The Art of Feeling Nothing
The goodbye comes in post-it form. Jamie had known, of course, what was coming — it was impossible not to, and the sentiment burned every time — but she had at least dreamed of a few more years. That was always the case though, with all lovers unreturned; the only thing one ever dreamed about was a few more years. She knows on waking, on stretching out into the bed that isn’t dipped slightly with Dani’s weight and finding a duvet not shifted by Dani’s sleeping figure. There is no slow walk into the kitchen, no glancing around to see, to understand. The pain is instant, and she is shattered by it. Shattered, as all broken souls tend to be.
And then, the post-it. A stark yellow note against the brown of their bedside table — a purchase made almost a decade ago by minds dizzy with wonder, with joy, with love.
Eight (and a quarter) years ago.
“This one?”
Jamie glanced up from the catalogue, her eyes catching Dani’s as the blonde gestured down at her own magazine. The pages were dulled slightly with the mar of previous users, and for a moment Jamie wondered if those people had been in love the way she and Dani were. Was anyone? The thought caught in her throat and she grinned up, startling the idea away. Has anyone ever known a love so timeless as this? And, timeless. The word burned, slightly, though with Dani such tinges of discomfort were becoming easier and easier to ignore — but timeless. The one thing that their love, surely, couldn’t be.
“Jamie?”
A nod, unthinking, eyes shut for a brief moment against the way the world seemed to suffocate her at times like these. There would come a day when she wouldn’t be able to look at this furniture, the day the beast returned and stole Dani far into the swathes of jungle that lay abound. She despised the sentiment, but it was the way things had to be. Their relationship, a time bomb. Their love, only unrequited for as long as the Dani she knew, could remember it. She drew herself back into focus, now, inhaling sharply and nodding again — a battle, and a silent one, against the concern that drew itself plain across the blonde’s features.
“I love it. Definitely.”
A half-lie — she’d barely seen it, barely been able to concentrate on it for longer than the seconds which had passed — but it was a nice enough finish, the same colour as the bed frame they’d bought yesterday. She tried her honest best not to let these thoughts in, and yet. They came, as creeping and uninvited as the word which had run itself into Perdita’s fingers on the night which would curse them all. They came, and they stayed. Her head jolted up at the feel of a palm on her cheek, Dani’s hand — was it trembling? — coming to rest on the curve of her jaw.
“Hey.”
She smiled at the greeting, fitting as it was.
“Hi.”
And that was all. All it could ever be. Dani grinned, half a breath away from laughter as she drew a steady line across Jamie’s cheek with the softness of her thumb. It was strange, this dynamic — Dani saving Jamie where so often the roles were reversed — and she revelled in it until the moment had passed.
“God, I’m sorry. We’re supposed to be picking furniture.”
Brushing it off, as she always did. A joke, a huffed laugh. The thought of losing Dani was a pit in her stomach and with every day that passed it held its place, dulled sometimes by the fact that they’d already made it this far and at other times, worsened by the reminder that there was only so far they could ever make it, in the first place. She thought she’d known what she was signing herself up for, that last day in Bly when she’d linked pinkies with Dani and her heart had ached with warmth — but she’d never expected them to have this much time together. With every day that passed, it was a fraction more devastated she knew she’d be when the goodbye finally did come.
Eight (and a quarter) years forward in time, again. Dani — she’s gone.
For the first few minutes, Jamie finds herself suspended in a quiet state of disbelief. So caught up in it is she that not until she’s dared to read the note does the understanding sink in, the realisation, the crumpling of her features that forces tears down her cheeks just the same as it forces her, to the floor. She doesn’t slip off the bed so much as she crumbles, each part of her collapsing into the ground in perfect increments. Her hip first, and the pain is jarring but not so much that it distracts her from all that is. Her elbow next, her head, the hand which the post-it note is clutched in sliding finally to the floor. Her heart, too, in another life, but her heart is with Dani, and Dani is gone.
It’s the desperation that startles her the most. Barely legible lettering, I’m sorry written four times in the space of three sentences, please forgive me, I love you, goodbye. She can imagine it, for the most part, simply in the way that Dani is, her slightly anxious temperament no matter the situation. Ink is smudged towards the left side of the ‘letter’, and the only assumable thing is a teardrop — Dani is right-handed and if she’d been writing in a hurry the ink would have smudged the other way. A tear. It has to be, and another fragment of her heart shatters with it.
She lies there, and she lies numb. As numb, she thinks, as Dani was. Did Dani feel anything, in those last few weeks? Was there any trace of love left in her steadily emptying heart? A day passes and the world blurs with it, Jamie’s eyes drooping shut and then opening over and over again as the hours drag by. No. The word — not mercy, nor enough — is as strong as it could ever have been. No. Because this can’t be real, surely, because they’d ordered a mattress together with a ten year warranty and it hasn’t been a decade, because her ring still presses into the skin of the fourth finger on her left hand, because she’d promised Dani so many more years together, just weeks ago.
