My Skeptical Lover,

For your edification:

in⋅ter⋅est⋅ing

-adjective

1. engaging or exciting and hold the attention or curisoty

2. arousing a feeling of interest

Etymology: "to be between," from inter- "between" + esse "to be."

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Every tragedy has the potential to throw you into a different state of being. And for that reason, tragedy inspires a certain amount of excitement within us. There’s a sense of possibility that accompanies it, a feeling that we are no longer, and can no longer, be who and where we were before, and therefore are forced to occupy a new space.

When we witness a tragedy befall someone we know, we wait anxiously for updates: what new space will they be forced to fill? And what imprints can we leave with them in this wet, new, unformed world?

To be denied a role in defining that new state is heartbreaking. It’s infatuation all over again: they’re a new person that you have to ponder and ruminate on. You sit in the periphery, crouching in the hedges around their new dwelling space, windows aflame with light, reminding you only of the fact that you are out in the darkness, and cannot come inside and help them arrange the new furniture, and decide what flavors of ice cream should be stocked in the freezer, and cannot be there with them to christen the hearth, and tend to their now-healing wounds by firelight.

Before you know it, they’ve settled into their new space, and it’s further away from yours than it used to be. You long for a tragedy to bring you back together with them, but you realize how anticlimactic that would be, and how transparent. They’re married now, with 1.8 kids, and that’s the world they’ve decided to occupy. They’re strangling, you’re just sure of it, and every day is now a tragedy, but they refuse to acknowledge it, they refuse the possibility of changing, of occupying a space a little closer to you, of brushing your hand without an apology, of speaking to you without that strange affected tone, of acknowledging your double entendres for more than their surface meaning.

Tell me, lover, that the next time I find myself on the brink of giving birth to .8 kids that you’ll be there to illuminate the tragedy in that occurrence.

~Befallen