Never Enough - original fiction

[libra_traveller]

Never Enough

I don’t care, I don’t. Okay I do, but I don’t want to care so much so that I’m slowly losing every bit of me as she dwindles away. Every piece of hair that comes out in her brush makes me lose the feeling in my hands. I’m not supposed to care because she told me she hated me, that she felt she was being punished for the way she treated me. She gave up on us, but I won’t stay away. Our marriage is long over but I’d promised her mother before her death that I’d take care of her Lily. And I won’t break that promise, even though seeing Lily so weak makes me sick. I wish I could do more than hold back her hair as the chemo makes her lose the little food she fought to get in her stomach.

More I selfishly wish this happened years ago when we’d been together, so that if I were to lose her, I’d bury her knowing she loved me. Instead I care for someone who despises everything about me, who silently wonders why it couldn’t have been me who got sick instead so that she could have walked away and not suffered my company. She doesn’t say it, but I can see the thought in her eyes when she glares at me as I hand her a glass of water.

I think what makes this hardest is that I never stopped wanting her. That even having her shaking in my arms as pain wracks her body feels like heaven compared to the months of lonely nights when I could only hold myself. At the same time though I want to fade away from the grief of seeing this vibrant woman, who rushed in and out of my life, barely holding on. We only have each other, but she won’t let me in anymore. I worry I’ll lose her too afraid to reassert my love for her. Perhaps worried that if I did, on her dying breath she would throw it back in my face. But for now she’s in treatment, maybe she’ll live. Maybe we’ll have years more and she’ll finally forgive me for loving her not enough. And maybe I’ll stop loving her too much.

Comments

[tarlanx]

Quite a sad, bittersweet ficlet.

[libra-traveller.livejournal.com]

Thank you.