She’d known it, even then, that she was lying to both of them — but she’d hoped. Hoped, as she had been for all the time they’d spent together. Hope is such a dangerous thing, she realises now, she should have realised then — hope could only have ever lead to misery. And here, misery is — her own beast, her own jungle. This has been waiting just as long as Viola, and her eyes sting with the realisation. Finally, she shifts, twenty-five hours later, and she can't feel her feet. Her own tears have dried on her face; sadness had poured out of her, a flood, and all that is left now is the rage. Not at Dani — never at Dani — at herself, for daring to think that this could ever have a happy ending.
The ache in her limbs worsens when she pulls herself finally up, vision fuzzing over with the effects of no food nor water for more than a day. Faintly, vaguely, she recognises that her lips are chapped, that her head aches, that her stomach groans — but who is she, to care? Moreover — the what. What is left to care about now that all is lost? Dani. Dani, and her name comes rather suddenly, a strangled cry from a dry throat. It wakes the neighbours, it startles the sun, but it is all she has left. She smells her perfume like a ghost.
Four years earlier.
Enough time had passed, now, that the two settled into the comfortable hypotheticals of their relationship. Maybe Viola would learn to live inside Dani as just less than what she was now, silence rather than ignorable white noise. Maybe they would grow old together, live to see the day when the townspeople didn’t look at them strange for holding hands outside the flower shop. Maybe, maybe, maybe, and neither ever said it out loud, this could last. They lived on that premise, though, always — one day at a time. They dreamed of the rest of it, though. The breach that was far too risky to make — one day at a time, until. Until the end.
It was the first requited love that Jamie, at least, had ever known. Each night was a wondrous thing, a continuation of the exploration that they had to be more conservative about during the day, hands and mouths travelling over bodies, marks left and names cried out in ecstasy. I love you, they would always seem to end on, slipping intertwined into a sleep that was never altogether dreamless. Some nights it was Dani who bolted up, breaths laboured with the traces of a nightmare, fractured memories piercing through the sleep she so desperately sought. Others, it was Jamie, and her awakenings were quieter, smaller, but no less jarring to either woman. Where Dani feared the past, she feared the future, and her dreams were saturated with loss, and loss, and loss. Each dream, though — each disturbance, each unwelcome thing — was thrust into the warmth of the present, of whispered reassurances through the darkness or the soft light of dawn. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re here. You’re safe. Arms would be wrapped around shoulders and thumbs would caress cheeks, and even in waking from something so violently unfamiliar, it was the closest thing to bliss Jamie knew she would ever feel.
On one such night, it was her turn to wake, from a nightmare more vivid than the others she could remember having. Scrawled writing on a yellow post-it note and an ache that suffused through her like blood spilling from a wound, and so threateningly realistic was it that on waking, on that tell-tale jolt which woke Dani from her own slumber, she sobbed. It wasn’t embarrassment so much as it was shame that came with the tears, with the shuddering into her lover’s chest — how could she be crying when here was Dani, carrying two souls in the weight of one?
“Fuck. I’m sorry. This is…”
Stupid, she wanted to say, no matter how elementary the word seemed. Real, were the syllables that almost tripped from her tongue.
“No. No it’s not. You’re okay.”
And Dani held her, snaked an arm across her shoulder blades and pressed her chin into the crown of the brunette’s head. Unrequited. She’d known it, always, since the day she’d walked into the kitchen at Bly and felt Dani’s searing gaze on her back, but here it was confirmed. The pad of Dani’s thumb drifted up her shoulder until it reached the scar, stretched tissue that Jamie had always been so painfully conscious of.
“You’re really beautiful, you know that?”
Maybe it was the sleep that dug out the candour in Dani’s words, maybe it was the natural ease with which she always seemed capable of saying such things — but the sentiment, it was there. Out of the window, stars still dipped low across the horizon, swooping and stretching and alive. Dani nodded in their general direction and Jamie felt her chin shift as she smiled.
“Look. See those?”
“The stars?”
Jamie smirked at the obviousness of her own question. Put it off to tiredness rather than the distraction of being so unfathomably in love.
“Yeah. They’re you and me.”
She hadn’t been expecting that. A testament to all that their relationship encompassed, these lovers, and such a tender word was lovers as it crossed Jamie’s mind that she replayed it, over and over until sleep came far more easily than it had before. They slept, and their hearts bled together.
Four years on.
The earth is littered with the ruins of empires who believed they were eternal. Jamie shudders further into herself, the glass of water she is forcing herself to drink spilling over onto her shirt — and she hates herself, for her ignorance. Red flags, alarm bells, warning signs avoided over and over and over in the pursuit of happiness. As if happiness could ever be a lasting thing. She had believed that her and Dani were eternal — and their empire had fallen, too.
