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November 11, 2005

nobody gets it like they want it

It's the end of the day and I'm curled up in an armchair downstairs with my bottle of water and the New Yorker, talking on the phone to The Husband and watching, kind of, The OC. He is urging me to let Herself, who has been sent to her room for the evening, downstairs to watch The OC with me and I am declining his offer. My knees ache, my head feels like it has been replaced with a mushroom--something gray and spongy and brittle--and my jaw hurts at the hinges. I have a scratchy throat and now instead of one swollen and painful gland in my neck I have two, and my earache persists. In short, I am not in a very good place.

I don't want to be sick, or even getting sick. I have a date Friday night that I cannot get out of even if I want to, since tickets have been bought and reservations made. And I don't want to get out of it. I want to go, and I want to be funny and girly; I want to feel pretty and have a good time and not think about my aching head. I tell The Husband "I have something to do tomorrow night" and he knows what it is, and I know that he knows. And after I hang up the phone I watch TV for a while and after a time I know I'm sad. I think Why doesn't he stop me? Why is he letting me do this? Why doesn't he care enough to say don't, stop, don't. Don't; you're mine.

I go upstairs and take three advil and some Cipro and go to bed. Toward the end of the night I dream:
The Husband has been here for a visit and he is about to leave and I suddenly can't stand it--can't stand the thought of him going--and remembering that I promised myself and him that I wouldn't do this, I throw myself at him, fling myself on him like a child, or a monkey, and I say "Come home, come home, come home. Don't go. Aren't you ever going to come back?" and he says, as distant and benign as the moon, "No, I'm not." And he gets in his car and starts to drive away. I call him on my cell phone and suddenly I am in a foreign country, someplace Asian, and I have only one shoe on and the other is in my car, which is being driven away from me. My purse is in the car. "Stop!" I cry and give chase, but it is too late.

I wake myself up sobbing, but there aren't any tears. The Cipro has reduced the swelling in my neck and my head doesn't hurt as much, but my throat is hot and scratchy. I lie in bed a long time after I should get up.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)