Whatsoever I've feared has come to life
Whatsoever I've fought off became my life
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots have faded
And now I'm doing time
Cause I fell on black days
Whomsoever I've cured I've sickened now
Whomsoever I've cradled I've put you down
I'm a search light soul they say
But I can't see it in the night
I'm only faking when I get it right
Cause I fell on black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate
So what you wanted to see good has made you blind
And what you wanted to be yours has made it mine
So don't you lock up something that you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking
No, not tying
No, not tying
I sure don't mind a change
But I fell on black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate

* * *

I stayed late at work, I've been staying later and later as the weeks go by. I just don't want to go home anymore. It's not only that she's there, it's not her at all. It's me.

God, how trite does that sound? I should be ecstatic. I have a brilliant, beautiful woman in my life who loves me more than anything on this earth. What else could I possibly want? From the outside, my life appears perfect. But I'm not on the outside, and I don't feel perfect. I feel like a rat trapped in a cage, caught in a trap. I'm ready to chew off my own legs to break free. And she has no idea. And I feel like shit.

How can I do this to her? She's always supported me, loved me, taken care of me. Through everything, and God knows, we've been through a lot together. She was there to hold me up when I felt like I couldn't stand on my own. She made me a man. She made me the man I am now. The man who's eventually going to tear her life apart.

She'll be fine, of course. Not at first, but she'll be able to get it back together. She's always been the strong one. But she's not going to take this well.

I have no idea what I can even say to her. How do you end a relationship, a marriage, after eighteen years? Eighteen years, we've been together. It seems almost crazy. It's more than half of our lives. How can I make her understand when I really don't understand it myself? I don't think that I can.

I have to go home eventually. I know that I'm not going to go through with this yet, leave her now. I haven't got the balls. Our lives have been entangled for so long, I need to think all of this through. Part of me, a huge part, just wants to write a quick note and run like hell. No explanations beyond my disappearance. But, she deserves more than that. I do love her.

I've never stopped loving her. I can't see myself ever stopping.

Sometimes, it's not about love.

********

She was dozing on the sofa when I finally made it home. I stood over her and kissed her hair, softly waking her. When she smiled up at me, her questioning eyes clouded with sleep, I hoped against hope that I could shake this thing.

I'm hurting her, I know that. We've tried to talk. It's not like she hasn't noticed the changes I've gone through, or that I'm not the same person that she's known for 99 percent of her life. Really, she's tried to talk, but I just sit silently, my arms crossed over my chest, and nod. I can't tell her how I really feel. I don't know the words. I'm afraid. I'm afraid to leave, and I'm afraid to speak, and I'm afraid to stay. I'm so fucked. I don't want to hurt her, but I know that at this point that's unavoidable. No matter what I do, I'm hurting her.

She offers me her hand and I go with her into the bedroom. It's late, very late. She watches as I undress and put on a pair of pajama bottoms, and I lie next to her. There's a mile of space between us on the small bed. We haven't made love in weeks. We both pretend that it doesn't mean anything, but it does. We pretend that we have our entire lives together to make love; and a few weeks, a month here and there, doesn't make any difference. It's not true. It makes all the difference. When she touches me, I want to recoil. It's unbearable. We're moving further and further apart.

When she speaks to me, her voice is like a hiss in the back of my brain. Conversation is a chore. When did I become such a bastard? What the hell am I doing? I don't want to hear her, and I have nothing whatsoever to say. We have been living on small talk and pleasantries for way too long now. At some point, I'm going to have to open my mouth. If only to hush the murmuring motif that's enveloped our home.

Our home. Bought with the money both of us earned and both of us saved. I don't even know what's mine anymore. Is anything? Is anything just plain mine? I'm not sure. I have lost track of the rules of this game. All of our material possessions will stay with her. When I leave, nothing comes with me except my clothes and what few objects are solely mine, only for the fact that she would have no use for them. The vase that was my grandmother's and then my mother's, the one that I shattered when I was ten, the one that she and I glued back together painstakingly so my mother wouldn't notice; will stay with her. It's the one thing that I want. It's the one thing that if I took, would kill her. It's always been a symbol of our relationship.

