your trainwreck girlfriend is crying again

(1999)

There I am again, weeping in the bathroom.

And there you are – I don’t know what you’re doing. I imagine you sitting in the other room, palm to your forehead, head shaking slightly from side to side. Maybe you bring your hands together in an attitude of prayer; maybe you bury your face in your hands, and drag them down over your cheeks until you look like the tragic mask of theater.

Meanwhile, the choking sobbing sounds keep coming from the bathroom. I cry like a very young child, long stretches of one vowel – “Eeeeeeeeeee”  – followed by staccato hitches – “Eee eee eee eee.” Then back to the main chorus.

There is nothing that can stop me. I mean, there is, but neither of us knows what it is.

I have some idea, though; I know you have the solution in you, if only you’d look for it. It makes me cry harder, knowing that you could help me if you chose to, but you’re too selfish. You’re too busy trying to figure out how to get out of the situation. I’m bleeding to death, big aortal pulses of blood shooting out of me, splashing the walls and the tiles and everything, and you’re standing on the sideline, like you’re Sherlock Fucking Holmes and I’m a troubling mystery. There’s no mystery! I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying in here. Eeeeeeeeeeee.

Haven’t you ever felt this? Haven’t you ever felt so bad that it feels like it could kill you? It feels like my throat is trying to turn inside out, and there’s a horror in my solar plexus that wants to be born. I can feel it scrambling. I have to get rid of it. Don’t you understand? This awful feeling is scaly, with reptilian claws, and if I don’t get it out of my body, I will die. I heave and strain, force air from my body like I’m vomiting, but nothing comes out except Eeeeeeeeee.

Doesn’t everyone have this? Everyone who’s not lying to themselves, I mean, the way you do. This is pure psychic pain; don’t act like you’re immune to it. Don’t act like I’m the worst person ever, and this is the worst event, just because I’m sobbing, just because I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I’m sad, so I’m crying – is that so terrible?

Why are you so afraid of me? Why can’t you see how much pain I’m in? Why is that a threat to you?

What the fuck are you doing out there?

If it was you – I know, it would never be you, but let’s pretend you’re a human being like the rest of us. If it was you who felt terrible, who felt unworthy of the oxygen it takes to keep you breathing, who knew for a fact that no matter what anybody said, they couldn’t really love you, they could only do you the favor of standing helplessly nearby and making you feel more alienated, more crazy, more hopeless – if it was you who was crying, I know exactly what I’d do.

I’d open the bathroom door and see you there, face contorted by agony, and I’d say Honey, Honey, Honey. It’s going to be okay. I love you, and I’m here to help you. Shhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh. I’d come to you, and even if you were sitting inconveniently on the lid of the toilet, I would find some way to embrace you, whether that meant awkwardly leaning over you, or collapsing at your feet and wrapping my arms around your legs, and I’d keep repeating gentle reassurances.

I would say such things as: I understand. My poor baby. It’s so awful. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I’m sorry that I said or did the thing that upset you, Honey. You’re right, and I’m sorry, and I love you.

IT’S NOT THAT HARD.

But instead, I’m the monster. You, sitting there in the other room, callously standing by while I prepare to die – yes, this time I’m going to do it! there’s no other way! – refusing to give me any kind of comfort or assistance – you’re not the monster, but I am? Because I have feelings? Deep ones, yes, and sometimes bad ones, but at least I have them. At least I know what they are.

Unlike you, you who claim to love me but can’t lift a finger to save me from this agony – that’s not love. What I feel for you, that desperate craving, that lust, that insatiable need to be with you constantly, that reverence, that central position I give you in the middle of my life, like a maypole from which all of the strands of my story unwind – that’s love.

If you don’t feel like killing yourself at the thought of losing me, that’s not it.

That’s what I did wrong today, isn’t it. I said I wanted it all to end, that I couldn’t take it anymore, and that’s the moment when you turned cold. It’s not a threat, the way you say it is, always trying to make me the bad guy; I’m not threatening you. I’m threatening me. Nothing’s going to happen to you, you’ll be fine; besides, you’ll be rid of me, like you so obviously want to be. So what do you care?

You care, you say. You do. Yes, but what do you care? Why do you care? Who do you care about, if not the woman in your arms screaming for her life?

You don’t act like you care. And don’t tell me that’s not fair, because it is more than fair; I’m over here choking, so full of snot that I can no longer breathe through my nose; I’m suffocating on grief, and you’re totally fine – that’s what’s not fair.

Nothing. You say nothing, except my name in a plaintive, or warning, tone.

Janice…