I can’t decide if it’s romantic or fucked up to be in love with someone that looks like a concentration camp survivor. Because I am, desperately. He – the one, my guy, Diego to my Frida, Satre to my Simone – he now weighs six and a half stone. This once attractive, sexy being now juts out all over. Skin stretched across bones making sitting down look painful and awkward (standing still looks worse). His cheeks are sunken, the bones in his face the only thing holding everything from falling in upon itself. A hole is open directly to his stomach which attaches to a bag which carries his shit around. All this and one fact remains: I still love him. You hear people say ‘I will love you no matter what, even when you’re old and grey and fat I will love you’ and you think yeah, right but the theory has been tested because I do. I just don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
She said ‘his sister rang, she can’t get to the hospital this evening so asked if I would go instead. You wanna come too?’
‘Do you really think he’ll want to see me?’
‘Of course!’
So we went. She drove. I hadn’t really moved from the sofa for two days. It had been a strange week. I had good days and bad days and the last month had been full exclusively of bad days. I couldn’t really remember a time when, if I wasn’t actually crying then I wasn’t on the verge of tears; I recognized that now would be a good time to pull myself together. Pulling myself together when needed (if only for an hour or two at a time) is one of my specialties. It must be part of the white, English, middle-class upbringing I’d received.
We walked the white, sterile hospital corridors. She seemed to know where she was going so I let her lead the way feeling a little like I was in a dream and was powerless to stop the unfolding events. We got to his room and I could see his knee. I knew it was him so I have no idea why I let her check at the nurses station his whereabouts. I was staring at his knee while she stood next to me and interrupted a gaggle of nurses (sterile of nurses?) to do so. One plus was that this was the first visit to see him I’d been on where I didn’t have a panic attack ten feet from entering the room.
We went in. I don’t know how well I hid my shock upon seeing his new appearance. Last time I’d visited he’d lost two stone, had a scruffy beard and looked like a Japanese P.O.W. Now he looked like an extra from an Austwitz documentary. People look like this in grainy black and white images not laid out in front of you in orange pajamas. Not the person you’d fantasied so many times about being married to (these thoughts were never entertained in the time you’d spent apart but interestingly, back when you were together, you’d never thought about the wedding ceremony. You just knew you wanted to be tied to this man forever. It was a love like nothing you’d ever experienced – for the first time in your life you were sure. You had never been sure before). Nothing that had happened over the last few months were expected. This was possibly the pinnacle of all that unexpectedness. But after that initial stomach punch shock, you adjusted. You could see him in there. It felt good to be in his company again.
Just before you went to leave (your friend had stepped away for a minute) he said ‘are you ok?’ The first time he had asked this question in god knows how many months. Instinctively you said ‘yes’ even though the answer was ‘no.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Sure’ you said, smiling. This new concern from him about your wellbeing was surprising and, as such, unsettling. She returned. You said your goodbyes and left.
Ten minutes later a text message came through I would like to meet you again soon. Do you think (when I’m out of here) we could ‘see’ each other like before?
The answer he wants is ‘yes’, the answer you want is ‘yes’, the answer everyone else will want is ‘no’.
You fear that he still loves his ex-wife, that he will use you, that you are the only option available to him. You don’t want to be runner up. You worry that it will all be about him, that he needs to learn to want to live by and for himself; that last time you ended up having to live for both of you and it nearly destroyed you both. It’s really only the latter fears that have any weight. You know you were both utterly and unendingly in love with one another. You don’t know how you know but you know. You are sure of it.
For the first time in over a week you go to bed and tingle. Your atoms vibrate happy instead of sad. You don’t feel so lonely anymore. You remember the feeling that’s been missing - what you have been aching for. The intangible thing that can’t be put into words, that no-one else seems to quite get. It is being in love and knowing you are loved in return.
Today you went to see him and this six and a half stone fuckup smoked a cigarette in front of you. Nothing ever changes. Love is never enough.
