There’s this phenomenon that sometimes happens to the dying. It goes by a few different names: the rally, the second wind. Or if you like to get technical, some call it terminal lucidity. They haven’t figured out exactly why it happens, just that sometimes, when things look or feel especially dire, suddenly there comes an inexplicable surge of energy and clarity. What appears to be a miraculous recovery. And it starts to look like everything will be alright.
But it never lasts. There’s this built-in, consistent experience of humanity that just before death, before that very final end, something happens that gives you hope. Something tells you it’s not really coming, but then it always does. A simple biological fact of the universe that somehow seems so deliberately malicious. Mortality’s rug-pull. Death’s bait-and-switch.
Hope is such a beautiful thing, but given the right (or wrong) context, it can feel like pure evil. When you lose something, it’s always worse if you had a tiny taste of hope; it feels especially battering, excessively cruel. In the face of loss, the aftertaste of hope leaves you feeling beaten and empty. Makes you want to cast it out forever.
And I had learned from the past. I was wary, careful, slow. I didn’t take the bait of hope right away. After all, I couldn’t truly believe what I was hearing. No, not me, who had been burned by hope so many times in the past. Not me, who had lost all faith in the magic that should be love. Not me, who decided never to want anything at all that wasn’t a sure bet, for my own sake.
But after a few days, I started to relax. The more time that went on and what I’d been told seemed to be true, the more I loosened up. Just a tiny bit. I didn’t hope or want or dream. No, not me, not ever. Not anymore. But I slowly began to loosen that white-knuckled grip I had around my own neck. I started to believe maybe everything really would be okay at some point. If we just give it some time.
Some time. It’s baffling, really. To finally get a taste of timing that isn’t so mockingly doomed, only for it to be swiftly wiped away by a fresh wave of fear. Why did I ever put such stock in fate? Maybe time was never the thing that was doing this to me. Maybe it was humanity all along.
Maybe it was just a girl letting life happen to her because she was too afraid to be honest. Maybe it’s just a boy desperately clinging to a mirage because the possibility of things actually going right is too much to bear. Without time or circumstance to blame, all that’s left is a blatantly impulsive decision enacted upon me in panic and my head is left spinning once again.
I really thought for a moment we might finally be done running from each other. But it looks like he’s still got a few more miles in him. It’s always the easier option, running. It’s always easier to turn away than it is to face something head-on. It’s easier to resent than it is to forgive. It’s easier to hurt someone than it is to do the work. It’s easier to walk away than it is to sit and try. And if you have shame bearing down on you like a boulder, anything other than running starts to feel impossible.
–
You put up with a lot, my friend tells me. You really let a lot of shit slide. I’ve watched this happen over and over and it always turns out the same way. He starts to get close with you and then he changes his mind, and you end up getting hurt. And it just keeps happening. It’s like you never learn.
I sit on the unfinished concrete floor next to the toilet, phone in my hand, and listen to him repeat himself as I wait to find out if I’m actually going to vomit or not. He goes on and on, channeling the spirit of all the anger I used to hold during times like these. Before it died out and was replaced with this tepid mixture of understanding and disappointment.
I wish he would just once stop and think about something before doing shit like this. He can never just wait, it always has to be these all-or-nothing scenarios and it has to be right away. I told him over and over again, I don’t think this is a good idea, I don’t think you should do that, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I say!
I give him a dizzy mm-hmm here and there. Feel the fluffy black bath mat underneath my toes. The solid hardness of the drywall behind my head. The dull yellow warmth of the bathroom lights. I don’t know what to tell you, man, I sigh. Like I said before, I get it. I can’t even be mad because I already know how he feels. I already did this myself. All I can do is respect what he thinks he needs.
But that’s what I’m saying, []! When has he ever respected your needs? He just does whatever he wants and refuses to make a decision until it’s absolutely necessary, when it becomes too inconvenient for him, and you’re the one who gets hurt.
It’s not like that—
Isn’t it? This is why I get so stressed out every time this starts again because it always goes wrong and then I have to deal with the aftermath. He pauses for a moment. Takes a breath.
I take a sip of water and he continues. I just don’t understand why he actually thinks this is the way to go. Every reason he ever gives me is so superficial, like he’s just ticking boxes. He never says it’s about how he feels, just this little list of traits.
Things anyone could have or do.
Exactly. Not the things that are actually important.
I shift my weight to lean against the toilet again. Well, then it’s probably not actually about that. It’s probably about fear. Look, if he won’t listen there’s nothing we can do; he just has to figure it out for himself, I guess. He lets out a deep, exasperated sigh and I follow suit. The pain in my body roils again, threatening to send my dinner back up and I groan to cover a sob.
I’m so tired, I whisper into the empty room.
I’m tired, too. I really can’t wrap my head around it anymore. He sighs again. I wish everything would stay the same just for a little while.
Well, I start. But I don’t know what to say. Yeah. Me, too.
We sit in silence for a minute, letting it all sink in. Having this conversation again for the nth time in the past several years. Preparing to navigate the new social environment once more. Him, still having the energy to be angry on my behalf. Me, no longer having the energy to even cry.
I’m sorry, he says.
I just say, yeah.
–
The pain feels strange and eerie. Kind of undulating like a pile of snakes. It’s not what I expected, though I don’t know if I really had any expectations to begin with. Some of it’s familiar—the weight of it, like someone invisible sitting on my chest at all times. What surprises me, though, is the burning. A subtle but agonizing heat like hot coals spread throughout my chest cavity. It tugs and pulls at me with every movement like a needle stuck in the skin. It presses down on me as I go through my usual morning routine invisibly and ineffably changed. It crawls up my throat and stabs at my eyes when the barista asks me how I’m doing, only to be squashed back down when he shocks me with a bro handshake and by some miracle actually makes me laugh.
It’s not some idealistic fantasy of a potential future that I’m mourning now. I hadn’t come up with one anyway, didn’t even try. No, I didn’t hope or want or dream. No, not me. My hope wasn’t so much as a wish for something, but the act of letting my guard down just a little, allowing myself to finally relax because I had so much time ahead of me with the person I love. Just that was enough for me. Anything else was an extra little miracle I wouldn’t dare desire. No, I’m not mourning the loss of something as intangible as an idea. Once again, I merely find myself mourning the loss of my friend.
Sometimes when you’re unwilling to truly believe in something and it lets you down, it’s easy to feel bitterly vindicated, to fall back on I knew it, I was right all along. The pain coaxes you toward that mindset. It’s easier to resent than it is to forgive. And it could be so easy for me to sit here and feel sorry for myself, to think to myself I was right for not believing that things could change for the better.
But, instead, I find myself thinking, well, wouldn’t it have been nice if I was wrong?