Adultery(20)

“But what exactly is missing in your life?”

Please don’t ask me that. Because the answer is nothing. Nothing! If only I had some serious problem. I don’t know anyone who’s going through quite the same thing. Even a friend of mine, who spent years feeling depressed, is now getting treatment. I don’t think I need that, because I don’t have the symptoms she described. I don’t want to enter the dangerous territory of legal drugs. People might be angry, stressed, or grieving over a broken heart—and in the latter case, they might think they’re depressed and in need of medicines and drugs—but they’re not. They’re just suffering from a broken heart, and there have been broken hearts ever since the world began, ever since man discovered that mysterious thing called Love.

“If you don’t want to go and see a doctor, why don’t you do some research?”

I’ve tried. I’ve spent ages looking at psychology websites. I’ve devoted myself more seriously to yoga. Haven’t you noticed the books I’ve been bringing home lately? Did you think I’d suddenly become less literary and more spiritual?

No, I’m looking for an answer I can’t find. After reading about ten of those self-help books, I saw that they were leading nowhere. They have an immediate effect, but that effect stops as soon as I close the book. They’re just words, describing an ideal world that doesn’t exist, not even for the people who wrote them.

“But do you feel better now?”

Of course, but that isn’t the problem. I need to know who I’ve become, because I am that person. It’s not something external.

I can see that he’s trying desperately to help, but he’s as lost as I am. He keeps talking about symptoms, but that, I tell him, isn’t the problem. Everything is a symptom. Can you imagine a kind of spongy black hole?

“No.”

Well, that’s what it is.

He assures me that I will get out of this situation. I mustn’t judge myself. I mustn’t blame myself. He’s on my side.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

I’d like to believe you, but it’s as if my feet are stuck in concrete. Meanwhile, don’t worry, I’ll keep fighting. I’ve been fighting all these months. I’ve been in similar situations before, and they’ve always passed. One day I’ll wake up and all this will just be a bad dream. I really believe that.

He asks for the bill, he takes my hand, we call a taxi. Something has gotten better. Trusting the one you love always brings good results.





JACOB K?nig, what are you doing in my bedroom, in my bed, and in my nightmares? You should be working. After all, it’s only three days until the elections for the Municipal Council and you’ve already wasted precious hours of your campaign having lunch with me at La Perle du Lac and talking in the Parc des Eaux-Vives.

Isn’t that enough? What are you doing in my dreams? I did exactly as you suggested; I talked to my husband, and I felt the love he feels for me. And afterward, when we made love more passionately than we have in a while, the feeling that happiness had been sucked out of my life disappeared completely.

Please go away. Tomorrow’s going to be a difficult day. I have to get up early to take the children to school, then go to the store, find somewhere to park, and think up something original to say about a very unoriginal topic—politics. Leave me alone, Jacob K?nig.

I’m happily married. And you don’t even know that I’m thinking about you. I wish I had someone here with me tonight to tell me stories with happy endings, to sing a song that would send me to sleep. But no, all I can think of is you.

I’m losing control. It’s been a week since I saw you, but you’re still here.

If you don’t disappear, I’ll have to go to your house and have tea with you and your wife, to see with my own eyes how happy you are. To see that I don’t stand a chance, that you lied when you said you could see yourself reflected in me, that you consciously allowed me to bring the wound of that unsolicited kiss upon myself.

I hope you understand. I pray that you do, because even I can’t understand what it is that I’m asking.

I get up and go over to the computer, intending to Google “How to get your man.” Instead, I type in “depression.” I need to be absolutely clear about what’s happening.

I find a website with a self-diagnosis questionnaire titled “Find Out if You Have a Psychological Problem.” My response to most of the questions is “No.”