Becky hadn't been returning my emails over the last few weeks because she wasn't getting them.
She was spending most of her time in the hospital, fighting for her life.
The Interferon treatments she was taking to destroy the Hep C were making her so sick and causing so much collateral damage to her body that her doctors took her off the treatments and spent 5 weeks just trying to bring her back to relative health.
The worst part of all of this was, the treatments didn't work.
After all she had been through over the last 10 months, she still had the Hep C.
It was incurable, it would keep attacking her liver until she got sick enough to get on a transplant list. That's what she had to look forward to.
But wait...it actually DOES get worse.
Part of the collateral damage that the toxic cocktail of treatments caused was to change her brain chemistry.
She had now been diagnosed as being bi-polar. Long term side effect.
She was going to counseling for depression.
She didn't want to take any meds for the bi-polar because of her experience taking meds for the Hep C. She didn't trust them. She's looking at natural, holistic approaches.
She says she'll come over to see me.
Much to my surprise, I wasn't entirely sure how I feel about that.
I mean, I hadn't seen her since sometime in April or May. It was now late September. At that point, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to happen. I loved her, I missed her, I still wanted us to be together. I think. But there had been so much time and distance between us. I'm not sure how you recover from that.
So she comes over
We sit and talk and everything seems...oddly normal.
We snuggle on the couch, we talk, we get caught up. I tell her I love her, she tells me she loves me.
She's devastated to realize that she completely missed my birthday. She says "You realize that with everything going on I would have missed my own birthday?" I laughed and reassured her that I understand, it's OK, no big deal.
She says she still doesn't have a phone and probably won't get one for another couple of months. She has some seemingly rational reasons for this.
We promise we'll try to do a better job of staying in touch and communicating.
We hug and kiss goodbye, and she leaves. I feel so much better! It feels like we might actually make it through this.
That was the last time I ever saw her or spoke to her.
She never returned another email.
Not even when I offered to take her out for her 50th birthday.
Obviously, she had been pushing me away for months and I just wasn't getting it. I thought we just needed to communicate better. But in retrospect, she had been communicating very clearly for a long time. I was just too stupid to realize it.
I still think about her almost every day. I wonder if she is OK. I wonder if she's on a transplant list. I wonder if she's even still alive. I have no way of knowing.
I suppose I could have made some Grand Dramatic Gesture to try to resolve things, but all of those options seemed kind of "over the top" and border-line stalkerish.
She clearly didn't need or want me in her life any more. That's her call.
I've never been one to "fight" for a relationship. If both people aren't in the relationship, then there's no relationship to fight for.
But some closure would have been nice.
I've been in a LOT of relationships and all of them eventually ended. I believe that all relationships have a natural lifespan. Nothing lasts forever. But I've always known how and when the relationships ended.
"Hey, XO. I've never mentioned this before, but you're kinda of a douchey fucking bastard with a tiny dick and I don't really like you. Never have. I'm outta here."
"XO, I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just come right out with it. I've met someone else. We're in love. I'm sorry. Goodbye."
"Hey buddy, it's been fun, but I'm done. Thanks for all the fucks. See ya, wouldn't wanta be ya!"
But I've never had a relationship that just...evaporated.
When you are in the middle of emotional dynamics like that, it's more difficult than you might think to look at things objectively as a disinterested, outside observer might see things.
If you leave an open container of water sitting on the counter, that water is going to evaporate and eventually that container will be empty.
You can't actually see the water evaporating. The day to day change in the container is barely noticeable, yet the end is inevitable.
Emptiness.
A once full vessel that held so much promise, is now inexplicably empty, coated with the dusty residue of what once was.
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