The One I Love

“I don’t know who I am without you,” I sob to a man who isn’t there.

If he was here, he would say what he said before: That’s the problem, Amelia. You need to find out who you are without me.

Groveling at the foot of an empty chair, I feel like a dog– leashed to the past, abandoned by the future I’d hoped to have.

Flashes of ‘what-once-was’ dance through my senses: the sweetness of his mouth, the inimitable scent of western white pine, his sleepy sighs like music to my mind. Marrying him would have been easier than breathing for me. But for him, it was too much too fast.

Maybe I really was a dog, chasing after the forbidden bones of a skeleton…

Nauseous at the thought, I rise to face the mirror. The room spins and I see stars, but beyond the blur I see myself.

My hair has reached the awkward in-between stage of growing, sticking out in all directions like a bunch of used paint brushes. The veins in my forehead bulge and blood vessels under my eyes have popped and turned pink. My lips are bitten and bruised.

Someone could look at me and think I’ve been stung or even beaten, and neither guess would be far off… Since the initial sting of ‘breaking up,’ my heart – which once beat strong with love – is now beaten by love.

I groan and look away.

Despite its high ceiling, the bedroom caves in around me, so spacious it’s suffocating.

In this space, I shared childhood stories with him. Here, we prayed, meditated, and slept together. We watched movies, played games, and laughed. One summer, we got sick and nursed each other back to health. Next to the bed, he got down on one knee, turning my deepest dreams into reality.

Even with the room rearranged and the bed remade, I still cannot shake the shape of his body from the sheets.

I wipe my face and lean closer to the reflection.

All I can see is him, the only lover I ever had, in flushed skin and wide brown eyes and an upside-down smile. His pain is sketched in the lines of my face. His joy lingers in my lungs. Our time together trickles down my spine.

I tear off my clothes and still he is there, hiding under collar bones and between my legs. If I move a certain way, I’m sure my body is his; hollow chest, strong arms, and blossoming hips. I don’t dare touch my lips, for I know that the kisses and whispers they’ve shared will spread.

There were moments when we reflected each other better and clearer than any mirror.

Every time I found myself in him, I’d inch closer, dive deeper, and find more. But when he found himself in me, he’d flinch away and dive back. I don’t blame him… it’s scary to find your soul in someone else’s bones.

I sink to the floor again, naked and trembling.

Who am I without the One I Love? Do I even exist at all?

It’s a question I never directly asked until now, yet it was there all along, hiding in plain sight. It comes from the smallest voice inside me, a fractal of the inner child; my inner fetus– partially-formed, floating in the depths of my conscience.

Before now, this small voice only made itself known through foggy nightmares, migraines and panic attacks; never making much sense. Now, it rises to the surface so plainly, I have no choice but to face it.

This is a fragment of my bones, my very soul… this is the skeleton I’m meant to chase.

So I take a deep breath and close my eyes, following the echoes of a voice that waited 26 years to be heard.

Who am I without the One I Love?

This time, ‘what-was’ flashes even farther back…

My mom had left the room at bedtime when I was a baby, and I bawled. I couldn’t see straight, all I knew was that the One I Loved was gone and without her I was lost.

But my mother never abandoned me, by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, to soothe me to sleep, she’d take off her nightgown and leave it with me as a blanket. She’d spend the days with me, teaching me how to walk, speak, dream and be. We’d snuggle and go on adventures and she listened to all the questions I had about the universe, no matter how preposterous. She didn’t just give me attention, but intention. For the first few years of my life, her love was the foundation of my reality.

How natural, then, that I would not only orient myself to that love, but totally identify with it… continuing the pattern with family, friends, and eventually my lover– he who built skyscrapers upon this love’s foundation.

I blink my eyes open, sending out fresh tears, and kneel at the empty chair. The room sparkles and spins.

“I know who I am without you,” I whisper to the man who isn’t there. “I’m the same person I was with you… the person my mother raised me to be: a woman who loves so fully, she becomes it.” I laugh through the tears and throw my head back. “All this time I thought I was nothing without you, because… Well, for a little while, I was in you, and you were in me... but Love remains in both of us, whether we’re together or apart. Oh, thank God! Thank God.”