Song Stories 2: 'Cause I Am Barely Breathing

"Barely Breathing" c. 1996 Duncan Sheik Songs / Happ Dog / Careers-BMG Publishing Inc.

I wonder if he ever wonders how I spend my weekends.

Generally, I do the usual things: a bit of cleaning, a load of laundry, the inevitable trip to the supermarket. But those things don't fill an entire forty-eight hours; and the rest of the time...

This weekend, I've spent that down-time reclining on my couch, listening to one song play over and over and over again.

The first time I heard it was in yet another rental car, driving down yet another highway on the way to yet another cheap motel, in order to investigate yet another X-File; and at first it was yet another faceless song, until all at once a lyric jumped out and grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go. I don't think he noticed, though. I'm very good at not letting him discern what I'm feeling, when I want to.

He started talking, damn it, just when the deejay was announcing the song's title; but I heard it again that night, and jotted down the information, and as soon as I got home, I bought a copy of the CD for myself.

I know what you're doing, I see it all too clear
I only taste the saline when I kiss away your tears
You really had me going, wishing on a star
But the black holes that surround you
are heavier by far
I believed in your confusion,
you were so completely torn
It must have been that yesterday
was the day that I was born
There's not much to examine,
there's nothing left to hide
You really can't be serious if you have to ask me why
I say goodbye...

I wonder if he has any idea how often I think about leaving him.

We're so close. So close. We don't 'hang out', particularly, we don't pal around during our free time, we don't really meet any of the common definitions of friendship; and yet there is an intimacy between us unlike anything I've ever experienced. Our lives outside of work are very carefully separate, but our souls are entwined. So much so that leaving him, losing him, would be an amputation.

And yet, I think about leaving him. At least once a day.

Since our first meeting, his life and his quest and his paranoia and his fears have tangled around me and dragged me down, deeper and deeper, until I can no longer see the surface. There's something very peaceful about drowning, once you cease struggling and surrender: you simply float, supported and enfolded by the water as it suffocates you.

I do not regret that meeting, or our partnership. I don't regret knowing him, working with him, or even the myriad horrors I've endured as a side-effect of that pairing. I do not regret any of it; I don't have it in me.

But every day, it crosses my mind, and I think about it. About leaving him. About tearing myself free of the tangled web he's woven, and fighting my way back to the surface.

Would I even know how to live that way anymore? with my feet touching the ground and my head above water?

'Cause I am barely breathing
And I can't find the air
I don't know who I'm kidding
Imagining you care
And I could stand here waiting
A fool for another day
But I don't suppose it's worth the price,
worth the price
The price that I would pay

Everyone keeps asking, what's it all about?
I used to be so certain, and I can't figure out
What is this attraction? I only feel the pain
There's nothing left to reason and only you to blame
Will it ever change?

I wonder if he knows how often I think about making love to him.

He is an attractive specimen of manhood. Very attractive. I might even venture to describe him as gorgeous, if I was of a mind to be honest about it. And I've seen him naked, so believe me, I know. On a purely physical level, he's definitely 'my type', oh yes, completely.

Over the last several years, I've spent more nights one- room-over from him in motels than I've spent sleeping in my own apartment; and we have that closeness, that intimacy, so that it's hardly uncommon for us to wander back and forth between the adjacent rooms as if neither is mine, or his, but both rooms simply ours. We are not lovers, but we behave like lovers, sharing personal space and toiletries with casual disregard for ownership.

And I've seen the way he looks at me, in unguarded moments: I know that he cares for me, and that he wants me, and that all it would take would be a single small step across the boundary we've created between us -- no gaping chasm, but an insubstantial thin line; that is all that keeps us apart. One gaze, one touch, one tiny gesture at the right moment, would be all that it would take.

I yearn for it. I dread it. I spend my days coming up with reasons why it should never happen. I spend my nights dreaming of the possible future moment in which it does.

For there is one thing which I do not know, and that is whether sex would bring us a greater intimacy, or only more barriers between us... could we survive the barriers, and still sustain the closeness which we need to be effective in our work? And a greater intimacy -- would this be a good thing? Or would it simply drag me further into the depths, and bring me closer to drowning?

There is one thing I do know, and that is that I cannot carry him to shore -- there is no force great enough to lift him out of the watery abyss. But he can pull me down. He can pull me down.

But I'm thinking it over anyway
I'm thinking it over anyway...

I wonder if he understands how much I love him.

