Something Beautiful

“Can you do something for me?” I said. I held his hands in mine as we both sat on my bed. “Not because it’ll do something for you - not because you’ll enjoy it - but for me, because it’ll do something for me. As a gift. Please?”

“What do you want?” he said. His face said that he wanted to say yes, though he didn‘t know what he was agreeing to yet.

“Be with me.” Stay with me, I thought. “Hang out with me. Tonight, or tomorrow... just, sometime. Be with me. Please.”

He didn’t answer, and I felt the weight of my anxiety and the sadness that had been hiding behind it. The loneliness that was always so much more sharp and sickening when coming on the heels of true connection. I laid back, still holding his hands. He didn’t answer, but looked down and away, wearing the frown that I’d come to recognize as concentration. I had never felt like he was farther away, and he was growing more distant by the moment. Be with me, I thought, for wherever he was, it was nowhere near where I was. We hadn’t been together all evening; we'd shared the same room, the same activities, but not the same experience.

My foot caressed his leg. There was a widening chasm between us that physical touch could not close. I tried to speak of it, to see if he felt it too. “Lately I just feel like I’ve lost track of you somehow, and I want to find my way back to you.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for his response, trying to reassure myself. Surely it was in my mind, an unfounded anxiety born of my irrational insecurities. His next words would be to comfort me. He would reach across the chasm and be with me again. I only had to be patient and trust that this moment would pass.

“Maybe...” he said. His voice was quiet and dark. “Maybe this isn’t what I want.”

My hands tightened around his, and I opened my eyes. I sat up straight. I looked into his face. “What?”

He continued looking down, but didn’t pull his hands away. He allowed me to cling to them, as if reluctant to let go himself. “It’s just taken me this long to figure out what I want,” he said.

I held his hands even tighter. “And you’re basing this on... what, a week and a half of dissatisfaction?” I couldn’t keep the twinge of accusation from my voice.

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t think it’s worthwhile to wait and see if it gets better?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?” I still held his hands so tightly that it might have been hurting him, and he neither pulled away nor returned the pressure. He finally looked me in the eyes, though. “I know...” I shook his hands slightly for emphasis. “I know that we can make this work.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He bent to press his forehead against our hands, still locked together by my one-sided grip. I looked down at the top of his head, his hair spread out across his back. I like when you put your forehead on me like that, I’d told him once. It makes me feel like you trust me. 

I let go of his hands and pulled away from him, wrapping my arms around my own waist instead. He stood up and took a few steps back from the bed, as if afraid of me, or perhaps afraid of hurting me.
I bent forward, my back curling around to encircle my gut, which was clenching like a fist grasping desperately at something that had suddenly slipped away. The chasm was real, and was opening up before my eyes. I was beginning to see, for the first time, that perhaps it could never be closed. Not by me. Not alone. Because there was nobody on the other side to reach across to.

He had already left.

***


Something beautiful is hidden in everything that has ever caused pain. You'll never find it if you only look for ways to numb yourself.