We were married on a warm October afternoon under the towering pine tree in the park that we climbed on our first date. It was perfect; her, me, and a handful of close friends. Her loving me as best as she knew how, and me absolutely convinced that I loved her more than any person had ever loved another. What I know now is that I would develop a proximity infatuation with anyone who paid the least bit of attention to me (low self esteem, anyone?) that would fade as soon as I began to really see them. That tale, however, is for another write up.
She brought home the lion one day when I was sick with the flu; she thought it would cheer me up. It wasn't a normal stuffed animal though, it was smooth and stretchy, a bit like spandex, and filled with what seemd like billions of tiny styrofoam peanuts. At first I thought, "Hey, I'm twenty-seven years old. I haven't had a stuffed animal in over twenty years. Why would she think I need one now?" I didn't want her to feel bad, so I dragged that thing around the house for the next few days, and made sure it was on the couch with me when she came home from work or class. I put it in the bed at night so that she would think I really liked it. Until I got over the flu, that stuffed lion and I were inseperable.
To qoute Yeats, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." They did, and it didn't. She became jealous and posessive, and would get upset if I spoke to my friends. I would work long hours and late nights until the Executive Director told me to leave just so I wouldn't have to be around her. It worked out well, because she was often out with her friends by the time I got home and would stay out long after I fell asleep. When our paths did happen to cross, she would hurl accusations of infidelity and indifference at me, and I would retaliate by pointing out the hypocrisy of her actions and my opinion that she had broken every promise she ever made. I slept alone on the couch most nights, or with my back to her on the rare occasions we shared a bed. And I began to sleep with the lion, because it reminded me of the person she had once been.
That lion made many long, lonely, painful nights a little more bearable.
Fast forward a few months. April, a year and a half after that blissful October day. I hadn't spoken to anyone I considered a friend in almost four months. I was alone, depressed, hurt, angry, and a thousand other emotions that have no name save for the internal primal screams and wails that each individual bestows on them. One day, she told me to have a good life with my friends, so I left. I returned later to get some of my belongings, but I left the lion behind. I was trying to send the message, "I don't need you or anything associated with you."
Fast forward another year and a bit later to last night. Things get easier, but there are days when I wonder how I'll ever get through the next rotation of the planet. Those are the days I turn to alcohol and drugs as a sort of local anasthetic for life. I lay in my bed, drunk, smashed on methadone. Somehow, through the wonderful methadone haze, I wept. I toyed with the idea of calling her to apologize for everything, for anything, just so she would tell me things were going to be okay. So she would tell me she still loved me. So she would hold me as I wept until I fell asleep.
Last night, I really missed that lion.