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“At least we aren’t that bad off yet, right? Fighting each other in the mud for a scrap of water. What kind of life is that?” I had asked her during the first parts of Mad Max: Fury Road. We were home that night, neither of us being too keen on going to the cinema anymore with people on cell phones the whole time, loud ass, disruptive kids, and the recent rash of theater shootings.
“Are we really all that different though? Aren’t we all fighting for scraps while the rich keep the power and the money?”
This was another reason we didn’t like going to the theater, these conversations.
“Well… we have water and no one makes us shave our heads.”
“Shaved heads notwithstanding, does everyone have water?”
“Not everyone, no.”
“But isn’t there enough money in the world to make sure they do?”
“I’d have to do the math on that, but most likely.”
“And isn’t there some random rich white person that decides on occasion to do some charity and bring medicine or food or water instead of everyone pulling together and actually resolving the issues that cause it? Sort of like raining down water from a gushing pipe every now and then?
“I mean…I don’t think those people are necessarily as evil as this guy, Sadie.”
“Some famous guy somewhere said something about the biggest evil being inaction.”
And with that her point had been proven for the most part, I guess. We enjoyed the rest of the movie, but the conversation was done. That’s the kind of thing I remember about her most, the thing I might miss the most except smelling her in bed beside me, feeling her heat, being able to put my cold toes against her calves and start a wrestling match in bed. I miss those moments beside her in bed the absolute most, but I also miss that quick intelligence, the snapshot conversations that didn’t take a debate or hours worth of back and forth. She dropped in and made her point, and that was that. It was like that idea was waiting inside her perfect little brain just for the right moment to show itself.
I’ve dated since Sadie.
Let me rephrase that. I’ve been out with other women since Sadie, but ultimately I end up comparing them to her or her to them, and it never works out. And even if I like someone, she inevitably asks me how I deal with it—having been with someone who committed suicide.
Is there an answer to that question, though? Truthfully, I haven’t dealt with it. Truthfully, every time I sit down to dinner with some other woman, I feel like a lying cheat. I hate myself for it. My heart still belongs to a woman that never wanted to be in this world in the first place, and all I can do is lay awake at night and think of all the things I should have said or done or not done even while knowing there was nothing that would have changed it. Rationally, I *know* it wasn’t the first time she tried to end things and that it was a constant battle for her. I *know* that it was going to happen sooner or later because even when she got the help she needed, it was only a temporary fix. But, the part of me that doesn’t give a shit for rationalization, the part of me with all the feels…that part of me is always and forever going to search for something I maybe could have done differently that might have made all the difference.
I love her. Even now after 2 years in this world without her, I think I love just as much as the first time I ever told her. Or maybe just as much as the 12th time I told her. I did kind of rush into things, but the first time I met her I just kind of knew that I would fall head over heels in love with her. I don’t scorn her memory for leaving me with all this baggage, and I don’t think she took the coward’s way out of things the way her family seems to… What I do think is that I was lucky enough to spend 6 long years with her through the hard times and the best times, through the tears and the depression and through the days when we laughed so hard together that my face ached the next day. It hurts to be without her. It hurts more than I ever thought anything could hurt me, but she was honest with me from the start, so how can I fault her? She told me on our 3rd date that one day she would probably commit suicide one day, and if I was going to date her, she needed me to understand it would never be forever. It was a serious conversation, but I already had a serious crush, and I thought naively that maybe it wasn’t as bad as she made it out to be. That’s when I told her that life isn’t worth living without taking risks, and that I needed to know what falling in love with her felt like despite those risks.
She kissed me for the first time that night and cried softly into my neck afterwards.
So how do I deal with it?
I don’t.
I don’t think there’s a way to deal with losing the love of your life. Sure, life goes on and all that. I don’t cry every day anymore, so there’s improvement to be had, but there will never be a time when her memory fades, that I don’t fall asleep at night wishing she was here, and I’m okay with that. I took the risk with her and saw it through, and for at least awhile I knew how it felt to love someone more than I loved myself.
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I hope the strength of my narrator shines through instead of this being seen as bleak and depressing... thanks for reading and be sure to check out the rest of the link ups and the More than Cheese and Beer blog!!
What a sad story, but beautifully told! Suicide is a hard subject to tackle and even more difficult to live with day in an day out. I'm glad this is just a fictional story!
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