This weekend we are coming out of the closet. My man and I decided to stop going undercover when we were no longer able to do so. He does this by publishing his memoirs; I can’t write this column about anything else because – no matter how much I’ve tried – nothing else comes out of my brain.
At the beginning, when we knew that we belonged to the select club of ELAdos and their common-law partners, a long time ago, we promised to keep the secret. We would admit the obvious, when it began to be noticed that he was sick, but not the name of his illness because it changes what those who look at you see and we did not want them to look at us differently. We just wanted and want to continue doing what we do among the living.
It was good to hide it, although that secret kept me from dreaming for months until I revealed it to a therapist friend. The first thing I discovered, among many other things that I have already discovered, is that sleeping is more important than eating, that you die sooner from exhaustion than from hunger, that without sleep anxieties, panic attacks and depression appear and everything stops having sense.
That is why, perhaps, I dare to speak in plural, because their evil is one of those that is most shared. I am not sick, but I am his arms and his legs, I do his and mine, I propose to live by his side whatever comes and try to be what he needs.
For now I think we are doing it in the best way possible, admitting that good is the enemy of perfect. When we met we already knew that loving each other has its moments of hate and now that is no different. Not long ago I apologized with “I do it with all the love I can and it’s not always as much as I would like.” He hates that I offer him help that he doesn’t need. Me, whatever he does it will never be as if he could do it himself.
No, I don’t have the makings of a cook, or a nurse, or a saint, but I do have the makings of trying to take care of the person I love until the end. I believe in this and aim to do so with pride all the time.
His memoirs are essential for what they are: history of journalism. They are titled Before that nothing because it is clear that we are all going nowhere. In them he recounts his present and past life, interspersing his today with his milestones, his references and his contingents. From the current one, he describes like no one else what happens to him and how he digests it and how he hates it and how he embraces it.
I only have words of admiration about how you are going through the ordeal of this cursed disease. Very few in his place, including me, would measure up to what he demands; that impossible amalgam of struggle and resignation, of fight and surrender, of no but yes, of yes but no, of you kill me but I plan to stay alive.
I often think that having traveled so much also helps on this trip, which may be the most important of my life.
We have decided to enjoy until the end, season by season. The time of admiration and guilt because my arms and legs responded to me has passed, the day has passed when in a large train station I was moved by seeing so many people together giving orders that their bodies responded, the time has passed when I hugged him and confused his muscle spasms with a bug that crawls up his legs and devours him and could eat me too due to contagion, I stopped seeing his first fall in slow motion like the demolition with dynamite of a very beautiful building , I already learned that you have to live strong by continuously exercising the present.
A few months ago we became a de facto couple because we are one and we don’t want any doctor to separate us at crucial moments because we are not registered. We went alone, we signed and we treated ourselves to a rich breakfast. We wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t been forced to. My little boy and I have been together for ten years without any role forcing us and we would have liked to continue like this until the end.
Registered or not, our plan remains the same: love ourselves as we know how.
#coming #closet