When my mother gave it to us as part of our engagement gift she said to me, "Pacey, when you were a little boy, you broke this vase. You knew how important it was to me, but you were careless and broke it anyhow. And ever since that day, I've realized what a phenomenal man you would turn out to be, and I always knew that you and Joey would end up happily ever after, together. Because two people that can work together to mend something so completely, so it's almost imperceptible that there's ever been even a crack, those are two people who are destined to be together forever." We so totally believed that then, and for so long I held onto destiny. Forever. I really believed in forever. Until recently.

I don't know the exact minute that it happened. I feel like I should have noticed, that I should have written it down, that I should remember it as some sort of bleak epiphany. I don't even know that there was an exact moment, but I'm not sure that it's been building either. I can't tell anymore, the days run into each other and the only thing I know is how unhappy I am. And how unhappy I'm making her.

I roll over onto my side, my back to her, and I set the alarm. I close my eyes and pretend to fall directly to sleep. I don't want to talk, I don't want to do anything but lay here and try to sleep. Every night it's exactly the same, and every night it's worse. I can feel her eyes boring through the back of my skull, willing me to say something, anything. I know how lonely I must make her feel.

When her breathing steadies and she is asleep, I turn to her and study her face. What the hell am I doing to myself, to her? What the hell am I doing to us? I look to her for answers that I know that she doesn't have. I look to her for a release that I know she can't grant. I watch her gentle sleep until I am under myself.

***

I think I know the answer
I stumbled on and all the world
Fell down
And all the sky went silent
Cracked like glass and slowly
Tumbled to the ground
They say if you look hard
You'll find your way back home
Born without a friend
And bound to die alone
I'm thinking of your highness
And crying long upon the loss
I've found
And on the plus and minus
Zero chance of ever
Turning this around
Why doesn't anyone believe
In loneliness
Stand up and everyone will see
Your holiness
They say if you look hard
You'll find your way back home
Born without a friend
And bound to die alone

* * *

I left work on time to be with her, and now I sit in the driveway watching her shadow through the draped window. The car is still running and I want so badly to pull out and take off. Just drive. She knows I'm out here. I put my head against the steering wheel and think. Away is the one word I hear over, and over, and over.

I resolve to talk to her. Everything in me is saying that I can't keep up like this, doing this to her everyday. This woman who trusts me, who loves me selflessly, who has always done everything in her power to be fully honest with me; is being crying for me and she doesn't understand why. I'm not being fair to her. I'm not being fair to myself.

I cut the motor and am left in a world of throbbing silence. I walk slowly to our front door and feel as if I should knock, though my keys bulge in my pocket. I am a stranger in my own house. I'm a stranger in my own life. Auto-pilot. The key slides easily into the lock and I'm almost surprised by it. I keep wishing that something is really wrong, like I'm in a parallel universe right now and soon I'll be home and everything will return to normal. I might be going insane. Or maybe, I'd just like to think that because it's a concrete explanation.

Pushing open the door, I step into the brightness of our front room. She doesn't come to welcome me home, and I don't expect her to. When I look for her in the living room, I have every intention of talking to her. But when I see her curled up on the couch, every word leaves my mind. She looks up at me, her eyes slightly squinted into half-moons, and I can tell she's been crying. Again.

She cries and I'm silent. She cries and I don't come home. She cries and I'm an asshole. That's pretty much all there is to it. I have to leave her. For both of our sanity.

"You've been out there for two hours."

"I'm sorry."

My voice is a croak, it sounds almost alien coming from my throat. I hardly hear myself talk anymore in this house. There's a amall echo that I've never noticed before. It's the first thing I've said to her that even slightly acknowledges my abhorrent behavior.

She's not asking me for an explanation, and I don't offer her one. I watch her dark eyes fill with sadness and her tears fall down her cheeks. She doesn't want my apologies, she wants her husband back. And I don't blame her. I find it hard to look at her face.

