I don't want my husband to stay. I don't want him to leave. I want him to be with me always and never. He fell asleep early last night, and it made my stomach tighten with panic. I don't want him to sleep. I don't want him to bother me when I'm sleeping. I want every moment to matter. I want to follow him around everywhere. I want him to follow me everywhere. I want to spend every second gazing at him.He has perfected the art of creating perfect longing for me. Our entire relationship has been a long, long, long grieving, a long wanting, a long longing. There have been moments of bliss, of union, of happiness that capped long spells of hurt and despair. Even now, married, living together every day, there is this perpetual sense of imperfection, of brushing right against something that is almost just right, but never quite. In many ways, it's just what I want. It's good material for me to write about. That's sick, isn't it? It's sick to want a perpetual impossibility, a sense of something constantly turning, returning, being built and destroyed and never quite completed. I'm in love with dissatisfaction. Nothing will ever be right, finished, complete, and I'll always have something to search for. I live like a kind of spiritual cockroach, scrounging for these bits, these moments, building my completeness like a collage of momentary satisfactions.
I want to go home. I have to keep working. I want to take this week off to follow him around, to sit in his lap and touch his face, and I can't. I know I have to keep going, keep moving through my life, keep working, keep surviving, keep trying to make myself happy. I want to be happy. I do. I want to be happy in a particular way, though, and I'm not yet willing to reset my vision of what I want. I want him. I want him to go away. I want him with me always. I don't know what I want.
Man Disappearing by Jean Albano