The kettle sits in the corner, an appliance which she’d had to battle for after Dani had suggested just ‘making tea in the microwave’ — it was the closest Jamie had ever come to passing out, probably — another reminder, as with all of the things in this house, of how empty it suddenly is. Best friends. Lovers. Wives, and the word still excites her after all these years, a flash of reminiscence shooting in the form of heat down to the place where her ring still sits. She glances down, momentarily, hopelessly, into the water that rests in the glass, but all that stares up are two same-coloured eyes, weary with the weight of disbelief. I miss you, she whispers, as if it is in fact Dani who watches up. Her grip slips with the glass and down it falls, shattering on the ground with a noise not dissimilar to the wail which had left her mouth just minutes ago. She doesn’t look down, at the ground, rather up, at the bed, as she steps across the shards which split the skin of her foot. It’s strange — she doesn’t feel the pain, only sees the blood, and is reminded of how much harder blood is to clean than water. She should care. She steps onto the carpet, and her footprints are red. She should care — but she does not.
Another day passes, stretches on by in the way that time does in sadness, until Jamie sits up. She’s had water, but not enough, and still no food — it’s been two days, and now her vision fades completely. She wakes up on the ground, and it’s night time. Back to square one.
“See those?”
Her voice is thin and barely there, heavy with tears she cannot afford to shed. She lifts a trembling hand and the effort pains her, pointing a finger out at the stars.
“They’re you and me.”
For a moment, she waits for Dani’s laughter beside her, until the moment has passed and there is silence but for a leaf-blower in the distance. She is dehydrated, and still she lets herself cry, aching for two American arms to hold her steady against the darkness. These tears aren’t like the ones from earlier. These merely fall. Feeling heavy like a weighted blanket. They feel like grief.
She sleeps. She wakes. She walks. Finally, finally, after a week of this, she eats. It’s half of a stale biscuit, so dry that she gags on it and is tempted to run her red footsteps back across to the bed, but the thought exhausts her and suddenly the whole packet is gone. She was hungry — she didn’t feel it, she doesn’t feel anything, she won’t let herself — but there’s evidence, here. She’s dimly aware of the stench of the fridge as she opens it, just the same as she’s dimly aware of anything which crosses her mind, at the moment, but she ignores that and reaches towards a vacuum-sealed bag of fresh pasta, the kind which is soft as soon as you open it. She eats, and she’s conscious of it now, conscious of the hole in her — a hole which Dani has left, where her heart is supposed to be — and she consumes the food as if to fill herself back up.
It doesn’t work. This is binge-eating; an American phrase which she’s heard Dani use a few times, and she swallows dry strings of pasta until it’s not hunger she’s aware of, but the opposite. Too much, and is this how Dani felt when she had two beings inside of her? She doesn’t know (she doesn’t have time to know) and now she keels over the sink, retching until she is empty again.
“Dani?”
She’s delirious. Not enough of anything — sleep, nutrition, sunlight, the love of her life — for a week and here, as she mindlessly rinses the sink of its contents, she calls the one name she remembers. There is no answer — she can’t remember why this is important — and she calls out again, Dani until it burns her throat. Kilometres (worlds) away, the Lady of the Lake sits, listening. The water presses down on her chest and it is with the same rage she has always had that she hates what she is putting her wife through, but she will not risk Jamie. Back in Vancouver, Jamie hollows herself out, slamming a fist so hard into the marble countertop that she feels it. Completely and utterly feels the essence of the thing. The recollections arrive as clouds, and she wrings them out, like rain. They flood the apartment, and for the first time, she does not sink.
“Dani.”
This time, she knows. She knows, she knows, she remembers — and the memory tears what is left of her to pieces. The pieces heap together, though, conscious with the kind of thought which separates human from spirit. I have to find her. All that is Jamie, all that is left of Jamie, burns. The soles of her feet where rivulets of blood still leak from. The knuckles of her right hand, one of which is split and stinging. The past week amalgamates and now she is certain, stepping past the shards of glass for the first time, wrapping crepe bandages which Dani bought as a precaution around her torn feet, wobbling and shaking and knowing, and knowing, and never having been so sure of anything before.
She eats, consciously this time. An apple which is slightly soft but not yet rotten, taking three breaths after each bite to make sure that another wave of nausea is not approaching, hobbling over to the sink when it does. No bile rises up into the basin this time, though, and instead she takes another bite, stronger by the minute and trying not to notice the way her bones stick out in a fashion they didn’t, before. Her ribs especially. They look as if they are clawing at the inside of her skin, and for the second time today she thinks of Viola, wonders if this is how Dani felt.
For three days, she lives like this, barely, but trying her best, until her feet are healed enough that walking is no longer painful and she is certain that she hasn’t fractured any bones in punching the countertop. There is enough food to last her, and just once she ventures downstairs — the shop is not salvageable even by her, each flower wilted or shrivelled to a brown shell of itself. She won’t be coming back here, for a while, she knows. The dead flowers — they dismay her, they do not distract her. She packs a bag, slips the post-it in there alongside her favourite Blondie tee, shorts, jeans and a few flannels. For all intents and purposes, once the sun rises on the fourth conscious day, she is going home.