“Twenty-Six Days”

It happens on a plane. No one has cheated. Or lied. No one has a secret. Or is screaming. There is no shatter of glass or hearts — only the cry whispers coming from aisle ten, seats B and C (middle seat, window seat). They’ve upgraded us to the emergency exit row which does offer extra legroom but does not bode well for the people on this plane if there is an emergency landing in the next three hours and thirty-four minutes.

“I don’t think we should date anymore,” I say

Except we don’t really “date.” We live together. We share a bed. Every night. We have plans. To buy a hairless cat and get married at City Hall.

I’m trapped. I can’t do it anymore. We’ve stopped having sex. Two months. My therapist says it’s because I think of him and his behavior as “baby-like. And no one wants to have sex with a baby. I’m emergency-exiting us both out of this relationship whether the flight attendants like it or not. Whether we are in a confined space or not.

I want the drapes open, the windows open, the wind in, he wants them closed. I want to stand in front of the concert and be consumed, brain enveloped by acts of art and conversation. He wants to stand in the back. In silence. In stillness.

And fine. Standing in the back can be romantic. Lovers can kiss and peek into each other’s eyes like little birds. I know that. But isn’t the purpose of life to connect with other humans through acts of openness and tragedy? To, yes, please tell me, why did you cry in 4th grade during math class, and did your mother raise you or could she not get out of bed for five years?

The flight attendants offer drinks and pretzels. I take both. Seven pretzels in one bag. A cup of ginger ale. I try to subtly wipe my nose on the rough skin of the airplane barf bag.They definitely regret their decision to move us to this row. This is a scene. We can save no one.

Logistics and the reality of the San Francisco rental market mean we will continue to live together for twenty-six more days. We’ve just paid rent and he feels entitled to this — to act as a ghost of our relationship for the rest of the month.

Day 1
The plane lands (safely) without our requirement to help anyone during an emergency landing even though we’ve verbally committed to doing so. We order Vietnamese food to be delivered and share a car from the airport. I do not wash his dish because now we are officially roommates. Even though we share a bed and a bookshelf. He’s silent, stoic, white-hot rage or devastation, I don’t know which. It’s worse than any open displays of emotion. I wish he’d throw Tupperware and scream a little but he goes to bed at 8 pm instead.

Day 2
I cancel our vegan subscription meal box and eat macaroni and cheese from a pot and Xanax for dinner because sometimes it’s important to give yourself exactly what you want. Whether you need it or not. Whether it’s good for you or not.

Day 5
His slippers are what get me. We’ve been avoiding each other, but ignoring inanimate objects that remind you of an ex-lover’s being is harder. I leave the bathroom and there are his slippers. I walk into our room and there are his slippers.

I made him return the too-small ones he had purchased, setting the receipt on top, by the door. Thirty-day return policy — I was my mother, his mother, a ghost of anything I should be. And he did it, he returned them for the right size.

And now, they’re just lying there, the fucking slippers. And all I can think about who is going to keep the duvet cover? And Cornelius, our fern? But I don’t dare bring it up. I’d prefer a duvet cover to a fern any day but my preferences don’t matter here. I’m the one doing the breaking and when you’re the breaker you stand by and wait to see what the broken claims as their consolation prizes so that in a few years they can tell one of their female friends, one of their only friends, “at least I got the duvet cover.”

I hope it’s not the duvet cover.

Day 6
I could do it on the couch. Or in the pantry, I guess, but the bed is warm and the white noise machine is soothing, and I don’t want our roommate to walk in on me when she fetches chips to emotionally eat in the middle of the night. So I do it here. In bed, while he sleeps six inches away from, snoring — I masturbate.

Careful not to move the bed. I’m an insomniac and it helps me sleep and I’ve always hated doing it in the shower — all wet and cold. And there’s something about finishing and then being in a space where people get clean, like you were trying to absolve yourself of the action you just completed. Shower masturbation should be reserved for family vacations when you’re stuck in the same house with eleven people for the same amount of days and privacy is last on the list of things you’d be getting that trip, right above emotional support and successful political conversations.

No, this was not one of those times. I had paid rent through the end of the month, after all.

Day 9
I attend a wedding alone. It is a three-day celebration of love and youth and group yoga and I want to die.The bride walks down the aisle to a Beyoncé song on strings. I am a twenty-nine-year-old cockblock sleeping on the floor of my friend and her boyfriend’s rustic cabin, inside a sleeping bag that was last washed before I went through puberty.

It’s cold at the wedding and no one is expecting it. Guests wear denim jackets over black-tie attire and I kiss a man in the meadow. He’s hesitant to lie on the ground and ruin his suit, but I’ve already committed to ruining my dress from the start — it’s cheap and stupid and I look like a baby-shower cake, with tits.

Day 13
Home.
“Is there anyone else? Is that why?” He asks me.
I tell him no but don’t tell him about the dry humping in the meadow from the weekend. I also don’t tell him that the thing we like most about ourselves is the thing we like least about each other.

Day 16
Cornelius is turning brown.
I still water him even though he’s our shared child I’d like to neglect. His furry limbs hanging from the tub, turning brown, strings of his body that lead to rotting roots. I re-fill the watering can, five times, six times after folding the shower curtain above the rod.

I wonder if he knows his dad never loved him. I wonder if his dad knows I did love him. We still sleep in the same bed, but I stay up past my bedtime every night to avoid hostel pillow talk. Of his questions of why why why.

Day 19
He buys me figs but doesn’t close the drapes anymore. And shouldn’t he leave them open, anyway? I’m the one that wants the openness and the corners of his childhood and to understand all of the times he was told you are bad and no and felt guilt weigh down on him like fallen books.

“It’s not special because you want to know these things about everyone,” he told me instead of answering.

But is there any other way?

Day 22
Cornelius is alive but not thriving. We have this in com- mon. With the drapes open I notice the treetops for the first time in this room. And you know what? It’s lovely up here, above the streets, watching the trees sway.

Day 23
I officially abandon all dreams of owning a hairless cat.

Day 24
The great division of socks occurs. He insists I return all of his socks that have made their way into my drawer over the past year two years. I empty the drawer on the floor and return every Hanes sock I can find, except one. I tuck this one away in my dresser for fun. And that is terrible, I know that, but so is being punished for a thing you need to survive.

Day 26
“But who will take care of you?” He asks. That is the question that circles down and down and roots itself in my mind.

Me. Me.

Allyson Darling

Allyson Darling is a non-fiction essayist based in San Francisco who writes about mental health, sexuality, and the nuances of being a human being.