The Riddle of Us

The Giza plateau stretched before me, wind howling across limestone and sand. Somewhere behind me, tourists were taking selfies. I stood before the Great Sphinx, its limestone body weathered by millennia, its human face somehow still regal.

My iPhone vibrated in my pocket—him again. Mark, who used to call me "bear" because I was grumpy in the mornings, because I hibernated when depressed, because he said I was "soft but dangerous." The bear who'd finally come out of the cave to travel alone across the world.

I pulled out the phone. His last message, still unread from yesterday: "I don't think you ever forgave me for not being what you needed."

The question hung there like the enigma of the sphinx itself. What had I needed? What did anyone need from another person—the comfort that anchors you, or the challenge that changes you? Mark had been comfort personified, safe and warm as winter hibernation. But safety had felt like sleeping through my own life.

The Sphinx had asked its riddle of travelers for 4,500 years: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was a human being—crawling as infant, walking upright, leaning on a cane in age.

But my riddle was simpler and harder: How do you love someone without losing yourself? How do you leave without breaking?

I typed a response, then deleted it. Then typed again.

"I forgave you everything except that you loved the version of me that was easy."

I pressed send and stood there a long time, watching the shadows lengthen across the desert. The bear in me had awakened, hungry and alone, finally ready to hunt its own life.