If the words I'm sorry could even begin to cover everything that's happened between us, or more accurately, not happened between us, I would use them over and over. Nothing is going to make this better. Nothing is going to make this easy.

Looking at her, I know that she needs a tenderness that I can't seem to bring to her. Human contact. She needs me. I have to force myself to near her on the sofa and touch her arm lightly. A minute gesture, but the only one I am capable of. My head throbs and I press my eyes shut. She grasps at me like straws, urging me closer to her. I have nothing.

"I love you, Pacey. What more do you want?"

Her voice is filled with such resignation. I want to touch her face, but my arms don't cooperate. I want to tell her that everything is going to be okay between us, but I know that's not the truth. I hope that she knows how much I love her. God I love her.

"I don't know...."

She pulls me into her arms and my body stiffens. I want to relax against her, but my muscles won't comply. She doesn't let me go. She won't, I know she's trying for response. I want so much to give her one, even if it's a lie. I feel dried up inside, as if there's nothing but sand running through my veins.

When her fingers tangle in my hair, I try to remember what it was like to want them there. It wasn't so long ago that I had but to feel air pass between us, and I knew that I wanted to touch her. It's not like that now. I feel her wet cheeks against mine and I feel like I'm betraying her. Who is really being betrayed when I want so badly to love her the way that I used to be capable of, and I want so badly to leave? I fight to bring my arms around her. They've been hanging limply at my sides, held close to my body by her embrace. Her back is warm.

I don't know how long I can stand this. I know how badly she needs me close to her. I have to break away.

She follows me to our bedroom. I need to sleep to escape my own life. It's the only time that I experience true silence. She stands between me and the bed, her eyes pleading with me not to disappear on her again. Her strength is the only thing that she has left. When I can't look into her eyes, she sits on the edge of the bed and buries her face in her hands. I'm breaking her heart.

I'm lifeless. I can't do a damn thing on my own. I can hardly breath anymore. I don't know. I don't even know who I am anymore, I am empty. Gone. That's the only thing I want to be, away. The things that I love about her are the same things that I can't stand. But watching her cry kills me, whatever there is left inside me to kill. I move closer to her and rest my hand on her shoulder, squeezing it gently under my fingers. She looks up at me with those eyes, and I feel angry.

I want her to force me to do something. I want her to get angry, to scream at me and throw things. Someone in this house has to, and I don't have the energy. What do I have to be angry about, even? I'm only mad at myself for falling out of love with a woman I should have kept my promises to. I've almost wished that there was another woman, someone to blame all of this on. Someone to leave her for. But I'm not leaving for anyone but myself. And I want her to hate me for it. All she does is cry.

I need her to see that as much as this is about me, it's for her. I can't keep doing this to her. I have to leave and let her go on with her life. I will only make her miserable. I can't shake this thing, whatever it is. It's not going to go away. She puts her hand on my wrist and pulls me down to her, my body succumbs to her pressure. I'm glad of it. She needs me near her and it's the least that I can do. I sit next to her and she wraps her arms around me again. This time, I'm going to give her as much as I can. Whatever I have left.

She knows.

When her lips travel to mine, I don't pull away, I don't want to. I kiss her back and try to make that say all of the things that I should be able to verbalize. I know that it can't, but it has to. I have nothing else. I can taste the salt of her tears on her face. She presses against me and I can feel my body responding to her. I want to make love to her.

Our clothes come off quickly, as if we both know that there isn't much time left for us. I take all of the passion that's left inside me and channel it towards her, but we both know that there's something missing. When I slide myself inside her, I press my chest against hers so I don't have to look into her eyes. I know that they're still wet with tears. I can taste them. It's over quickly.

I roll off of her, feeling like more of a bastard than before.

She is the one to turn away. She puts her back to me and I can hear her crying even though she's pushing her face deep into the pillows to muffle herself. I should be able to touch her, but I can't. I should be able to allay her fears, but I can't. I feign sleep until her cries cease and we are left with the same horrible silence. I have to get out of here.

