worse. We simply were. We existed. We never had the passion these conflicted children on the CDs wail about, begging for some kind of closure. It suited us, though other people looked on in disdain at our detached togetherness.
If we had been brought up to believe in arranged marriages, we would have been the epitome of perfection. The only difference is we arranged it all ourselves, a compromise beneficial to both parties. We liked each other. We had a lot in common. We could talk for hours about nothing, laughing and smiling, but when all was said and done we had nothing but ourselves for company. It was like marrying a friend, and not even your best friend. Someone to have a good time with, someone to talk to, someone to depend on. Not someone to love and make love to.
I never liked him reading what I wrote. It scared me that these figments of my imagination had more emotion than me, they loved and lost and fought and fucked and I couldn’t give my husband any of that. I wondered what was wrong, why I could write these things so well and never feel them. I tried, once, not writing, to see if perhaps these feelings would swell inside me instead, but nothing happened.
I wonder now if I loved him. It’s funny, but in retrospect I think I did. It wasn’t the love you’re supposed to feel for your husband, but it was love, or the closest I’ll ever get. “I’ve grown accustomed to you face” Henry Higgins tells Eliza. We grew accustomed to each other. Being apart was so strange and foreign that we hastened back together. I feel so foreign now I’m an alien in my own home, because it was once our home.
I wasn’t surprised when he told me about the young man from his amateur dramatics society. He never tried to hide it. He would come on Saturdays and tell me all about the blond man with the neatly clipped beard and shining blue eyes. When he confessed, nervously but without shame, what had happened between them I gave him my blessing. He sat at my feet that night as I read, and when we went to bed he told me he loved me. I loved him then. There was no passion, but I loved him.
He was beautiful. I’ve said it before, but it bears saying again. He was at his most beautiful when he was sad, like some tragic figure in romantic poetry. I took him to cliff tops and churchyards and wild rivers and took photographs of him, looking sad and lost. Some turned into covers for my books. They had the same black haired, blue eyes, tragic aristocrat. I had married my own protagonist, and I knew how the story would end because I had already written it, but in the real world there was no magic to save him.
I always expected him to just leave. To come downstairs and find an apologetic letter, telling me he loved me but he needed more. I thought he would take his lover and fly. Instead he left his lover and fell.
I never asked why they broke up. He just came home one afternoon and climbed into bed, golden sun glowing through the curtains as it set. I took him a cup of tea, but said nothing. I didn’t want to know who left who. I knew it would be my fault, either way. Perhaps I should have left him.
I don’t know how long you’re supposed to mourn the end of a relationship. Is it like mourning a person? I never knew how long I should do that either. Everyone thought I was so cold and callous, when I didn’t shed a tear, when I didn’t breath a word of my guilt, so I mourned those fools instead and withdrew from them. I never needed anyone. Well, anyone except him.
After a week in which he would lie on the bed and drink tea I asked him if perhaps he’d like to get back to work. Perhaps he could put some of this into his work? Into his plays. Write the pain away, the way I wrote my emotions away. He looked so hurt then. How could he write plays for his drama group when he was there, how could he have other people pretend to know his pain? He couldn’t face them, or him, or anyone. Just me, because I was neutral. I had never been anything but.
We didn’t sleep in the same bed by that point. For a while, we had explored each other, but that had finished before we even married. It was nice, though, sharing a bed with someone. Like when you had nightmares as a kid and curled up between your parents. We both appreciated it. But when he started seeing his actor, I let him be. Sometimes they’d sleep together in the spare room; sometimes I’d take the spare room and let them have the bigger bed.
Perhaps I should have slept with him, then. Helped him get through the nightmare. Let him wrap his arms around me and leach some warmth and neutrality from me. I thought he’d rather be alone. I don’t know. I guess I never knew him that well. That kind of emotional second-guessing is reserved for those in love, not marriages of convenience like ours.
When I went in one morning, and couldn’t wake him, cold and stiff, I wasn’t surprised. I took more photographs of him. I brushed his hair. I cleaned up the rubbish from the pill packets and put the glass of water in the dishwasher. I kissed his dead mouth, and wondered when the last time I had kissed him was. Months, maybe even years ago. We had lost that level of connection a long time, which is why he sought it in others, and I let him. I didn’t need it, but I knew he did. Had done.
Separation was always painful to us. Even now, I’m waiting for him to come back. I invited his ex to the funeral, but he didn’t come. I suppose he thought it was cruel of me to even ask. Perhaps my husband had left him, because he loved me. I was his wife. There was never much passion between us, but he loved me. Was it egotistical to marry him to stroke my ego? I never understood how he could love me. He didn’t love me enough to die for me, though. Or so I thought.
This morning I started writing again. My publisher was making concerned noises, so I caved. And when I switched on the computer I found a file. A suicide note in bits and bytes. He’d attached my favourite photo of him, and my favourite song. He loved me, he knew me, he could second-guess me.
I won’t tell you what he said. It’s painful to think about it, to think about how I loved him, really, but not in a way that could satisfy him. It would be sacrilegious to paraphrase and rephrase and borrow phrases from that letter. Enough to say we loved each other, in different ways. A love no one else could comprehend. It was too different, too peaceful, too cold for them. I suppose you could say he froze to death, and that I am frozen. That letter thawed me, just a bit.
I want him back. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I want to do what I should have done. Things wouldn’t have changed, not outwardly, but appearance is half the act. We also appeared content. Everything else was attached by those who didn’t know us, seeing what they thought they ought to see. I saw what I thought I ought to see, and didn’t ask questions. And he let himself die. I want to go back and stop that from happening.
I can’t do that, but I married my protagonist, and I can rewrite the ending. I always was better at expressing my feelings through fictional characters. He did read those books, when he thought I wasn’t looking. I hope he reads this one, wherever he is. I hope he knows I loved him, even if it wasn’t enough to prevent his final chapter. I hope he enjoys the sequel.
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Date: 26/1/05 07:24 pm (UTC)