I opt for suffering 

 Dezember 11, 2021

He laughs, and I adore his voice. 

This deep timbre I can’t get enough of. This vibration I want to cocoon in now and forever. 

He can’t stop laughing. 

„That’s mean!“, I say, but my indignation is played. „Don’t laugh at me!“

„I’m not laughing at you“, he claims. „I’m laughing out of disbelief. No one has ever called me beautiful. Maybe no one has ever seen my beauty like you do.“ 

The morning after winter solstice I wake up in his bedroom for the first time. A plant is hanging from the ceiling right over the bed. „I didn’t know where to put it, and up there was a hook“, he explains. 

I admire the fabric of the red, ornamented curtains. 

„It’s silk from a Sari“, he says. „My ex-wife sew them. It’s from her wedding dress.“ 

I checked out from my hotel one day before my official departure, ordered an Uber and went to his house.

„I’m standing in front of your door“, I texted. 

„Knock on it“, he answered, but in the very same moment he opened. 

When I stepped into his hallway, a voice in my head said: „This is your house now."

„I felt heartbroken when I came home from London after we first met“, I told him, my head resting on his chest. „I don’t know why. Perhaps because your are heartbreakingly beautiful.“  

And he started to laugh. 

Now he arches and stretches his body against mine. I never touched skin as soft as his before, except maybe when my son was born and I devoutly traced his tiny soles and cheeks with my fingertips.  

„Our bodies seem to heal each other“, he says. „I haven’t felt this peaceful in a very long time.“

Then I lay on my back under green leaves in the rubicund light falling through the silken curtains. Soon I will have to go. We never have time.

It’s two days before Christmas. In the evening I will land on a different planet. 

A planet he doesn’t inhabit.

Now his left hand rests on my sternum, his right hand at my pubic mound. He sits silently, eyes closed, for what seems an eternity.

„Now this is sealed“, the voice in my head says.

And I promise myself I won’t be heartbroken this time. 

I will trust. 

I will conquer the doubt that will creep in once we’re apart. 

Still I will suffer.

Suffer the delicious pain of missing him. 

Suffer the excruciating fear of loosing him. 

Suffer the inevitability of transcience, the vanishing of memories.  

„Pain is inevitable, suffering is an option“, my Buddhist teachers used to say. 

I opt for suffering. 

I know it’s a choice. 


Photo by Emilio Garcia on Unsplash