I slip off the bed quietly and go to the dresser, pulling on a pair of sweatpants. It's times like this that I wished that I smoked. I would have a reason to leave the room. I can't bear looking at her. She sleeps, but it's not sound. Her face is twisted with pain even in slumber. I go out to the living room, turning around once to look at her again. She knows. She knows I'm going to leave.

***

there was a grown man dying from fright
so surprised at the things he'd say
with a giant fantasy life
running 'round on feet of clay
naked except for a perpetual death
and i'm right to prove wrong
it moved him along closer to division day
I spent a long time living with that
never could give it a name
and when you don't know what you're looking at
makes it much harder to tame
mostly they'd meet when he was asleep and
have some sick exchange
that struck him as wrong
and moved him along closer to division day
I can't make an exception for a bad connection
that only goes one way
sell out for a song where I don't belong
with you on division day
the moon stood up on the ridge
looking down where the water shines
and a man looking over the bridge
like he'd done so many times
thinking about how to stay out
out of trouble's way
flying to fall away from you all
it's over division day
beautiful division day

***

The weekends are the absolute worst, there's nowhere for me to hide. I wake up and I can't run to work to get away from everything here. I can try to bury myself in my office, but it only makes the tension between us greater. I wake to find myself on the sofa, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the light. It's the first time that we've slept apart in years.

One year ago, she would have come and brought me back to bed. Two years ago, I never would have fallen asleep anywhere but in her arms. Then, her arms were a warm and tranquil place. Home. Now, her arms remind me that there's something desperately wrong.

If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this now.

I walk tentatively into the bedroom, but she's not there. The bed is made and the window shades are open, spilling sunlight into the room. She enters from the bath, a new resolve on her face. I'm terrified.

"You're leaving."

I nod at her weakly. I know that I need to explain, but as usual, I have nothing to offer her. There is a long stint of silence before either of us make a move to speak.

"What happened to us, Pacey?"

"I don't know." My voice is barely above a whisper.

Why can't I give her more than that? She would do it for me. I sit beside her on the bed, taking her lithe hand in mine and staring at it for a long time. She still wears my ring. I can't seem to bring my eyes to hers. I feel them sting with the promise of tears, as hers fall slowly.

Somewhere along the lines, we've lost track of each other. Maybe it was that we never gave each other a chance to be alone. Maybe we never gave each other a chance to be anything but together. Maybe I'm not giving her a chance now.

"I love you. You have to know that."

I am crying freely now, and I don't think that she's ever seen me this way. I had hoped that she never would.

"But?"

But, I have no idea.

"Things have changed. I've changed. Nothing feels right anymore. I'm sorry." My words are lame and I feel like I've rehearsed them a trillion times over the past few weeks. They sounded better before they came out of my mouth, less trite and less like a complete cop out. Now, they only seem like a lie, an excuse.

"Sorry? After almost ten years of marriage, you're sorry? And that's the best you can fucking do? You're sorry..." She hesitates for a moment before continuing, and I live to have an answer. "Pacey, we can work through this, we've been strong through worse times before. Please. We have to try."

I have tried. Her voice is desperate, she's grasping onto the only thing she has left. I bring my hands to her face and cradle it in my palms; her warm, wet skin sticking to mine. To look into my eyes, she can only see how miserable I am.

I know that she has to make the attempt, and I wish to God that her words could move me. But, I've heard them in my own voice, banging around my head for as long as I've been feeling this way. A long time. I don't even know how long it's been, but it feels like forever. The same forever that we'd promised to share. I remain unconvinced, and I don't think I can get it back.

"I can't." My impotent voice scratches my throat.

And I am sorry. I want more than anything to get beyond this unfathomable sense of loneliness I feel, this overwhelming need I have to be alone. The contradiction leaves me nauseous.

"So that's it? You're just going to leave?" Her words are staggered between soft sobs. She tries so hard to remain in control for me, but fails miserably.

