Dopamine

It’s getting bad again.

Jake came home a month ago and I could almost sum the whole thing up to one bad day. He made Eggs Benedict on Saturday mornings, lulled me to sleep with murmurs of The Late Late Show, and continually promised to change the light bulb over the bathroom sink. I was in tune with the smell of his aftershave and his crumpled workout clothes at the end of the bed. But it’s starting. The workout clothes haven’t moved, and the light bulb isn’t going to be changed. Jake is breaking, but he doesn’t cry; he aches. Not like a wound, more like a memory. His pain is old worn familiar, just not comfortable. A slow, sickening silence that whips circles in his mind and puts a gap in our bed.

But I’m willing; in fact somewhere I’m at peace. I just have to remember. I have to remember that when he hasn’t slept for four days he once set aside a whole shelf in the living room bookcase for his Batman comics. When he refers to any form of medication as a waste of damn time, I scroll through old emails and cling to coming home early’s and why don’t I cook tonight’s. When he’s gone completely numb, I remind myself that he still thinks better with Beethoven in the background and always kisses the top of my head right before he turns over to go to sleep.
As long as I remember, and as long as he knows, it will leave. It will.