I love him. Like a friend, like a brother, like a partner, like a lover, all of these and more. Love is a complex thing; there are so many ways to love... I love him the way I love a bowl of hot soup on a cold rainy day, and the way I love my favorite cuddly-warm sweater, and the way I would love a man that I might pledge my life to in marriage. I love him enough to die for him. I love him enough to live for him.

But do I love him enough to stay with him? Every day I ask myself that, and every day I fail to find an answer.

He is the best friend I've ever had. I could tell him... so much more than I do. I could confide in him, and fear no betrayal more severe than perhaps a light teasing jest that would be instantly retracted should he find that it caused me pain. I could hand him my heart, my soul, and he would accept the gift reverently, and treasure it always.

And it would be the final weight, the anchor that would hold me underwater permanently, fated to sink forever into the fathomless ocean that is his existence. Should I give myself to him that completely, I would lose all hopes of ever emerging from his world.

But there are days, there are moments when the water is so inviting that I am tempted to risk that irrevocable step, and give him something that would bring us closer than even lovemaking could. There are times when all I want is to give myself to him, the entirety of who I am, and feel the encompassing warmth of his acceptance, of his embrace, of the water flowing around me as I sink into the depths.

I've come to find I may never know
Your changing mind, is it friend or foe?
I rise above, I sink below
Every time you come and go
Please don't come and go...

I wonder if he knows how much he hurts me.

If he thinks about it at all -- and guilt-ridden as he is, I'm sure he must -- he would likely imagine that it is his self-centeredness that hurts me: the times he's abandoned me to pursue his quest, the times he's ignored my advice and been damaged for it, the times he's failed to be there when I needed him, failed to save me from the darkness he's brought into my world. But those things don't hurt me, for I've come to expect them. He is no superhero, he is merely human, as flawed and imperfect as we all are -- and I know how his personal demons haunt him, how his need to find the truth consumes him; I don't expect him to be anything other than who he is.

The thing that hurts me most is his tenderness.

I don't often allow it, but in my times of weakness, the barriers lower, and it slips through: a gentle word, spoken in a caring voice, accompanied by a gaze that speaks so eloquently of his love for me that it pierces me to the core. An embrace, a soft kiss on my forehead, or simply a leap over an impossibly-high hurdle to accomplish something that will lighten my burdens somehow. It is in these moments that I feel what he feels for me; and it is these sudden instants of empathy that make me feel as if I am drowning.

I am, to him, the air that he breathes, the blood in his veins: I am the sun around which he revolves, the source of all the light and warmth in his world.

And how am I supposed to resist that?

These are the times I feel most like leaving him. A note on his desk to greet him someday, and me too far away to witness his shock, his disbelief, his agony at my absence. Me, somewhere distant, living a new life, where the sun shines brightly on a warm beach, and the ocean and its waves something to observe, without having to so much as dampen my feet. Me, on dry land, and the sensation of drowning only a distant memory.

Then I make the mistake of looking into his eyes, and I am lost all over again.

'Cause I am barely breathing
And I can't find the air
I don't know who I'm kidding
Imagining you care
And I could stand here waiting
A fool for another day
I don't suppose it's worth the price,
worth the price
The price that I will pay
But I'm thinking it over anyway
I'm thinking it over anyway

I wonder if he knows that I'm thinking about him.

I wonder if he knows that I'm lying here on my couch, listening to the same song play over and over, singing to me the story of how I feel for him, the attraction and the despair. I wonder if he knows that I'm crying, slow hot tears that trickle down my face. I wonder if he knows that I've used up a whole box of tissues already, and don't possess the energy to go to the bathroom and retrieve a wad of toilet paper, so that my tears flow unchecked into the pillow.

I wonder if he knows that I composed my letter of resignation for the forty-fifth time today, and packed a suitcase filled with the things I need most to survive, and that the only thing that undermined my resolve was the realization that I'd packed the Superstars Of The Super Bowl tape that I've never bothered to watch. I wonder if he knows that I held the tape in my hands and burst into tears at the knowledge that I am fated to drown, and the even more distressing knowledge that I no longer fear the drowning.

I wonder if he knows. And what he would do if he knew.

And when I walk into work on Monday, walk into the basement office that is still nominally his rather than ours, and look across the desk to meet his gaze, I wonder if he will see through my mask and my barriers and know what I am feeling. That I almost left him this weekend. That I can never leave him. That I love him, and that my love for him is an endless ache in my heart that tears at me with clawed fingers. That his love for me is my treasure, and my curse.

I wonder if he knows that we are drowning together.

I wonder if we should drown in each other's arms.

I know what you're doing
I see it all too clear...