The Den, from Cathedral of the Pines. Photograph: Gregory Crewdson
The Pains of Loving You
The feeling of loneliness consumes me, while my partner may be laying beside me I still can’t help but feel like the decisions I have made were wrong. It feels as though I have been lying to myself, the last few months and I should’ve chosen to embark on an adventure instead of making the decision to stay put. We often as humans like to settle for what is easy and we begin to convince ourselves that we are doing is right. I mean, my love for Remy is one that I have always been unsure of. I look over at her with her brown hair nestled behind her ears as she sleeps soundly despite the goosebumps that take up every inch of her pale skin. The longer she lays there the more they appear. I want to get something to cover her with. But, the feeling of my body moving from the couch, and the sound of my feet pressing into the floor will wake her. If I wake up Remy, I risk making her angry and I can’t bear another day of her anger. So instead I sit there and begin to shiver, waiting for her to wake up.
I stare out into the room thinking about this relationship that Remy and I have built, from the moment I met her I knew she was special and her smile was so big, it almost reached her ears, you almost wondered how it was possible for a person to be so incredibly happy. But with Remy, you could see the broken person through her smile. A person wanting to be loved and never wanting to relieve the pain that she was consumed with . I was attracted to her because I knew I wanted to be the one to make her feel whole again. There were days where we would lay in bed together and talk all night then watch the sunrise. It was right out of a movie, but then the fear that consumed Remy began to erupt. Remy began to drink, and at first I would drink with her. A glass of wine at dinner and maybe a cocktail for desert. But it began to worsen as the months went on. She would come home and from the moment you’d hear her key make contact with the lock on the door, you could smell the alcohol that was on her breath and her clothes. Our long nights were replaced with me holding her hair back as she would throw up everything that she had consumed. Although, we would see the sunrise together, it was not the same. At her very worse, there were nights like this one, where a stranger would drop Remy at the house and she would always be breathing, but never awake. So now, I sit beside her and wonder if it is all worth it.
