What We Carried

The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional bubble from the goldfish bowl on the counter. Three years of shared life reduced to cardboard boxes stacked like walls between us.

Emma stood by the window, watching the storm clouds gather. 'You taking the fish?' she asked, not turning around.

I looked at the goldfish — an impulse buy from a carnival we'd attended two summers ago, when we were still the kind of couple who won prizes together. 'No. You keep him.'

'His name is Lightning,' she said, finally facing me. 'You named him that night because of how fast he darted around the bowl. Remember?'

I remembered. We'd been drinking wine on the fire escape, watching an electrical storm roll in, making all these plans about where we'd live when we finally moved out of this shoebox. We were going to bear the burden of a mortgage together. We were going to grow up.

Instead, we'd grown apart.

On the kitchen counter sat the bottle of vitamin D supplements her doctor had prescribed after she started sleeping twelve hours a day. Neither of us had said the word out loud, but we both knew what it meant. Depression had moved in like a third roommate, eating our food, draining our energy, demanding all her attention.

I tried to be there. I researched therapists. I bought the vitamins. I learned about serotonin and sleep cycles and the art of not taking things personally when she cancelled plans, stopped cooking, stopped wanting anything from me except space.

But there's a difference between bearing something with someone and simply bearing witness to their unraveling while your own needs pile up like unopened mail.

The cable guy was coming between three and five. We'd scheduled it together, back when we thought we'd be here another year. Now I wondered why I hadn't cancelled. Why I was still waiting for things I'd already left behind.

'I can come by,' I said. 'To see how you're doing. With the vitamins and stuff.'

Emma's smile was sad, knowing. 'That's not how this works, Mark. We don't get to be friends who check on each other's medication schedules.' She opened a box and began placing books inside, spine by spine. 'We either commit to the hard work or we don't. There's no in-between where you visit like a concerned relative.'

Lightning flashed outside, followed immediately by thunder. The goldfish darted around his bowl, sensing the change in air pressure.

'I loved you,' I said. 'I loved you even when you couldn't love yourself back.'

'I know,' she said, placing the last book in the box. 'That's what makes this so hard.'

I picked up my keys. The cable would have to wait for whoever moved in next. 'Goodbye, Emma.'

'Goodbye, Mark.'

In the elevator, I realized I didn't know where I was going. Only what I was leaving behind — an aquarium, a prescription bottle, and the kind of love that burns itself out trying to keep someone else warm.