An anonymous post on Monogamy

topic: Monogamy medium: Text

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.  The conclusion to what turned out to be her suicide note, her final goodbye.  She had her demons and I mine, but we always had each other…even when we didn’t.  There isn’t a moment that passes where I don’t think of her, where I don’t see her face.  Her knowing smile haunts me at every turn.  I’ll call you, she said with a grin.  Those were her actual last words to me.  I wish I could just press delete and forget all the days, and the hours, and the seconds of her.  I’ll call you.  I had no idea the ramifications.  I was too blinded by rage and sorrow to think.  Actually, I wasn’t even listening then.  Go figure.  Memory’s a funny thing, huh?  I mean, she fucking slept with my best friend while we were engaged and had the god-damn nerve to tell me about it in a Facebook message…and the nerve to tell me that she still loved me, that I was her—and I quote—one and only.  God I loved her—shit, I still do.  She’s my one and only…and I know this because all of the pain and anger and guilt and love and hate that we brought on each other.  I mean, I slept, you know, with other girls throughout our relationship—even into our engagement—but I never her told her about it.  Why would I wanna hurt her like that, ya know, when she loved me so much?  Shit…I loved her too much to do that, ya know?  Everyone else was trash, scraps…like I said, she was my one and only.  But it’s easy to take that for granted, to abuse that sense of security, to abuse those you cherish most because you just know they’ll be back…you know?  But I’ll tell ya, when she held the mirror to my face, I couldn’t fucking take it.  I exploded.  Now, of course, I can surmise as to why.  But then?  Shit just happened.  God, the fucking names I called her…was I serious?  I just couldn’t hold back, ya know?  Oh God!  All she had to say—really all she could say—is I’ll call you…  As it happened, she flung herself from the top of an empty parking garage later that night.  Babe—I know you can hear me—I hear you calling…I never won’t.  I’ll hold you again soon enough, ya hear?  Haha…I got like this crazy habit, ya know…haha.  You must think I’m a real lunatic, huh?  I know what you’re thinking, though.  I know how I seem.  But she’s there, I know it, I feel it…I feel her like before, and it won’t stop…I can’t stop.  And, really, that’s how I know that people are real, that relationships aren’t just random intersections of bodies of nothingness in the indeterminate nothingness of space-time.  She’s how I know that love is real, that soulmates—as cheesily idealistic and Rom-Com as it sounds—actually do exist.  Shit, man, I’ve questioned everything—literally everything—since she left.  My life is shrouded by doubt, well, it was.  But I’ve stopped thinking, I’ve stopped judging…and I started feeling again.  Ya, that’s it.  I started feeling again.  And, man, shit…I gotta tell ya, as real as I am here next to you—ya feel me, right?—shit, as real as I am here, her calling is just as real.  The trick is ya gotta perspectivize your life, contrast everything you have with loss…with death.  Imagine everything that you love—that you ever’ve loved—everything that you hold dear and cherish…imagine that gone.  Imagine your love vacant, absent, destroyed.  Whether this death is by your hand, your loved ones, or somebody else’s is of no consequence.  It’s only in this vacuum that you’ll begin to appreciate us and really feel the real unity.  It exists.  I’m kooky, man, but I’m not a fuckin’ kook.  Shit, I hear people all the time sayin’ “God is Love. God is Love.”  Well, if that’s the case, then God bless you, man, god bless you.  Don’t think about me or what I’ve said, just feel it and let it take ahold of you…it’s real, man, it’s our lifeblood.  Don’t be brought along by that cynical, narcissistic, nihilistic cant spewing from all these automatons, man.  It’s fuckin’ bogus!  Those people are fuckin’ sheep, so let them baah!  Fuck, man, just go on and get outta here.  I can’t say much more than I have, and I really shouldn’t…I’ve said more than enough.  Just get outta here, go home to your girl, look into her eyes—and look hard, man…really look—and imagine the eulogy that you’d have to make in front of her loved ones if she was lost to you.  You do that, man, and tell me that you don’t feel the calling, that you don’t know what I’m saying.  Shit.  Go on, git outta here before I talk your fuckin ear off, man.

And so as he started to sob, I slowly slid from under the down comforter, wriggled into my silk boxers and slacks, fastened my belt, rebuttoned my shirt, and walked barefoot back to my dormroom.  SHIT!  I left my watch and phone on his nightstand…