I take her into my arms and hold onto her for dear life, as she tries to wriggle away. I need to feel her in my arms right now, if only because I may never have the chance again.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry... I love you so much." I'm blubbering now, my voice disappearing thinly into her hair. I can feel my entire body shaking against her. She pushes me violently away.

"NO! I can't listen to you apologize to me anymore! Not if you're not going to do anything about it... Go!" Her voice lowers, "Just fucking go... I'm so tired."

I reach out for her again, but she runs from our bedroom. I won't follow her, not this time. I need to allow her the same space that I'm about to give myself. I've hurt her more than enough and I have to let her alone now. If I try to force her to do this my way, I'll only be torturing her more.

My way. Everything I've put her through has been my way. What right do I have to ask her for anything? How can I ask her for understanding, when I have no clue what the hell I'm doing? To run after her, to make her placate my bullshit, would only be for my benefit. I might be making a terrible mistake here. All said, I will never forgive myself for any of this.

Sitting on the edge of our bed, my head cupped in my hands, I know what I need to do.

I begin to pack my clothes. Even pulling my suitcase from the closet makes me want to throw up. I hadn't anticipated this pain in my chest, or that I would hate this process as much as I do. Somehow, I had been building up this moment as the one where I would finally feel okay, where I would finally feel free. But all I feel is like a grotesque interpretation of the man that I used to be, the man who loved his wife and wanted to be with her, as he had for more than half his days on this planet. Now I wish that this fucking planet would swallow me up whole. I never anticipated this process at all.

I kept trying to lie to myself, telling myself that it would never get to this point, that I would change the way that I felt. I think that I thought I would never really have the balls to leave. But here I am, packing my bags. I think I'm making a horrible mistake, one that I'll never be able to repair. But I don't want to stay either, because I don't feel right about anything.

What the hell is feeling right, anyway?

Every article of clothing haunts me. Here's the sweater that I wore when she graduated from school. Here are the pants that she bought me when we had to go to that office picnic and she wouldn't let me wear those ratty jeans.

She's come back to the bedroom and watches me pack from the chair near the window. I suppose that she has to, for the same reasons that I have to do this now. It's finally becoming real.

I can't look at her.

I can't breathe.

***

When my suitcases are at the door and the silence in the house is loud enough to burst my eardrums, I go back to her. I won't apologize to her again, it has no purpose. But I can't walk out the door without something. I simply go to her. I kneel before her and look into her pain-filled eyes.

"I won't pretend to understand this. I wish that I could, but I don't think that I ever will." She puts her hands on my face now, and I feel my eyes begin to fill up with tears again. I had promised myself that I wouldn't cry. I can't bring myself to tell her that I don't understand it any more than she does.

"I love you, Pacey."

"I love you too."

"But it's not enough, is it?"

"God. I wish it was..."

My words trail off. My legs are rubber beneath the weight of my body. My world is crashing down around me and I don't have the strength or the wherewithall to do anything about it. Everything is my fault, I only hope that eventually I can find the power to pick up the fragments. Maybe even before it's too late. The door is calling me to walk through it.

She stands and helps me to my feet, silently forcing me to make my move. I don't want to prolong this any more than I have already. Every passing second kills her further. Every passing second makes me weaker. Every passing second makes her hate me more.

We stop at the door and I pick up my bags, taking one last look around me, at what I'm leaving behind. My eyes linger on our vase, perched alone on the mantle. She follows my line of vision. I touch my fingers to her lips and say nothing, turning and walking out the door. Walking out of my life.

***

Barely a mile away, I know that I've done the right thing for both of us.

Ten miles away, I try to quell my regrets.

One hundred miles away, I need to hear her voice. I won't call. I won't make this any worse than it already is. I'm so sorry.

At a gas station, in a town I have no idea where, I feel better for the first time. Not good, just better. Better that I've released both of us from the misery that's been encompassing us, the stagnation that had become our lives together. I think that I'm finally going to be alright. I think that she's finally going to be able to understand, and repair the pieces that I had shattered from the whole.

I sit down on a rock in the sun on the side of the road, and I cry. Long and hard.

I can breathe.

***

The end.