mills

“ The first time he left I felt scalded, as if drenched by a waterfall of boiling bitter tea. After the fourth time, I came to expect it and no longer felt anything but relief that our unwieldly life together would be, for a time, suspended in his absence. I would always think, “Now I am free to pursue my own interests, my own pleasures; my time is my own, how precious”. But the storms that precipitated his departure exhausted me so, and I would think about freedom and try to consider the myriad options now available to me while laying in my bed, my room darkened with drawn curtains, body prone and limbs laying stiffly in the afternoon heat. I could not move, and I could think only in circles, moving sometimes forwards and sometimes backwards, but always concentrically, around the big hole that was left in me whenever I was alone.