Excerpted – elseship: an unrequited affair

My birthday was on a Wednesday. I suggested a no-fuss evening of takeout with whichever housemates were around since we were hosting a party that weekend for all of our respective friends, under a loose guise of my birthday minus special attention. I came home from an after-work swim to your refulgent face at the door ushering me upstairs to wait until summoned. When I descended, my housemates were sitting in the dining room. The chandelier was dimmed, festooned with mint-green and blue ribbons matching the candles ablaze underneath. Turquoise garland hung against the navy wall, and multicolored tinsel and confetti bespeckled the table set for lasagna and cake. You alone had left work early to decorate and bake. You never left early. A fib about a pipe bursting at the house. The homemade cake was made more impressive by the fact that up until then, the kitchen was without bakeware. The cake had required pans, an electric mixer, foresight.

My entire body was immediately awash with paresthesia. I was vibrating, teary-eyed, and too nauseous to eat. Everyone was touched by how overwhelmed I seemed. But that wasn’t it. At the center of my foggy spin were your MoonPie eyes. I felt a desperate desire to express a gratitude in a manner that words would not withstand. Like I wanted to swallow you and the entire thaumaturgic universe that surrounded us and never throw it up. An impossibility that wrenches.

I felt this way through the evening and into the next day while sitting in my office cubicle. The pressure was so intense I reached for a notebook to trace the feeling back to its source. At the end of the entry, I googled “lovesickness,” accurately diagnosing myself without ever having had an approximate feeling, never having been even fractionally lovesick. Whatever had been called a crush in the past was always in a cerebral space. This was chemical intoxication.

In these first gulps of love, I swallowed heartbreak. love. bittersweet. I knew you were too desirous of partnering with a man to want partner­ship from me (however dated an assessment this seems now). I had also grown accustomed to ambiguous rejection from every crush over the years. My journal entry was already filled with future dismay. Would I ever fall in love like this again, being that it depended on the gradual proximity to someone in my home?

The lovesickness did not subside, not all day, not through every attempt to eat, not during my evening swim. You had after-work things. We didn’t see each other that night.

There was a friend that I saw a few times a year when we were in our early twenties, when our travels intersected in different countries. He felt like the greatest potential for love and partnership. I eventually told him that I like-liked him. He didn’t feel the same. I was angry, not comprehending how I wasn’t enough. I ended the friendship. This kind of rejection taught me to accept the friend zone as the only zone.

I wanted to preemptively combat bitterness before it crept in between us. Know the love was real, even if it was only one-sided. Before bed, I wrote out a list of everything I loved about you. I stopped writing at item 132.

I journaled more. I messaged my somewhat-estranged childhood best friend, : “Maybe too personal or weird a question, but remember long ago how you mentioned that you felt like you were in love with [our mutual high school best friend]?” We had never spoken about it. I hadn’t understood its gravity enough to delve deeper. She of course remembered. She and had remained best friends, they still lived together, like sisters now, she said. told me the feelings eventually faded, helped by falling in love with other people, but it took time because they stayed friends.

After work I met up with a former coworker who had fallen in love with our other, then straight-identifying and coupled, coworker. They were now together, in crazy love. They encouraged me to tell you, that I shouldn’t presume how you felt or could feel.

After work I met up with a former coworker who had fallen in love with our other, then straight-identifying and coupled, coworker. They were now together, in crazy love. They encouraged me to tell you, that I shouldn’t presume how you felt or could feel.

I spent the morning in the corner farthest from my bedroom door curled up on the floor. Sobbing to my mother, calling a close friend, confessing to anyone who was not you. By midday I made my way downstairs to lie on the couch and attempt a meek fact-finding mission. You joined me, stroking my hair as we spoke. You were aware of my melancholic few days. I asked, “Would we be friends if we didn’t live together?” You emphatically said, Yes, of course. “Does it make you uncomfortable when I say ‘I love you’?” No, I don’t say it back because it would be disingenuous to say it only when prompted. We spent the rest of the day together running errands and setting up for the house party.

Later that night at the party, you confronted me in the kitchen. Alcohol makes you talk more freely. You wanted to revise your comments from earlier in the day. You said that you didn’t feel as strongly about our friendship as I did, not yet. I see the potential for that as we share more experiences and memories over time . . . I don’t remember what else was said, I had never had a conversation about friendship intentions. Why were you doing this now? I hadn’t been drinking, but it felt like I had been kicked over sideways.

I confided in more long-distance friends. I read many articles with head­lines like “The Science of Romantic Rejection,” “Frustration Attraction,” “The Neuroscience of Infatuation,” “The Neurobiology of a Break-Up,” “Unrequited Love in Friendships,” “Limerence and Emotional Attach­ment,” “Pain of Unrequited Love Afflicts Rejecter, Too.” There was no comfort to be found in these external truths. I wished to not be in my life.

Monday comes. The physical symptoms still raging. It takes all my strength to dress, commute to work, sit at my desk, and look like I am designing instead of stuck in a loop, journaling the same feelings as the prior pages. There is no tantrum over the wounding injustice of unrequited love. The love is bound up small and frozen as the shock of lovesickness launches me into damage control. I am consciously yearn­ing to steer into acceptance, to a scenario that minimizes animosity and alleviates this chilling darkness, like I am in a cave mining for hope.

I usually tackle emotions as they arise, researching and processing with friends and problem-solving my way back to a peace. But my brainy tactics weren’t working to dampen my bodily distress. I was devolving further into wreckage without resolve. We lived together. We live together. I didn’t know what this love would do to me or for how long.

That evening you came home and asked if I wanted to talk about my melancholy, still evidenced in my anguished expression. You don’t have to if you’re not ready, but I think I know what it’s about.

I had to tell you.

The words of that conversation did not embed in me. My memory of it is out-of-body and behind glass. We sat at a distance on my bedroom floor. My voice shaking, my eyes apologetic. Your voice solicitous, your eyes sodden.

I told you.

You already knew.

You had caused lovesickness many times before.

Telling you changed everything, but not telling you would have still changed everything whether you were in on it or not. My thoughts urge to be spoken, secrets feel like hiding, lying. I only know how to exist translucently. If I had chosen otherwise, I would have lost something of my freedom.

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TREE ABRAHAM is an Ottawa-born, Brooklyn-based writer, art director, and book designer. Her works experiment with collaged essay and mixed media visuals. She is also the author of the creative nonfiction book Cyclettes.